Choreo Market Access: 2017

 

Choreo Market Access LLC
488 Madison Avenue, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10022
Telephone: 212-849-7949
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: choreomarketaccess.com

 

Accounts
Account wins    8
Active business clients    6

Brands by 2016 sales
Brand-product accounts held    6
$25 million or less    2
$25 million to $50 million    1
$50 million to $100 million    1
$1 billion or more     1
Products yet to be approved/launched    1

 

Services Mix

Market access strategy    50%
Market access communications    50%

 

Client Roster

Amgen
Collegium Pharmaceuticals
Genentech
Intracellular
OPKO Renal

 

 

The ever-changing landscape of market access demands multifaceted support from a manufacturer’s marketing agency. Executives say Choreo Market Access, a Healthcare Consultancy Group (HCG) and Omnicom company, brings together strategic consulting services – informed by front-line industry experience – with world-class creative execution, to offer insightful, responsive partnership in crafting and delivering communications to payers, institutions, and other market access stakeholders.

The Year’s Accomplishments

Choreo entered the market access marketplace during 2016 with a bang, launching a novel pain management medication by an up-and-coming East Coast manufacturer. The launch was an unqualified success, resulting in exclusive status versus a well-established chief competitor at two top commercial plans in just six months. The product is now covered for 91 percent of commercially insured lives.

The agency also launched a groundbreaking therapy for vitamin D deficiency in 2016. “Given that vitamin deficiencies do not rank high among payer priorities, this launch provided an opportunity to exercise some market access ingenuity,” executives say. “The effort thus far has resulted in unrestricted coverage by a third of commercial plans nationwide and almost 60 percent coverage across commercial plans at Tier 3 or higher – a significant inroad for the first branded product in a category dominated by generics for the past 10 years.”

According to managers, in its first year, Choreo gained eight new clients, ranging from some of the most prominent drug manufacturers in the world to exciting young companies bringing their first products to market. The primary mission for all clients is the same: to secure market access for their brands.

Agency staff has expanded from a handful of individuals at the end of 2015 to 25 employees at present. Choreo collaborates regularly with its HCG and Omnicom partner agencies, such as Health Science Communications, Hyphen Digital, ProEd, Chameleon, The Scienomics Group, and Ketchum Public Relations.

“Our interdisciplinary team of market access strategists, medical strategy experts, market research professionals, world-class creatives, and full-service account executives draws from experience on both the client and agency sides of the fence,” executives say. “Poised for growth in 2017, Choreo is here to provide new and existing clients alike with insights and persuasive communications to meaningfully support their brands in a rapidly shifting market access environment.”

Structure & Services

Choreo forges a dynamic and comprehensive integration of market access expertise and cutting-edge creative execution.

“You can have the best value proposition in the world, but if customers don’t engage with it, what’s the use?” says Roger Haskins, executive creative director. “Conversely, you can have great creative, but if it is off-strategy it won’t translate to brand success. We believe that synchronizing sound strategy with compelling creative can move markets and improve access for our client’s products.”

Fundamental ideation begins at Choreo with the CORe (Content Origination Roundtable) Team, consisting of a market access strategist, a medical expert, and a copy writer. These disciplines infuse every agency deliverable with strategic purpose, medical credibility, and engaging messages.

Executives say the CORe Team often begins by developing a robust payer message platform. Campaigns, programs, and assets evolve from foundational thinking captured in this platform, which addresses considerations of critical importance to payers when selecting medicines for their patients.

“Our tight-knit team then works together from all locations (including offices in New York and Los Angeles) to ensure thorough input from all pertinent skill sets,” according to Choreo’s leadership. “Medical and Strategy work with the client to capture all applicable subject matter expertise in order to establish strategic priorities. Copy gets involved early to initiate the process of message development. Once a vision has been established, the entire creative team engages to create and produce the tools and programs.”

With Choreo’s market research operation in the mix, critical business decisions need not be made without validation. “Our understanding of the nuances of market access is invaluable to informing meaningful market research in the payer space,” management notes.

“It’s about knowing who to target and getting the right respondents to participate in your market research,” says Krystina Smith, director of Insights and Analytics. “Payer is a broad term; it’s important to get an informative mix of roles and lines of business, such as Medicaid, Medicare, commercial, etc. The goal is to combine a sound methodology with the ability to mine information for actionable insights.”  

These research capabilities complement the agency’s market access expertise and strategic offerings.

“Good research is more than just an information dump; it should illuminate the fine details and considerations helpful to honing an overall market access strategy,” executives say. “These insights are then pulled through in the creative output.

“The professional roles outlined herein work closely together to deliver comprehensive value to market access clients. At Choreo Market Access, we believe in the power of an elegantly synchronized value story to change mindsets and move markets.”

Future Plans

Choreo is partnering with Ketchum Public Relations to develop a new offering: payer-specific public relations. According to agency leaders, the partnership is breaking new ground by bringing together two skill sets that do not routinely coexist. “As a premiere pharma PR agency, Ketchum will be able to channel Choreo’s market access expertise into a payer-targeted PR product,” executives say.

Meanwhile, Choreo continues its development efforts broadening the utility of interactive value models (IVMs), which allow customers to digitally explore a product’s value proposition before committing to a policy decision. Choreo is also expanding its digital capabilities to include real-time pull-through technologies based on local, specific, real-world data.

Philanthropy/Citizenship

Choreo helps support HCG’s ongoing pro bono work with combat veterans. The group assists efforts to help veterans reenter civilian life and transition to civilian jobs and supports other philanthropic organizations serving veterans.