Concentric Health Experience 2015
Concentric Health Experience
175 Varick Street
New York, NY, 10014
Telephone: 212-633-9700
Facsimile: 212-675-2209
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: concentrichx.com
QUICK FACTS
Accounts
Account wins 13
Accounts resigned 1
Active business clients 13
Brands by 2014 sales
Brand-product accounts held 22
$50 million to $100 million 6
$100 million to $500 million 6
Services Mix
Print/Collateral/Offline promotion 35%
Digital 65%
Client Roster
Allergan
Becton Dickinson
Ferring Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Guerbet
Leo Pharma Inc.
Medtronic
Novartis
Otsuka/Lundbeck
Rouses Point
Sobi Pharma
Sunovion
Theravance Inc.
With four product launches in the queue for 2015, Concentric Health Experience is well placed for its third consecutive year of impressive growth across all measures, according to agency leaders. The agency was recognized with a third Manny Agency of the Year nomination and by Advertising Health as one of the top 25 health agencies in the world based on its success in 2013 – a year that boasted 30 percent growth, an expanded client roster, and six product launches. According to executives, Concentric continued its rapid pace in 2014, which toppled 2013 as the agency’s best year yet. 2014 included a 40 percent increase in overall growth, 13 new account wins, 44 new hires, and an employee retention rate of 92 percent.
2015 promises to surpass the agency’s performance in 2014, with Concentric working with its largest and most diverse client portfolio to date and revenues that are expected to double those of 2013, executives say.
The year’s accomplishments
Plain and simple: People and brands grow at Concentric, executives say. “We strongly believe that building a culture of entrepreneurial spirit, intelligence, and collaboration is the key ingredient to help clients grow their brands. A brand is only as good as the team behind it. Teams with energy, passion, and diverse expertise push boundaries and drive brand growth, and that, in turn, fuels our agency,” says Ken Begasse, co-founder and CEO. “At Concentric, we celebrate a culture that is focused on ownership of and accountability for our clients’ challenges and on growing personally beyond expectations through a blend of collaboration and exploration. We like to encourage each member of our agency to think like an owner and dream like an entrepreneur. That won’t change no matter how big we get.”
The agency’s headcount increased to an all-time high of 155 between its New York City–based U.S. headquarters and EMEA headquarters in London, and is expected to increase by an additional 20 percent in 2015, executives. Jennie Fischette, an invaluable member of the team since joining in 2012 and, in the words of Begasse, “a dynamo with endless energy and an inherent drive for innovation,” was named managing partner in 2014. The agency’s ongoing strategy of senior executives working directly with all levels of staff across all departments continued to pay dividends in the form of account and employee retention.
“We have expanded our team aggressively over the last two years,” Fischette says. “This has allowed us to keep up with our organic growth, which drove 46 percent of our performance in 2014. However, we’re not just adding for scale. We believe talent is our currency, and to support our value proposition, our headcount has outpaced our agency growth. The feedback I get from our clients is that they hire us for the quality of our offerings. Ensuring that our agency is composed of experts with depth and range within their areas of expertise is truly a competitive differentiator for us.”
According to agency leaders, the collaborative, cooperative structure at Concentric is also a key to its continued ability to attract top talent. “For us, culture is key to growing right, not just growing right now,” Begasse says. “Talented people are inspired and motivated by working with others who challenge them in a constructive manner. We value smart people, but we value smart people who can make others better even more because they build and reinforce the Concentric way.”
A core part of Concentric’s DNA is specialty pharma, an area in which the agency has excelled for over a decade, according to executives. This has spurred ongoing growth in 25 specialty areas. 2014 saw a particular emphasis on and exponential growth in oncology, including four Novartis brands – Zykadia, Jadenu, Farydak, and Tafinlar/Mekinist – as well as rare diseases, including recent brand partnerships with Sobi Pharma’s Kineret, Keprivance, and Orfadin.
“Rare and orphan diseases is an area of expansion for our agency services,” says Michael Sanzen, co-founder and chief creative officer. “We enjoy working within these categories because they are truly centered upon bridging the value gap between the patient and their treatment. We believe that true innovation is born when we creatively address the paradox of the practical and emotional needs of our stakeholders.”
