Concentric Health Experience: 2019
Concentric Health Experience
330 Hudson Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10013
Telephone
212-633-9700
E-mail
[email protected]
Website
concentrichx.com
Quick Facts
Accounts
Account wins 5
Active business clients 10
Brands by 2018 sales
Brand-product accounts held 19
Services mix
MCM 45%
Brand building 30%
Commercial strategy 15%
Analytics 10%
Client roster
Alexion
Genentech/AbbVie
Guerbet
Novo Nordisk
Otsuka/Lundbeck
Rouses Point
Sage
Sunovion
WINNER
Best Interactive Physician Campaign
FINALIST
Best Nonbranded Campaign
Best Professional Campaign – Video
Diversity & Inclusion Champion
The Med Ad News Category II Agency of the Year in 2018, Concentric Health Experience (CHX) had a year of growth across all measures: expanded client relationships, capabilities, and new partnerships promising continued performance and transformation, according to agency leaders. As the industry is advancing quickly toward more personalized marketing, CHX is doubling down on its vision for applied cognitive sciences. Led by Brian Dunn, CHX’s Chief Behavioral Officer, this growing capability is the foundation for building brands that connect to human behavior.
“This is an exciting time for us,” Dr. Dunn says. “Using multiple approaches from cognitive neuroscience, we build a foundation for our clients to truly understand what influences medical decisions and other health behaviors, moving beyond the social sciences to the intersection of data science and neuroscience. This involves translating techniques from the lab and applying them to explain and predict human behavior.”
Agency executives have now seen that clients are ready to embrace this shift to data-derived behavioral insights that ignite content development and brand engagement. “There is a richness of data at our fingertips going beyond the clinical that can help brands make deeper connections with their customers,” says Michael Sanzen, Chief Client Officer and CHX co-founder. “Gleaning insights from real-world human decision making helps craft brand narratives that are authentic, solution-oriented, and shape the promise of medicine into stories that ignite the human spirit.”
Recent accomplishments
Agency leaders say they are proud to celebrate a year in which CHX prepared numerous innovative products for commercialization, many in underserved patient communities, rare-disease, or that represented a disruptive approach to treating chronic illness. These included launching new products and delivery systems in COPD with Lonhala Magnair, the adjuvant launch of Taf-Mek, and the launch of Ultomiris in rare blood disorders. These diverse engagements shape the agency’s continued evolution toward a consultative practice, one that is flexible, nimble, and smart.
“These are exciting times to be working in health. As an agency, our client roster is diverse, a true representation of the industry at large,” says Ken Begasse, CEO and co-founder. “Often, we are working with first-commercialization companies. To ensure that their innovative science can change lives, we need to prepare the organization as well as the brand to secure a strong commercial opportunity.”
In 2018, CHX helped prepare Sage Therapeutics to become commercially ready to introduce Zulresso, a breakthrough for postpartum depression (PPD). Key to this was a workstream of more than 40 projects focused solely on ensuring commercial readiness. Central to these initiatives was an embedded consultative model that the agency believes is critical, as gaps in process, tools, and even people often exist during run-up to launch. “No two organizations are the same, and assuming they are is irresponsible,” Begasse says. “We need to be proactive to their needs. So, we shape our engagement models to best suit the challenge and deliver value beyond promotion. Integration of customers, services, and teams makes for a more adaptive and responsive commercial approach, one that we can champion for our clients.”
Nothing says adaptive, speed, and value more than how the team worked with Mist Pharmaceuticals on repositioning Stendra for erectile dysfunction, agency executives say. CHX served as Mist’s marketing team and overhauled the brand, including sales force deployment, key account profiling, and patient activation with targeted DTC. Leadership says that the results of Stendra represents the very best of a client-agency relationship, one built on trust.
“Our team did an outstanding job building the business case for targeted DTC,” Sanzen says. “Something many brands like Stendra didn’t think was for them. Blending intelligence on customer behavior with a smart engagement strategy and artful media planning helped us deliver results Mist has never seen.”
Creatively, the “power-couple” campaign resonated equally with men and women. During development, both the creative and behavior science leads worked closely to optimize the campaign. The agency mapped behavioral intent and was able to tweak the execution for a perfect match of entertainment and brand engagement.
“This is a great example of using neuroscience to inform creative execution that aligns with customer needs and desires while delivering equally on commercial objectives,” Dr. Dunn says. Results were outstanding, and the engagement plan delivered over 4 million views in the first two months, with more than 65 percent of viewers watching the entire spot. Most importantly, it triggered a 500 percent increase in patient activation.
According to agency leaders, results like this have opened opportunities with other clients, noting excitement around a sharp increase in video-based online DTC initiatives for 2019. “We happen to be working in a number of categories like obesity, mental health, and respiratory that require some disruption to the status quo,” Sanzen says. “Behavioral science helps us understand how to move them, and getting to them efficiently and timely sparks action.”
Agency leaders say speed from strategy to engagement is an advantage, and CHX is focused on breaking conventional constraints that inhibit brands from connecting with customers on a human level. According to management, this fresh approach requires efficient integration of modern brand engagement, and therefore, the agency deploys a diverse team structure designed to enable fast, efficient integration and decision making. The agency says this model, “Core Four,” bypasses the archaic and costly models of others, grounded around the union of strategy, engagement, creative, and commercial talent. From here, it allows clients to scale and flex, as needed, depending on the timing and prioritization of workstreams as the agency prepares the organization and the market for launch. Concentric leadership believes that this integrated engagement model will power deeper connectivity with clients to ensure sound execution.
“Naturally as an agency, we love the power of an idea,” Begasse says. “I believe, more than ever, to really change behavior, the power of an idea resides in the execution. We worship informed execution.”
FUTURE PLANS
For CHX, leaders say the future is now, and that the agency has never been in such a great position to offer more to its clients. Continued investment in innovative methodologies and tools will help the agency continue blending their consultative approach with scale. “While our path evolves, our future was set years ago,” Dr. Dunn says. “We made a commitment to improving health experiences, and behavioral science is foundational. We are well on our way.”
PHILANTHROPY/CITIZENSHIP
The purpose of CHX is to transform the health experience, and leadership believes that requires a culture of courage, compassion, and community. These values help shape their approach to talent and development. Impressively, CHX boasts a very diverse community: minorities make up more than 37 percent of the agency, 55 percent of the agency are women, and most importantly nearly half of all leadership positions are held by women.
“The face of health is diverse and powerful,” says Patricia Enright, Chief Talent Officer. “We want our agency to reflect this shift so that our work exudes the authenticity that can only come for deep empathy and shared life experience.”
When you have a purpose to transform health by improving individual health experiences, there isn’t a shortage of volunteers, agency leaders say. CHX’s ongoing philanthropy platform The Health Fix (thehealthfix.org) is CHX’s commitment to improving the health experiences of those in need. Over the years, the initiative has helped communities all over the world.
In support of a colleague, in 2018 The Health Fix focused on late-stage ovarian cancer. Working with grassroots organization girlygirl P.A.R.T.S., CHX created the “Overcome Ovarian Cancer” initiative. This campaign included resources to raise awareness and funds for the development of an effective screening tool in conjunction with the Dana Farber Institute.
In 2019, The Health Fix will focus on building awareness for women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. CHX will be working with The Cancer Couch in support of a long-time friend recently diagnosed. “Through our philanthropic efforts, we are building a shared culture of Courage, Compassion, and Community,” Enright says. “There isn’t a more noble pursuit than to ‘Make Medicine Matter’ through compassion and volunteerism.”
