New technology chief joins Palio; Saratoga office to wind down

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Bryan Roman

Bryan Roman

Changes are taking place at Palio. The agency will be shutting down its Saratoga, N.Y., office by the end of June and consolidating business in its New York City and Los Angeles offices. Additionally, the agency has appointed its first technology leader. As senior VP, director of technology, Bryan Roman will report to President Kim Johnson and be responsible for delivering transformative technological solutions for clients at the forefront of healthcare, including global pharma, biopharma, device and diagnostic brands. He will manage and lead technology solutions across the agency’s offices as Palio continues growing digital services to help clients more effectively reach their target audiences in today’s complex environment.

“Palio’s focus on building seamless brand experiences is based upon a keen understanding of the way users interact with brands, as well as positioning brands to be more responsive in a crowded, multi-screen world,” Johnson says. “Today’s brands have to be nimble to easily share content with their end users. Roman’s track record of marrying technology and creativity will allow us to uphold our clients’ brands’ authentic voice across communication channels and platforms.”

Roman will provide direction and insight to multi-disciplined technology teams of designers, user experience developers, strategists and producers. Executives say he is well versed in the realms of client relationship, new business development, vendor management, talent resourcing, and internal operations, and understands that digital technologies and digital media continue to evolve and improve, and those driving this evolution and change want to ensure a dynamic experience that bring their brands to life.

“I am always exploring innovative applications to craft perfect solutions for client challenges,” Roman says. “My passion is creating engaging experiences made accessible to the masses by leveraging the right technology for the job.”

As part of inVentiv Health, Roman will also have access to cross-disciplinary clinical and commercial experts to create integrated communications and commercial solutions for clients. Complementing advertising, the company’s commercial capabilities include sales teams and sales training, strategic and tactical market access services, non-personal promotion, public relations, medical communications, adherence services and full management of commercialization teams.

Before joining Palio, Roman was director of technology at Fancy Pants Group, charged with managing and leading the development of their technology team and driving innovation through research and development. Roman has also developed touchscreen and digital display applications, e-commerce and consumer sites and API codebase.

As for the closing of the Saratoga office, Johnson says it is a core part of the agency’s growth strategy. Palio has been doing more work across inVentiv, as the agency has been building its New York City headquarters, which is co-located with inVentiv.

“We have significantly grown our New York City office and have had great success in attracting great talent and doing a lot of work with our public relations, medical communications, and managed markets sister agencies,” Johnson says. “Clients are really benefiting from that integrated approach and that is what’s driving our strategy now to further consolidate, focusing on New York City and Los Angeles, where we are also co-located with inVentiv, out of an inVentiv West Coast hub in Santa Monica.”

Operations in Saratoga are in the process of winding down, Johnson says, with many employees having relocated or joined other divisions of inVentiv. There is no firm date for the office closing, but it is expected to happen by the end of June.

One inVentiv group, inVentiv Managed Markets – an offshoot of Palio – will maintain a strong presence in Saratoga.

“That is an area of the inVentiv business that continues to thrive in Saratoga, and many of our employees have moved over to that division of inVentiv,” Johnson says.

Palio has been pitching – and winning – accounts in conjunction with other inVentiv groups, she added. “We’re pitching together, we’re assembling teams in new and different ways, and we’re doing new and different things,” Johnson says. “Part of it is because the market is demanding it, but it’s a nice opportunity to be able to offer that type of diversity of work to our staff too.”

And clients will not really see a difference because most of them are being serviced out of the New York City office in one way or another, Johnson says. “The client feedback has been business as usual, really.”