CMI Media Group and Compas: 2021

CMI Media Group and Compas

2200 Renaissance Blvd., Suite 160

King of Prussia, PA 19406

Telephone 

484-322-0880

E-mail 

[email protected]

Website 

cmimediagroup.com

 

QUICK FACTS

Accounts

Account wins 8

Active business clients 45

 

SERVICES MIX

Full service, non-personal promotion planning and buying and investment management 88%

Data and customer insights 12%

 

CLIENT ROSTER

Abbott

AbbVie

ADC Therapeutics

Agios Pharmaceuticals

Alcon

Almirall

Amneal

Ardelyx

Astellas

AstraZeneca

Bausch Health

Becton Dickinson

BeiGene

Boehringer Ingelheim

Bristol Myers Squibb

Eli Lilly 

Ethicon

Exelixis

Fresenius

Genentech

GlaxoSmithKline

Horizon

Johnson & Johnson

Myovant

Neurocrine

Novartis

Novo Nordisk

Otsuka America Pharmaceutical

Pharmacyclics

Regeneron

Seattle Genetics

Zoetis

 

“2020 was the year of listening and acting,” say executives at CMI Media Group and Compas. “Unprecedented times meant uncertain times, which meant it was more important than ever to take time to listen.”

According to management, CMI Media Group and Compas had two intertwined priorities: employees and clients. “Listening was employed to make sure they would be able to act on the most critical needs.”

Management says, “Many people used the pandemic lockdown for soul-searching, developing interests in yoga, bread-making, or house plants. Others saw 2020 as a time for awakening and change, participating in social action and education. Still others experienced the year as an incredibly challenging time, experiencing loneliness and fear. Likewise, the pandemic resulted in an incredibly complex year for businesses, many trying to survive or re-invent themselves amid the economic downturn. While pharma’s reputation improved as the potential saviors of the pandemic, they faced challenges around how to communicate with audiences about certain disease states.”

CMI Media Group and Compas, the agencies formerly known jointly as CMI/Compas and separately as CMI Media and Compas, Inc., experienced 2020 in a complex way as well, adding that the first priority was their people, ensuring employees, clients and partners had the support they needed.

“Listening took many forms, including formal surveys, one to one interviews and focus groups,” company executives say. “By putting employees at the center of two-way communication, the leadership team was able to identify ways to offer support and decrease stress levels. This responsive leadership approach included expanding the flexible work schedule program, providing home office stipends, streamlining internal communications, offering workshops on coping techniques, and taking an official corporate stance and providing education and charitable donations during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests.”

In spite of the pandemic, the agency continued to lead with compassion, and deliver on what has always mattered to its employees through extensive learning and development resources and opportunities, improvements to the annual review process, and culture-focused initiatives that were steadfast during otherwise uncertain times. “We weren’t going to let the pandemic change who we are,” says CEO Stan Woodland. 

“We lead with empathy and agility, hearts and minds. We want our impact to be guided by data and strategy, but also by the human touch,” says CMI Media Group President Dr. Susan Dorfman. “Being flexible to pivot in any situation, as well as having a pulse on what people need, are critical parts of every aspect of our business.”

According to Compas President John Donovan, “Being true to our core values has helped up thrive in these uncertain times. Our ‘We Are Family’ approach extends to our supplier-partners as well. Valuing supplier relationships at the same high levels as we do our client and employee relationships has been a differentiator for us since day one.” 

Management says on the client and partner side, social media listening strategies increased in popularity, and in addition to providing these insights to clients to support intelligence around their markets, CMI Media Group released to the industry a monthly analysis related to COVID. The analyses reviewed insights across consumer and HCP audiences, providing learnings and recommendations. CMI Media Group also published a series of thought leadership reports at the onset of the pandemic and in recovery phase, again based on survey data from consumers and healthcare professionals, to guide pharma on how best to engage with health audiences during COVID-19. 

Another area of focus, which had been planned before the pandemic, was a brand refresh, which was announced in February 2021. “Following rapid growth that was consistent in its 30-plus years, and having hit exponential growth especially in the past 10 years, it was time to find a new way to tell the brands’ story of who CMI Media Group and Compas are today and to support future growth,” company executives say. They embarked on an extensive process, focusing first on the CMI Media Group side. Compas is in progress now. 

RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Steady and consistent growth has continued for CMI Media Group, which management says has become the go-to strategic media partner for a significant portion of the industry. 

