Brick City Greenhouse: 2021
Brick City Greenhouse LLC
One Gateway Center, Suite 2600
Newark, NJ 07102
Telephone
908-867-0200
Website
brickcitygreenhouse.com
QUICK FACTS
Accounts
Account wins 14
Active business clients 8
Brands by 2020 sales
Brand-product accounts held 22
SERVICES MIX
Professional advertising 70%
DTP 20%
Corporate communications 10%
CLIENT ROSTER
Avrio Health
EyePoint Pharma
Horizon Pharma
Immunomedics
Janssen
Janssen Oncology
Medicines Development for Global Health
Scynexis
TG Therapeutics
“Brick City Greenhouse was founded on the idea of being a brand-first agency that empowers people to create the extraordinary on behalf of our clients,” management says. “Many of the agency’s employees came from large holding-company agencies and saw firsthand how bottom lines are a bigger driver of agency behavior than doing what’s right for brands. The agency’s leaders wanted to change this and create an agency model that was truly focused, not just in words but functionally, on bringing out the best in brands and the people that serve them.”
Since then, Brick City Greenhouse has strived to create new possibilities for the agency model for both marketers and agency staff alike. “The agency has made a number of fundamental departures from the standard operating procedures and norms of traditional agencies, freeing staff to create the highest caliber of work and giving marketers a greater sense of partnership and accountability,” management says.
RECENT ACCMPLISHMENTS
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, 2020 was a banner year for Brick City Greenhouse, with nearly 100 percent revenue growth.
After an FDA setback in 2019 with one of the agency’s key clients, the leadership team says they wanted to ensure that Brick City Greenhouse was positioned for resilience during this downturn. The agency maintained staffing levels, continued to make key hires in digital and other vital areas, and ramped up new business efforts to offset the loss.
According to management, the efforts paid off handsomely in the back half of 2019 and continued through 2020. In 2020 the client roster grew by four new clients and 14 new brand assignments. This included two concurrent subpart E/H oncology launches, relaunching three completely redesigned corporate websites, and broadening the client portfolio in the areas of women’s health, immunology, oncology, gastroenterology, and rheumatology, for both HCP and DTP.
The agency also substantially increased its headcount and doubled revenue. “And this trend is forecasted to continue through 2021 with a projected headcount of nearly 50 staff members and a 40 percent increase in revenue year-over-year by the close of 2021,” agency executives say.
STRUCTURE AND SERVICES
Brick City Greenhouse has stripped away the unnecessary barriers to productive relationships so clients can get exactly what they desire from their agency without all the baggage that comes with traditional AOR models,” according to agency leaders. “The agency gives clients more day-to-day, senior-level involvement; a higher caliber of strategy and creative than they get with junior teams at large agencies; improved budget optimization; and faster turnaround times.”
To do this, the agency has eliminated the billable hour model and uses fixed-fee pricing. For AOR assignments, Brick City Greenhouse carves up the scope of work and charges a project cost for each line item. “This gives marketers a greater level of predictability in their budgets,” agency executives say. “If there’s a change in strategy or some other factor that changes the scope of the assignment, up or down, agency leaders work upfront with the clients to re-estimate and change the scope in a way that everyone is comfortable with. The cost is fixed and there are no surprises.”
This fundamental change has led to “a whole cascade” of advantages for clients, agency leaders say. “Brick City Greenhouse hires only A-level talent, without passing increased salary costs on to clients. These highly qualified individuals are more efficient and produce better quality work, and this structure incentivizes the agency’s teams to be as nimble and agile as possible. And overhead, especially with the remote working model that was in place before the pandemic, is significantly lower and allows the agency to keep costs down for clients.”
Because Brick City Greenhouse’s goal is to attract, inspire, and retain the most talented personnel in the industry, the agency has created a work structure that seeks to empower employees not only to do their best work but lead their best lives. “There are no timesheets, complete flexibility in work arrangements, a truly remote working structure with its 40-plus employees spread across seven states, and unlimited paid vacation time. And as an added perk, the agency pays for employee healthcare and supplements the cost for spouses and dependents. These efforts led to MM&M naming Brick City Greenhouse in 2019 as one of the Best Places to Work.”
These fundamental changes in how the agency operates allow Brick City Greenhouse to deliver marketing and communication services that are better, faster, and in a more cost-effective way, agency executives say, adding that once marketers get a taste of the Brick City Greenhouse way, they never want to go back. “The entire experience is different than any other agency I’ve worked with,” says Patrick Aldworth, Senior Director – Marketing and Sales Training at Horizon.
Brick City Greenhouse offers a full range of professional and DTP healthcare communication services, with competencies that span from prelaunch activities, such as disease awareness and launch readiness to franchise and corporate communications, through to LOE efforts both online and off. “In fact, about 80 percent of the agency’s work last year was digital. In 2020, Brick City Greenhouse also continued to add to its strategic, account, digital, and creative capacity with several senior hires. This follows the agency’s philosophy of ensuring clients get senior-level, day-to-day attention on their brands,” according to Brick City Greenhouse’s management team.
Agency leaders say “it’s deeply rewarding” to see the new model they created is increasingly being sought out by both employees and clients alike.
FUTURE PLANS
2021 promises to continue the breakout trend from 2020, and Brick City Greenhouse will continue to hone and refine its ever-evolving model in response, agency leaders say, adding that they want to make sure that the agency is always inspiring its clients and employees.
“Change here is a given – as is growth,” management says. “Some of the agency’s biggest accounts started with a single small project.”
Agency leadership has found that once clients experience what it’s like to work with Brick City Greenhouse, things grow quickly. They say the agency is ready and well-positioned to take on these challenges, and they do not look at new business as an onerous task needed to feed the ever demanding “bottom line.” They see it as an opportunity to carefully curate a collection of interesting and like-minded clients that they can be passionate about.
Fred Kinch, founder and content lead; Renée Wills, co-founder and client lead; Ashley Schofield, co-founder and creative lead
PHILANTHROPY/CITIZENSHIP
Brick City Greenhouse is a mission-built organization and has always had a desire to give back to the healthcare community, agency executives say. “So as part of this mission, every year the agency has donated 5 percent of its post-tax profits to health and wellness-related charities and they plan on continuing this trend. The agency is also a female majority-owned company. This philosophy extends to working with companies that bring unique value to the medical community.”
In 2018 Brick City Greenhouse started working with Medicines Development for Global Health, a not-for-profit biopharmaceutical company focused on neglected diseases, based in Melbourne, Australia.
“Brick City is in complete alignment with our mission and values. They get us. This understanding has really helped us propel our corporate story forward,” says Mark Sullivan, founder and director of Medicines Development for Global Health, a 2019 Fast Company Most Innovative Company and 2019 Prix Galien nominee.
