Concentric Health Experience

175 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014
Phone: 212-633-9700
Facsimile: 212-675-2209
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: concentrichx.com

Accounts
Account wins    14
Active business clients    17

Brands by 2015 sales
Brand-product accounts held    31
$50 million to $100 million    7
$100 million to $500 million    18
Products not yet approved/launched    6


Services Mix
Print/Collateral/Offline Promotion: 35%
Digital: 65%

 

Client Roster
Allergan
Becton Dickinson
Bayer
Collegium
Ferring Pharmaceuticals
Guerbet
Intercept
Leo Pharma
Medtronic
Novartis
Nualtra
Otsuka/Lundbeck Alliance
Pfizer
Rouses Point
Sun Pharmaceuticals
Sunovion
Theravance

Concentric Health Experience, last year’s Category 3 Agency of the Year, is still winning with culture, and winning big, its executives say.

The year’s accomplishments

2015 shattered all previous records, with an “astonishing” overall growth of 75 percent, an increase in worldwide staff of 65 percent to 226 employees, and a “remarkable” 75 percent new business winning percentage, having won nine of 12 pitches, agency leaders say. “Incredibly, the agency deployed 13 integrated creative campaigns and launched four brands in 2015,” executives say.

As great as the growth is, Concentric executives agree that the most inspiring results from their unique culture are measured in relationships and retention. The agency has a healthy organic growth rate of 38 percent; five out of seven legacy clients expanded or deepened their relationship with Concentric, and the agency was awarded four new accounts based on stellar performance within existing brands. At the same time, Concentric also maintains an industry-leading 88 percent employee retention rate.

“Performance, relationships and accountability create a winning combination,” says Ken Begasse Jr., co-founder and CEO of Concentric. “We are a testament that building an inspiring culture can have measurable impact for our people, our clients, and our agency. Employees feel that they can do their best work at Concentric, and that opportunity is here for them to explore their interests, learn and grow, regardless of their level. This leads to outstanding retention. Without a doubt, our clients benefit from having an agency filled with deep institutional knowledge, experienced leadership and long-standing continuity on their accounts. Lastly, our focus on culture and commitment to people has powered our outstanding growth over the past 5 years.”

Talent and Culture

Growing smart is a clear focus for the leaders at Concentric. As the agency planned for significant and sustained growth, the company invested in both people and culture in order to ensure a sustainable value proposition for employees. With 2016 promising to be another year of impressive growth, with 17 clients and 31 brands already engaged, Concentric wanted to ensure the agency was well positioned to lead clients forward, so they strengthened their leadership with 30 managerial hires in 2015 and solidified key capabilities, departments, and offices. Managing Partner Jennie Fischette describes the game plan for 2015: “Leading and never following means learning how to feed growth. For Concentric, this consisted of growing key assets like Concentric Health Intelligence and our London office, reimagining our engagement group with the launch of Radius-Hx, and expanding our content strategy department to match the evolving needs our clients.”

In London, Concentric added new leadership with industry veterans, Executive VP, Managing Director Peter Carr and Executive VP, Creative Director Arron O’Hare. Carr is the former owner of Courtney Alexander Consulting Limited, and O’Hare was the Creative Director at award-winning DJM PAN Unlimited.

In New York, Concentric fortified resources across the board, but particularly strengthening the medical strategy, operations and account groups. Key leadership hires included Ed Cowen from Medicus International to run Concentric Health Intelligence and VP, Medical Director Paula van de Nes. Begasse says, “I can’t emphasize culture enough. It’s allowed us to attract some of the brightest minds in the industry, and at the same time develop our internal talent and provide them a path to grow along with the agency. Our investment here continues to pay dividends over and over.”

“With five years of consecutive growth, you would expect the work to suffer,” says cofounder and Chief Creative Officer Michael Sanzen. “But as we say, ‘Inspiring people do inspiring work,’ and I’m inspired to come into work everyday to create alongside our inspiring people. We believe a life well lived, both personally and professionally, is the key to building ideas with empathy and connectedness, which leads to inspired work. That philosophy makes us attractive to the best talent in our industry, and they have come to Concentric to do great work, with great people, for great clients.”

Executives say in 2015, with an eye toward the future, Sanzen set his creative vision into motion, literally transforming the agency’s ability to create meaningful engagements across all customers and media. First, he bolstered creative leadership with the addition of seven new creative directors across four groups to lead the agency’s expanding creative team, which grew 300 percent last year. Second, Sanzen led the realignment of the creative-services team, creating a design-focused vertical and finally, spinning out the Radius-Hx engagement group, reflecting a continued emphasis on inspiring, game-changing work on behalf of the clients of Concentric across all sectors. The early results were outstanding, with Concentric being honored with 15 creative awards globally. The incorporation of cutting-edge animation and technologies like Google Cardboard has helped enhance Concentric’s already innovative work.