“Rather than simply executing media buys, the company uses a mix of proprietary technology and highly skilled staff to help clients target key audiences often to the individual level,” management says. “The company’s upward trajectory of growth, which has been steady since its founding, is due to its superior client deliverables rewarded by an industry-leading client retention rate and new business wins, allowing CMI Media Group to sustain double-digit annual revenue growth over the last several years. This also allowed the company to build its superstar ranks, with employee growth mirroring that of revenue, including hires at every level across the organization.”

The leadership team says over the last nine years, CMI Media Group and Compas combined have had more than 20 percent revenue growth year over year, including a “record breaking” nine competitive RFP wins in 2020, and 33.7 percent staff growth. 

According to management, award wins spanned recognition for the company’s work and culture, including recognition as a top and most innovative agency in various categories by Med Ad News, MM&M, PM360, Digiday, and PharmaVOICE.

Inclusion and diversity have always been a major focus of the agency. Although the company has a diverse staff and leadership, management knew it was important to formalize inclusion efforts to ensure the company’s positive track record of diversity continues and remains sustainable through its growth. This has included employee-led initiatives that are supported by corporate leadership. 

According to company leaders, 2020 was an important time for taking big steps in streamlining and supporting inclusion and diversity practices. Coming into the year, the focus was on establishing committees to bring content to staff each month, including Mental Health Awareness Month, Pride Month, and Hispanic Heritage Month, as well as a focus on Black Lives Matter. Content has included panels featuring staff and clients, classes/workshops and curated resources. Woodland also was named to the new WPP Inclusion Council. 

Toward the end of the year, CMI Media Group and Compas announced the formal launch of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which are considered best practice in corporate diversity efforts.

Compas is certified by the National Minority Supplier Diversity Council as a minority-owned-and-operated business and generates significant Tier 1 and Tier 2 Diverse Spend.

STRUCTURE AND SERVICES

According to the leader team, a highlight of CMI Media Group’s innovation is Empower, which they characterize as the health industry’s first and only closed-loop planning platform that enables continuous and personalized “insight to action” at scale. 

Empower, which was launched in April 2020, allows CMI Media Group “to close the loop on integrated consumer/HCP audience planning, messaging and outreach, making every campaign more effective,” company executives say.

“The platform offers cross-audience customer universe identification, segmentation, media planning, activation, measurement and on-going people-based optimization. By leveraging consumer and HCP data together, CMI Media Group is able to achieve integrated messaging to inform audiences, messaging, media strategy, and ultimately drive engagement to impact your brand’s bottom line. The Empower platform allows the creation of audiences from over 265 million consumers and 1.5 million healthcare professionals across 26 physician specialties, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, RNs, pharmacists, medical students and other prescribers.”

As the executive team explains it, “Many companies encounter business problems and then look to find fully fleshed out solutions on the open market, which in most cases never fully address the original problem. CMI Media Group has historically looked for external solutions first, like everyone else, but in recognizing the shortcomings of those available solutions, have developed many proprietary tools and products ourselves. CMI Media Group has always been an innovative leader within the health and wellness space and has successfully built tools that push their clients’ business forward, and provide seamless, data-driven solutions to core business problems. It’s the reason CMI Media Group developed Empower, to be hyper-targeted in promotion to all customers (patients, caregivers, and HCPs), Media Vitals, to get a detailed understanding of customer preferences, and PROACT, to optimize customer experiences with real-time next-best-message execution.”

CMI Media Group is also at the forefront of social media for pharma, with milestones this past year such as launching the first PGA sponsorship with pharma on Twitter. The company’s core service offerings consist of paid media and paid social media strategy, as well as social listening and research, and community management. 

“The latter two offerings are not typical offerings you see within a media agency; however, CMI Media Group truly believes in the power of digging deeper into the paid social landscape to understand the research side first,” company executives say. “Through extensive social listening and community management, CMI Media Group delivers top notch, innovative, and out of the box social media offerings for our clients, all based on data.”

According to the company, for more than 30 years, Compas has been partnering with the industry’s leading media providers, as well as up-and-coming innovators – representing all channels and tactics – positioning them for success with healthcare clients and agencies.

“As stewards of our clients’ media investments, Compas is committed to enforcing the highest standards of buying execution, effectiveness, transparency, and accountability while leveraging our clients’ collective buying power through a consortium that unlocks incremental savings,” management says. 

CMI Media Group and Compas services include strategic media/promotional planning and buying; co-marketing opportunities; promotional execution and investment management/buying services; addressable and connected TV; customer insights and analytics; supplier alliance management; primary market research; programmatic display, audio, and video; search engine marketing and search engine optimization; social listening and advertising; content planning; and global reprints.

