WINNER – Best Consumer TV/Radio Campaign, Best Medical Device Campaign; Finalist – Best Interactive Patient Campaign: People with brain injury often struggle with speech loss (aphasia). Recalling the right word can feel impossible. Constant Therapy is an FDA-cleared speech rehabilitation app prescribed by clinicians. Every scene is inspired by the science of speech loss and real patient experiences.

AREA 23

An FCB Health Network Company

622 Third Avenue, 3rd Floor
New York, NY, 10017

Telephone
917-265-2623

E-mail
business.inquiries@
area23hc.com

Website
area23hc.com

 

QUICK FACTS

Accounts

Account wins 10

Active business clients 30

WINNER – Best Professional Print Campaign; FINALIST – Best Experiential Campaign: AREA 23 printed entire classic novels on toilet paper rolls to help doctors realize that patients with chronic idiopathic constipation spend way too much time in the bathroom.

Brands by 2019 sales
Brand-product accounts held 40
$25 million or less 9
$25 million-$50 million 1
$50 million-$100 million 3
$100 million-$500 million 6
$500 million-$1 billion 4
$1 billion or more 4
Products not yet approved/launched 13

SERVICES MIX
Healthcare professional
assignments 60%
DTC/DTP assignments 40%

 

CLIENT ROSTER
Acasti
Allergan
Astellas
AstraZeneca

WINNER – Best Patient
Engagement Campaign: Thanks to Trulance, doctors can finally treat chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC) without the troublesome side effects of previous treatments. Now, they can get the good without the bad.

Bayer
Beirsdorf
Boehringer Ingelheim
Constant Therapy
Daiichi Sankyo
Eagle Pharmaceuticals
Genentech
Gilead
GSK
GSK ViiV
Horizon
Indivior
Insmed
Invitae
The Learning Corp.
Leo Pharma
Lilly
Myovant Sciences
Nektar
Neurocrine Biosciences
Novartis
Nutent
Optinose
PatientsLikeMe
Roche
Urovant Sciences

FINALIST – Best Interactive Patient Campaign, Best Medical Device Campaign: See Sound is the world’s first smart home hearing system for the deaf and hard of hearing. Powered by more than two million YouTube video clips, this machine-learning model reports 75 sounds with industry-leading accuracy.

WINNER

Agency of the Year, Category I

Most Creative Agency

Most Admired Agency

Best Consumer TV/Radio Campaign

Best Medical Device Campaign

Best Patient Dngagement Campaign

Best Professional Print Campaign

 

FINALIST

Best Consumer Print Campaign

Best Experiential Campaign

Best Interactive Patient Campaign

Best Interactive Physician Campaign

Best Medical Device Campaign

 

FINALIST – Best Consumer Print Campaign: A campaign that uses only 10 percent of every medium to show how standard iron pills may deliver only 10 percent of what people with iron deficiency need.

AREA 23 has certainly earned a reputation as a challenger brand over the last decade, and in 2019, agency leaders say they challenged many of the accepted tenets and preconceived notions that define agency business. According to Renée Mellas, president, “From our growth strategy to the very role of pharma agencies in the bigger industry picture, we look at 2019 as the year AREA 23 defied the laws of advertising.”

RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS

In 2019, AREA 23 executed seven major launches for clients. Early in the year, Indivior’s Perseris gained FDA approval as a treatment for schizophrenia, and Lilly’s Cyramza gained the first of three indication approvals it would receive throughout the year. Another Lilly brand, Emgality, already achieving success as a migraine preventive, became the first FDA-approved treatment for cluster headaches, a vastly underserved condition. AREA 23 executives say it was a busy autumn, with three big brands reaching regulatory approval. Beovu, Novartis’ long-awaited challenger to Eylea in the wet AMD space, and Bayer’s Nubeqa, a differentiated treatment for men with nonmetastatic prostate cancer, were both approved in close succession. Calquence, AstraZeneca’s BTK inhibitor, was approved for CLL, adding to its growing list of indications in hematologic malignancies. Additionally, in late December, AREA 23 partnered with Allergan to launch Allē, the new loyalty program hosting the company’s full suite of aesthetic products, such as Botox and Juvederm.

“It’s commonly accepted that in order to grow in the ad world, you need to pitch, pitch, pitch,” management says. Following its 2018 commitment to limit participation in new business pitches, AREA 23 finished 2019 with the least amount of pitch activity in the agency’s history. Paradoxically, the agency won 10 new major AOR accounts, all of them earned without participating in a full pitch, and all adding up to the financial equivalent of an entire Category 2 agency, AREA 23 executives say, adding, “Definitive proof that for some agencies, pitching is not a prerequisite to growing.”

