Excitant Healthcare Advertising: 2016
Excitant Healthcare Advertising
1410 Meadowbrook Way
Woodstock, GA 30189
Telephone: 678-357-1127
Email: [email protected]
Website: excitanthealthcare.com
Accounts
Account wins 3
Active business clients 8
Brands by 2015 Sales
Brand product accounts held 13
$25 million or less 8
$25 million to $50 million 1
$100 million to $500 million 1
Products not yet approved/launched 3
Services Mix
Direct Marketing (postal or electronic): 30%
Sales Collateral: 30%
Professional Advertising: 15%
Interactive: 10%
Strategic Marketing Consulting: 10%
Professional Relations: 5%
Client Roster
Alara/Neolpharma
Galen US
Krona Therapeutics
McKesson Technology Solutions
Prevention Pharmaceuticals
Sebela Pharmaceuticals
Triplefin
Zoetis
Excitant celebrated 2015 as executives say the agency not only defied start-up odds by surviving through its fifth year of operation, but is actually thriving. According to its leaders, the agency entered 2016 with a more diversified client base made up of additional brand assignments from both new and current clients. The agency also carries a renewed focus on its target market, small to mid-sized brands and clients across pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical devices, and healthcare IT.
“When we spoke to our clients, we found that what they really loved about our approach was that like them, we embraced the fact that they were not ‘big pharma’ but a small to mid-sized brand,” says Mark Perlotto president and CEO of Excitant. “That allowed us to bring programs and ideas to the table that are right-sized, financially appropriate and well thought-out for what their brands need to successfully compete – that told them we are aligned, engaged, and understand their business.”
Executives say the agency has not only continued to add to its roster of clients and brands, Excitant continued its winning ways at the creative awards shows in 2015, adding to the “impressive” track record of creativity demonstrated since its founding.
The year’s accomplishments
Zoetis has been a client of Excitant since 2012 and the relationship has never stopped growing, executives say. Early in 2015, the animal health company moved responsibilities for its Witness portfolio of six point-of-care veterinary diagnostic tests to the agency starting with a complete brand design overhaul which gave a new, cohesive look to all six products residing under the Witness brand. Included within the Witness assignment was full launch responsibility for its third-generation heartworm diagnostic scheduled for early in 2016. The assignment included message and campaign development, print and digital advertising as well as print and electronic sales collateral.
Later in the year, the agency also initiated pre-launch awareness work on a revolutionary new visualization technology for parasite detection that was in-licensed by Zoetis.
Prevention Pharmaceuticals, also a long-time client of the agency, turned to Excitant to develop packaging design and launch campaigns for its omax3 professional brand of omega-3 supplement to two distinct professional audiences. One campaign targeted chiropractic and sports medicine physicians and focused on the product’s use in managing joint inflammation, while a second campaign targeted alternative medicine physicians connecting the brands inflammatory response effects to combating the effects of aging.
A unique, targeted assignment also came to the agency in 2015 from Neolpharma. Excitant was chosen to develop the launch campaign exclusive to the Puerto Rico market for Levo-T, Neolpharma’s brand of levothyroxine for treating hypothyroidism.
Excitant also initiated a relationship and work with Sebela Pharmaceuticals and was called on again in 2015 for additional project work from a 2012 client, Triplefin.
According to agency leaders, the creative product put out by Excitant for its clients continued to shine in 2015 across a wide range of categories at several prestigious creative award competitions.
The agency walked away from the 2015 Communicator Awards with four winning entries. For its client Galen, Excitant took home Awards of Distinction for the Synera parent brochure, website design, and a physician testimonial video. It also received an Award of Distinction for the corporate image video it developed for the Zoetis Canine Reproduction Services business.
The 2015 Rx Club Awards judging brought the agency four more awards for a promotional education eBlast, a convention booth handout, a two-wave direct mail series, and sales collateral, all for its Zoetis client.
Its biggest awards show performance however was at the Diagnostic Marketing Association Dx Communications Awards where the agency walked away with 10 top three winners in six different categories, including a complete first-second-third place sweep of the online advertising category for its Zoetis client. In the only non-diagnostic product category at the DxMAs, the agency also scored a second-place finish for its Paragon Perspectives campaign created for McKesson.
In fact, over the last three years Excitant has won 20 Dx Communication Awards – more than any other agency or manufacturer over the same time period, executives say.
“With our client focus on small to mid-sized brands, creative awards take on a different meaning,” Perlotto says. “Our clients do not have the huge media budgets of big pharma to drive brand awareness, so the fact that our creative product allows their brands to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those brands speaks volumes. Our clients tell us they love that we can find unique ways both strategically and creatively for their brands to stand apart from the crowd.”
Structure and services
Excitant is a full-service agency, but executives say it has refined its operations relative to today’s environment to better serve small to mid-sized brands and companies with a refined a flexible model that better suits its target audience. “All our core strategic, creative and account services are handled in-house, but rather than trying to build out specialized services in-house, we have established strategic relationships with outside partners whose business is to stay at the cutting edge of their fields in media, technology, video, and the like,” Perlotto says. “We fully manage the work done by these partners on behalf of our clients, so they only deal with their Excitant team, but benefit from the specialized expertise.”
Perlotto says this approach allows Excitant to “right-size” their offering specific to the individual client’s need, rather than trying to justify maintaining such in-house expertise and overhead, which in-turn enables them to be more cost-efficient for their clients.
Future plans
According to its leaders, the agency headed into 2016 with a full head of steam. January already brought work from an undisclosed women’s health start-up company and two brand assignments from Merz Neurosciences, so the agency’s prospects continue to look bright.
“Our dedicated focus on the small to mid-sized brands won’t be changing anytime soon,” Perlotto says. “We believe we’ve landed on a near ideal balance of filling a real market need with a model that allows us to be both flexible to the needs of our current clients and quickly scalable to accommodate their growth as well as new agency assignments.”
Executives believe that is a smart move for the future as well. “Combining highly attentive client service with outstanding creative certainly seems to have served the agency and its clients well thus far,” they say.