Proprietary technology and solutions include Empower; Media Vitals, which is now inclusive of both consumer and prescriber data; performance-based compensation models such as Own the Audience and Compas Media Buying; a programmatic solution called AdMission; and a customer-experience management solution called PROACT.

FUTURE PLANS

Company leaders say a major focus is the rebranding of the partner agencies, which kicked off in early 2021 and will be seen more by the industry as new capabilities are unveiled. The rebrand’s tagline is, “Realizing healthcare’s possibilities.”

According to company executives, healthcare inequities, digital-first consumption, ecommerce, drones, mobility, connected homes and devices, telemedicine, AI-enabled devices, remote monitoring and EHRs are just a few concrete examples of digital transformation in healthcare – accelerated globally by the pandemic – that are completely reshaping how and where consumers and healthcare professionals consume information and make decisions. “These shifts are re-engineering the way patients and providers interact with one another, and with healthcare manufacturers – drastically shifting the criticality of access to information and how/where decisions are made about treatment plans and health outcomes,” management says. “This transformation is a key driver for change in reimagining the possibilities of healthcare. Health information access, education, and equality have never been more important – and truly impactful change has never been more possible. The agency’s investments will further the possibilities in healthcare, reinforcing their continued and future-forward commitment to the business of healthcare communication as well as the people, innovation, technology and data resources necessary to propel business results and transformational growth initiatives for the healthcare/life sciences industry and clients.”

PHILANTHROPY/CITIZENSHIP

Company executives say during the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, employees wanted to make a difference. Employees researched and shared resources and education, and the agency offered up resources to host and disseminate the information. Employees participated in peaceful protests and wrote to their legislators, and agency leaders have “never been prouder.” Additionally, employees identified and financially supported nonprofits making a difference, and the agency matched donations.

Giving back to the community is a cornerstone of the corporate culture, and that philanthropic spirit was seen quite a bit in 2020, according to management. 

In working with longtime philanthropic partner Liguori Academy, the agency learned the students currently had no library – the school had yet to find funding. Gearing up in the same way as last year, when they built a food bank for the school, CMI Media Group and Compas employees rallied to raise funds to fill a room with the books on Liguori teachers’ wish lists. The agency matched every dollar employees raised, and in February 2021 donated funds to cover bookshelves and other costs as well.

The company has also partnered with Liguori Academy to support the students with fundraising, mentoring and with an Advisory Board made up of CMI Media Group staff volunteering their time and skills to help the school, including a social media campaign that aided in fundraising.

CMI Media Group and Compas’ culture starts with living their employee value proposition, “Brilliant Minds. Big Hearts. Bold Opportunities.” According to management, the company creates an inclusive culture where integrity and service are paramount, while providing opportunities for development and career growth that employees can own. CMI Media Group and Compas hold leadership accountable to provide caring and open environments for all employees through regular communication and providing peers the opportunity to recognize each other.

CMI Media Group and Compas also have annual philanthropic initiatives, this year modified to be pandemic-safe. The agencies reached their 25th consecutive year of their holiday-time philanthropic initiative. Employees’ volunteer hours and monetary donations were made to a wide range of nonprofits spanning healthcare and social issues, as well as providing resources to families in need. 

CMI Media Group and Compas employees honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. each year by organizing volunteer opportunities for all employees to serve their communities. The January event was in-person in 2020, but for 2021, due to gathering restrictions, they reimagined the positive impact they can collectively have, even while remote, and expanded the Volunteer Opportunities for 2021 from one day of service to three available dates to choose from.

While turnover is a natural occurrence in agencies, CMI Media Group and Compas’ turnover is much lower than the industry average. “People leave for a variety of reasons; however, what is extraordinary and very telling is the unprecedented number of employees who return after a short hiatus,” the leadership team says. “Several dozen employees, affectionately known as Boomerangs, have returned. It serves to validate that our culture, our commitment to employee development and our priorities are very much aligned to our staff’s needs and desires.”

Company leaders maintain that CMI Media Group and Compas have a transparent culture where they “collect and act on feedback from employees in a variety of ways that allow employees to participate in coaching, recognizing each other and demonstrating appreciation for each other while celebrating living our values of: ownership and accountability, acting with respect and integrity and putting employee, client and partner satisfaction first. CMI Media Group and Compas has been continually recognized for its positive corporate culture. Additionally, this past year, 20 percent of staff earned promotions, and 51 people hit their fifth, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th, or 30th anniversary.”