Sanzen adds, “Our experience in these areas over the years with the launch of Xifaxan550 in hepatic encephalopathy and our work on Exjade allowed us to bring instant credibility to the challenges these clients face in building differentiated, connected, and coherent brand experiences.”
In 2014, the company’s digital footprint continued to expand, with approximately 65 percent of its portfolio concentrated in this area. “This is the world we all live in now, and as an early adopter of digital, it’s become not only a core component of our business, but a key differentiator in the marketplace,” Sanzen says. “Through our efforts supporting our client categories and communities, we have become a Top 10 influencer on Twitter across 20 healthcare hash tags, and we garnered over 600,000 social media impressions in the last six months of 2014. Our social engagement as an agency positions us to lend our expertise and experiences in the service of our clients, and it pays huge dividends for them.”
Structure and services
In 2014, Concentric expanded its innovative research offering, Concentric Health Intelligence, which is currently being used by 95 percent of clients – a 100 percent growth rate in the offering from the previous year, according to agency leaders. Concentric Health Intelligence provides clients with a 360-degree immersion process that leverages a wide variety of traditional and nontraditional methodologies to mine insights from all stakeholder audiences, including patient, payer, and physician. Insights gleaned are then used as a foundation for integrated channel strategies that lead to more effective and more substantive engagement with desired audiences, executives say.
The service represents a critical step forward for pharma and healthcare marketing in its unique exploration of insights into the intersection of the clinical, emotional, and practical implications of engagement. “The primary challenge in leveraging the data uncovered through this proprietary process is that the transformational breakthroughs it promises also require risk-taking,” Fischette says. “However, we are able to clearly demonstrate—via the robust data and analysis generated by the process – the ways in which the benefits far outweigh any inherent risks.”
Begasse also notes that the agency’s long-standing focus on engagement suffuses all aspects of its structure and services. “Engagement is what drives brand success more than ever. When we use engagement as our key metric, it opens us up to a world of possibility. You are no longer hamstrung by what’s ‘always been done.’ Instead, you pursue what will engage customers effectively: authentic experiences that solve human needs. We excel at that and bring this capability to every component of our work with clients.”
Future Plans
Concentric Health Experience is a truly a global agency, and will build out its presence in every major global market both via its existing headquarters in New York City and London, as well as through the MDC Partners network, executives say. “Insight and intimacy is local, not global,” Fischette says. “Our expansion strategy will bring both to all our clients, so we can be agile and learn with them as we bring brands to market,” adds Fischette. 2015 will specifically see continued expansion in new markets in Europe and here in the U.S., with additional staff and offices on the board to service both the East and West Coasts.”
The agency isn’t limiting its growth to the physical realm either. “Given our growth and commitment to assembling best-in-class teams, we want to tap into the very best talent, no matter where they are located,” notes Adam Cohen, managing partner and creative director at Concentric. “As a result, we’ve embarked on a ‘connectivity campaign’ that allows us to take advantage of technology, giving us the freedom to hire top talent, no matter where they live. This also allows our existing teams to communicate in real time no matter where they happen to be around the globe. This connectivity has created a 24/7 environment in which our clients are never without support, which is essential in today’s fast-paced and global environment.”
Philanthropy/citizenship
Last year, Concentric leveraged the agency’s growth to deepen its long-standing commitment to social responsibility and community contribution. Most notably, Concentric established a series of wide-ranging philanthropic initiatives labeled “The HealthFix” (thehealthfix.org), designed to help fix health experiences here and abroad. The first campaign, which offered $1 for every social share toward a new ambulance for a rural clinic in Zimbabwe, garnered participation in more than 25 countries and funded a new ambulance in a matter of months.
Concentric then tackled a health experience closer to home. The agency collaborated with CDM, The CementBloc, and Triple Threat to raise nearly $30,000 to support Strongmom, an organization for industry colleague Kerrie Prettitore, who was battling not only colon cancer, but also DPD deficiency, which caused a dangerous reaction to treatment. Sanzen says, “We’re so proud to be part of an industry that, at its heart, cares about those in need and pulls together to make a difference.”