According to Mellas, “Our new approach to new business has served us very well. We’ve become very selective as to what kind of opportunity we’ll consider. If it’s a full pitch, in which we’d be working in a vacuum, exhausting a ton of resources on a spec assignment, it’s unlikely we’ll participate. If it’s a great product, a great client team, and they’re willing to evaluate us on our proven track record of outstanding creative and great brand results… those are the kinds of relationships we’re interested in pursuing. We turned down 33 RFPs in 2019 alone, and it’s been liberating to realize that you don’t have to chase every opportunity to be successful.”

FINALIST – Best Interactive
Physician Campaign: This virtual reality experience immerses the oncologist in the mindset of their patients as they process the news of progression. After showing how patients feel, we leave their doctors with a solution both they and their patients can appreciate: Cyramza.

Agency managers say new AOR accounts gained during 2019 underscore that AREA 23 is the uncommon agency whose strengths cannot be pigeon-holed, encompassing oncology and rare disease, and expanding into areas such as aesthetics and diagnostic services. AREA 23 added the following accounts: Lilly’s selpercatinib (formerly Loxo-292) for thyroid and lung cancers (HCP and consumer); Lilly’s Verzenio for metastatic and early breast cancer indications; Myovant’s Relugolix for advanced prostate cancer; Nektar’s bempegaldesleukin in combination with nivolumab for metastatic melanoma; Horizon’s teprotumumab for thyroid eye disease (HCP and consumer); BI’s Pradaxa for atrial fibrillation; Urovant’s Vibegron for overactive bladder (HCP and consumer); Invitae’s next-generation sequencing (genetic testing services); and Allergan’s aforementioned Allē customer loyalty portal.

Sixty percent of accounts added in 2019 were moved to AREA 23 from other non-FCB Health Network agencies, while 40 percent represented new accounts not previously assigned.

According to Tim Hawkey, chief creative officer, “There’s an amazing benefit having adopted this different approach. When a client calls you because they already love your work, and they choose you for the real chemistry you have together… you end up in a much healthier long-term relationship based on shared values and a shared desire to create magnificent and disruptive creative work.”

“They say that what goes up, must come down,” agency executives say. “Well, after a five-year streak of producing the industry’s most award-winning campaigns, AREA 23 leaders are proud to report that 2019 was their best creative year yet, both quantitatively and qualitatively.”

By the numbers, AREA 23’s trophy haul was their greatest to date, bringing in seven trophies from Cannes Lions (including Grand Prix and Gold), the Manny Awards, MM&M Awards, One Show, D&AD, Clios and the Global Awards. AREA 23 was named Agency of the Year by MM&M, Clio Health, London International Awards, and The Global Awards. In addition, four of their clients ranked at the top of the Outcomes Creativity Index, a new ranking of pharmaceutical clients based on metrics of creativity published by Med Ad News. Bayer and Lilly were recognized in the top three pharmaceutical companies, while the brands Lartruvo and Xofigo were recognized in the top three of pharmaceutical brands, measured by an aggregate of creative awards won over the prior year.

According to Hawkey, “While the recognition is nice, we’re not here to win awards. We’re here to disrupt and help transform this industry with creativity. And some of the campaigns we were able to conceive, produce, and deploy in 2019 represent not only a huge leap forward in our thinking and approach, but they also represent some really exceptional bravery on behalf of our clients to do things that have not been done before.”

Among AREA 23’s 2019 canon of work, four campaigns stand out as most notable, executives note. The “No Defense” launch campaign for Insmed’s Arikayce, “is a stunningly simple and graphic solution, and is exactly the opposite of what you’d expect a specialist campaign for a serious orphan disease to look like,” agency executives say. The “Get Up Alarm Clock,” created as an activation for Lilly’s Lartruvo, “merged technology and data with heart and soul, and in the process created a new impetus for pharma brands to offer solutions beyond the molecule.” The “One Word” film for The Learning Corp.’s Constant Therapy “is a clinical horrorscape that shattered the standard pharma trope of the mechanism of disease video. Additionally, AREA 23 and Wavio’s See Sound “is at once a demonstration of the agency’s machine learning and product design capabilities and their commitment to solving the world’s most underserved health problems.”

