Q&A with Klick Health’s Rich Levy

Med Ad News had a conversation with Klick Health’s Chief Creative Officer Rich Levy about the independent agency’s recent appointment of three senior creative leaders, the kind of work he wants to see Klick produce, and how he is always looking for the next great hire.

Rich Levy: As you saw from the release, I’ve been at Klick now for about 18 months and our group is just growing like crazy. We’ve announced the hiring of three really important, really senior hires to the team … We’re just really excited about these senior creative leaders coming into our agency as we grow. In 18 months our creative group has more than doubled in size and we just continue to grow as our clients trust us with more business, organic growth, new business growth, etc. It’s been a good time.

Med Ad News: You went on a hiring tear when you got to Klick, and you’re continuing to acquire new talent during the pandemic. Please discuss Klick’s ongoing process of hiring new talent.

Rich Levy: One of the benefits of working for a privately held company is we can hire ahead of the curve. We’re not waiting to win business to hire people, we’re hiring proactively as we find really great, talented creative people. We’re always looking for really great people. And the one thing, if we’ve learned something from COVID, is that we can find people wherever they are, and we’re working just as effectively remotely as we were in person. We’re looking for people all around our offices, all over Ontario, all over the tri-state area, all over Pennsylvania, to really find the best and the brightest.

Med Ad News: What are your goals in 2021 in terms of new hires and types of accounts to go after?

Rich Levy: Over the past couple of years we’ve noticed a change in the types of business that our clients are entrusting to us, in that we are winning business that is much more 360, where it’s HCP, it’s DTC, it’s patient, it’s digital, media, payer, all of the above. We see that we’re working on much more integrated pieces of business. Our history is well known as a digital agency of record and a digital shop, but I think that 85 to 90 percent of the pieces of business that we’re seeing come to us now are more integrated pieces of business. So that means that we’re hiring people with more integrated experience, more 360 experience that we had in the past.

Med Ad News: Ultimately in 2021, are there growth goals that you are trying to meet, or as you said, you’re just putting people in place proactively?

Rich Levy: We all have our individual goals. I have a goal, I’d like to win Agency of the Year at the Mannys this year! I’d like to win Most Creative Agency! I would love to see all the awards shows coming back, and I would love for our work to be recognized across the industry. One of the things that we are focused on is doing meaningful work that allows people to take care of their health. Again, when you’re in the middle of a pandemic and you’re hiring people, from inside of healthcare, from outside of healthcare, people who are coming into our industry for the first time, are coming because they truly understand the importance of health communication – probably now more than ever. So one of my goals is to hire people who perhaps never thought about healthcare as a career choice but are now drawn to it because of the type of work we’re doing and the importance of the work that we’re doing.

Med Ad News: As far as what you look for in new hires, what are the characteristics you tend to gravitate towards?

Rich Levy: Our culture at Klick is very well-defined – kindness, empathy, compassion, all of those things are incredibly important. But the one thing that I look for, more than anything else, is someone who is willing to dive in and embrace the information. Someone who is always looking at things in a slightly different way, and people who don’t want to do the ordinary. There’s way too much ordinary work in advertising and I think people who like to look at things in a slightly different way, I’m drawn to. I’m drawn to the unusual hire. The people who for one reason or another never thought about a career in healthcare advertising, and now are drawn to it because they see we are doing things differently.

Recently we had a virtual portfolio night and job fair, and one of the things that we did, because we actually thought it would limit the number of people who would apply, is that we asked everyone to give us a video submission to tell us something about themselves. Well, we were shocked that it dramatically increased the number of people who applied to the job and the video submissions were so incredible, because you got to learn something about people that was much more three dimensional. For example, there was a guy who came on who was applying for an ACD position, and he had his two children, one on his lap and the other one running around, and he said, “Welcome to my office!” There was a woman who came on and said, “I’m not going to lie, I think this is the eighth time I’m recording this, but I think this one is going to be the best!” Which told me so much about her, that she’s a perfectionist, but she wasn’t taking it too seriously. So I think when you find people who are interesting people who want to do things a little bit differently, and you put them all together, you end up with incredibly different work that’s just not the same as everyone else. And I think you’ve seen over the years the work of agencies that I run, clearly the work that we have done is very different from the rest of the industry.

Med Ad News: Do you think you’ll be able to reach some of those goals in 2021 of having different kind of work? Are there things you’ll be able to point to next year and say, “We planted the seeds for this in 2020”?

Rich Levy: I do, we have a few projects that we’re working on right now that I think are incredibly different, I love them. One piece, I think we’ll be launching in May. We’re trying to hit a specific day of the year. But we’re really excited about it. And we’re doing it because it solves an enormous problem in the world, we’re not doing it because we hope it will get incredible recognition. We do think it will get recognition because I think it’s so unique, when people see it, they’ll be like, “Why didn’t anyone think of that before?”

You know this industry. I’ve been here 18 months, we’re getting to that point where the work that we have created when I first arrived will be all coming to market in 2021 and we’re super excited. We have an agency town hall at the end of the year where we get the agency together, and I am putting together a reel right now of just work that we have produced this year in 2020, and I think people are going to be blown away when they see the work because I don’t think they understand the amount of work and the quality of the work we have done this year. And I think bringing in these new people, like Laura and Lauren and Ryan, will help us elevate it to even the next level. As well as people like Sam Dolan, who was the chief creative officer of Ogilvy Health, in the spring – she’s already elevating the business, and the work that we’re doing for some of our clients has been amazing.

We’re at that point where everything is starting to click – no pun intended – at all of the right time.

We’re always looking for people who don’t want to do ordinary work, and I don’t need an open job requisition to have a virtual coffee with anyone. And I love meeting people, because you never know where that next great hire is going to come from.