Looking ahead, 2016 promises even more honors to come, with most of the 13 newly minted creative campaigns eligible in 2016. “I am extremely proud of the work we did together in 2015,” says Adam Cohen, managing partner, executive creative director. “First and foremost, each campaign is performing well for our clients. Creatively, the work is bold, simple and inspiring, and the shear amount was mind-blowing. This being our most prolific creative year yet, we continually raised the bar from one campaign to the next.”

Structure and services

Concentric means “common center.” According to agency leaders, by understanding the core value proposition across all key stakeholders, Concentric effectively develops brands that connect in a deep and meaningful way. In 2015, the agency restructured its offering to best align with the evolving needs of the industry. Concentric Health Group now consists of three integrated areas of excellence: Concentric-Hx, the brand-building and communications arm, Concentric Health Intelligence, the strategic insight and research arm, and Radius-Hx, the engagement team within Concentric that was created in 2015 to extend that common-center strategy across the entire customer journey.

“The modern agency model requires expertise efficiently integrated across the value-chain,” Begasse says. “By giving each discipline an identity, a focus, and ownership, we’ve created ‘intrapreneurship’ that openly collaborates within our growing organization. This benefits our clients, of course, but also our employees because it empowers ownership.”  

“We created a structure that allows areas of expertise to thrive while still working together to build a stronger whole,” Fischette says. “Concentric-Hx continues to provide our clients with the strategic thinking and flawless execution they’ve come to expect on all matters of branding and communication, but now this offering is turbo-charged by our growing expertise in other areas.”

In 2015, Concentric expanded its innovative research offering, Concentric Health Intelligence, which is now used by nearly all clients, agency executives say. “Concentric Health Intelligence provides 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,” executives say. “Insights gleaned are then used as a foundation for integrated channel strategies that lead to more effective and more substantive engagement with desired audiences.”

Radius-Hx is an integrated department consisting of content strategy, UX, analytics, communications planning, design, and development. “Working seamlessly with brand teams, Radius-Hx breathes life into strategic and tactical plans by facilitating more profound communication connectivity,” executives say. “This process begins with unique customer research and ends with a sophisticated point-of-contact strategy.

“Everything we do at Concentric centers on creating better health experiences,” says James Driscoll, senior VP, director, user engagement at Radius. “It all starts as we uncover moments of truth along the customer journey, and then we apply best-in-class user experience in order to make the strategy actionable.”

 

Future plans

According to managers, Concentric Health Experience is a single, integrated, global agency and will build out its presence in every major global market via its existing hubs in New York City and London. “Growing globally is a continued focus in 2016,” Begasse says. “However, knowing how important corporate culture is to success, we believe it’s imperative to grow with our own people, grow intelligently, and minimize our reliance on repetitive infrastructure. Regional presence makes sense, local insight is a must. Our expanding global model will be adaptive and built for the modern healthcare environment. It’s not a surprise with the extraordinary growth Concentric has experienced that plans for a new headquarters are in motion. Concentric NYC will be more spacious, with the agency relocating to 330 Hudson in August 2016, and plans for new space in London are following.”

Philanthropy/citizenship

“Contribution is the most important aspect of our culture,” says Lourdes Molina, head of talent and culture. “At Concentric, we think it’s our privilege to further the causes closest to our employees, improve the health experiences of those below standard, and amplify the smallest voice to ignite change.”

Concentric leveraged the agency’s growth to deepen its long-standing commitment to social responsibility and community contribution, executives say. Most notably, Concentric continued its established series of wide-ranging philanthropic initiatives labeled “The Health Fix” (thehealthfix.org), designed to help fix health experiences here and abroad.

The newest Health Fix is the e-NABLE Community Foundation, an organization using 3D printing technology to provide prosthetic devices to children who need them at little to no cost. The company was named one of the top 10 business opportunities for 2016 by Springwise, a global innovation discovery engine that identifies the latest startups, innovations and businesses around the world. Concentric is partnering with e-NABLE to help them build a sustainable development infrastructure that connects innovative designers to open-sourced fabricators around the world.

“This is satisfying on a number of levels,” Sanzen says. “It excites because this is true healthcare disruption in practice, it fulfills because e-NABLE is providing more than a helping hand, they are treating the entire patient and their families by enabling futures.”

Concentric also had another successful Dare to Stair campaign for World COPD Day, earning more than 34,000 impressions on Twitter in the first day alone. In addition, the agency supported the following causes in 2015: Together We Can: Uber/City Harvest Food Drive, Tree Census, Melanoma Research Walk, MS Bike Ride Team Bike Event, Hudson Square Daffodil Planting Hudson Square Connection, Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Central Park Walk, NY Cares Coat Drive, Dare to Stair, In God’s Love We Deliver: Bag Decorating, and StrongMom (strongmom.org).