“The work we did in 2019 is proof that pharma work can not only be life-changing, but game-changing as well,” Hawkey says.

STRUCTURE AND SERVICES

Renée Mellas, president; Tim Hawkey, chief creative officer

In the fourth quarter of 2018, FCB Health medical education shop Hudson Global was realigned under the AREA 23 umbrella, with the new name AREA 23 ON HUDSON. 2019 marked the first full year of the two offices working together with the goal of creating a bridge between promotional and medical education, and offering the full suite of services to clients on both ends.

According to Mellas, “We set a target of ending the year with seven shared clients between the two offices. We’re proud to report that we ended the year with 11 shared clients. And the clients are already reaping the rewards.”

Management also notes that despite in-demand strategic services and a track record of success, AREA 23 disrupted itself and announced a new holistic approach to their strategy capabilities with the hire of Julie Pilon as executive director of integrated strategy. Prior to joining AREA 23, Pilon served as chief strategy officer at Publicis Health + Sapient, and was the long-standing managing director and president of toptier research and consulting firm InSync.

“We’re incredibly proud of the strategic functions we’ve built in the agency, but they have historically been separate functions: brand strategy, medical strategy, UX and engagement strategy,” Mellas says. “With Julie on board, our vision is to pull those functions together under her singular leadership with the goal of providing more integrated strategy solutions to our clients.”

Pilon adds, “We live in a world where cohesive brand experiences have become the destination. From communication to services, our integrated strategic process now merges our capabilities across disciplines to create breakthrough communication campaigns with big experiential ideas that differentiate brands and are incredibly meaningful to customers. It doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a deliberate process we orchestrate with our clients from the start. And yes, it works very well indeed!”

Beyond integrating the agency’s existing capabilities, Pilon is tasked with building new capabilities that meet the needs of the clients and customers of the future. Collaborating with her colleagues across the FCB Health Network, Pilon has played a key role in launching the network’s support services offering, integrating data, analytics, and service design.

And when it comes to technology, in 2019 AREA 23 proved that cutting-edge innovation is hardly the sole domain of digital agencies. In June, the world first heard of See Sound, a home-hearing device for the deaf and hard of hearing. Invented as a part of AREA 23’s “What If” process, and built in partnership with software company Wavio, the device was awarded the Grand Prix for Innovation at the Cannes Lions Festival. The recognition was just the beginning for the product, which the agency has continued to push to the commercial stage. At the end of the year, the effort culminated in a major milestone – a $1 million equity investment deal funding the manufacturing phase for See Sound and solidifying the partnership between AREA 23 and Wavio.

“From an agency standpoint, this project is significant for so many reasons. First, we have the opportunity to save and improve lives,” Hawkey says. “Second, this is a proof point to our clients in our world-class machine learning and product design capabilities. Additionally, this represents an entirely new revenue stream for us, and any agency today should be thinking about ways to diversify their revenue.”

FUTURE PLANS

By the end of 2019, AREA 23 showed that accepted laws of advertising perhaps are not as set in stone as we once thought,” agency executives say. “What 2020 holds in store for the industry is anyone’s guess, but when it comes to AREA 23, one thing is certain – it will be defined by more self-disruption and continued rewriting of what is possible in health advertising.”

PHILANTHROPY/CITIZENSHIP

Leaders at AREA 23 say once again the agency put its creativity to work for several non-profit organizations. The agency continued its partnership with Mollie’s Fund to create a new TV spot, focusing on the need to keep a close eye on your moles. The PSA follows a disembodied eye on a journey around the body as it examines everything it comes across. The spot aired in donated media across the United States and Europe.

Building on its relationship with Change the Ref, an organization founded by grieving parents in the wake of the Parkland school shooting, AREA 23 created a campaign to expose the medical side of gun violence. Inspired by a growing outpouring of concern and anger among trauma surgeons and medical professionals about the devastating effects of assault rifle injuries, the agency worked with those very doctors to create Impossible Operation, a board game based on the classic operation game, but with a deadly twist. The Impossible Operation game shows a shocking and upsetting image – a young girl lying on the floor with a large gunshot wound in her midsection. Any attempts to remove or repair her organs result in an instant flatlining of the patient. Because assault rifle wounds are often inoperable, the game is unwinnable. The game was shipped to members of the Senate who have notoriously blocked any debate on gun violence, as a means to pressure them to bring key legislation to a vote on the floor. The campaign was covered heavily by the press, including national television, bringing even more attention to this underappreciated issue.