Excitant Healthcare Advertising: 2019
Excitant Healthcare Advertising
1410 Meadowbrook Way
Woodstock, GA 30189
Telephone
678-357-1127
E-mail
mperlotto@
excitanthealthcare.com
Website
excitanthealthcare.com
Quick Facts
Accounts
Account wins 8
Active business clients 8
Brands by 2018 sales
Brand-product accounts held 18
$25 million or less 7
$25 million-$50 million 4
$50 million-$100 million 2
$100 million-$500 million 2
Products not yet approved/launched 3
Services mix
Professional advertising 25%
Consumer advertising 20%
Sales collateral 20%
Direct marketing (postal or electronic) 15%
Interactive/web 15%
Strategic marketing consulting 5%
Client roster
Avanos
Dynex Technologies
Galen US
Graphic Solutions Group
Krona Therapeutics
Marine Ingredients, a KD Pharma company
Merz North America
RedHill Biopharma
Teleflex
Verantos
Zoetis
In completing its eighth year of operation, Excitant management says the agency has continued to defy the odds, gain recognition and attract more clients with its non-traditional approach to defining what a health care agency/client relationship can (and should) be. Excitant executives say that is certainly an enviable position to be in, but it comes from a genuine source.
“Simply put, we believe if we operate in the best interests of the client and do great work for them, we’ll be successful and grow as they grow,” says Mark Perlotto, president of Excitant.
This philosophy seems to have struck a chord with clients as the agency reports that many of its client assignments have come from marketers who have worked with the agency team in the past and bring them along as they move to new responsibilities and even new companies.
Recent accomplishments
2018 was again filled with accolades for the agency and numerous awards for the creative product Excitant develops for clients. After being named an “Under the Radar” agency in 2017 by MM&M, it was once again recognized as a “One to Watch” agency in 2018 by the publication.
Over the course of 2018, the agency also continued its success at a variety of creative award shows. Excitant took home Gold at the Communicator Awards for its corporate identity work for Marine Ingredients, a KD Pharma company. As the year progressed, the agency also collected two Silver Davey Awards, five Rx Club Awards for client work and a PM360 Pharma Choice Bronze Award for its self-promotion campaign.
The “Simplicity” campaign developed for Zoetis’ Witness line of veterinary point of care diagnostic tests included professional journal and online advertising, web video, and email direct marketing. Individual elements took home Rx Club awards and then Excitant closed the year taking home a Silver Medal in the integrated campaign category at the 2019 VETTYs, the only awards show specifically for work in animal health marketing.
According to Excitant’s leadership team, the agency was also successful in weathering challenges in 2018: an acquisition, a brand divestiture, and a strategic focus shift at three of its clients in 2018 resulted in decreased marketing spend for their brands.
“One of the things our clients find attractive about working with Excitant is our ability to adapt and flex to their individual needs and situations,” Perlotto says. “We applied those same skills to adjust to those client challenges and continued to move forward.”
From a new business perspective, the agency moved past those challenges and never looked back, adding eight new clients to its roster and a significant additional assignment from a current client by the time the dust settled on 2018.
In May, the agency was selected by the medical device company Avanos and has since worked on corporate branding initiatives as well as assignments across its respiratory health, digestive health, and interventional pain franchises. This client is expected to continue to increase its reliance on agency services in 2019.
In the fourth quarter of 2018, the agency’s efforts earlier in the year began paying off with a flurry of clients selecting Excitant for assignments leading into 2019.
In October, Excitant began work with Verantos, a company that uses advanced technology and AI to mine and analyze data from real world experience data sets to execute regulatory-grade studies for regulatory submission and label expansion support for pharma brands.
Also in October, the agency’s diagnostics experience history paid off when it was selected by Dynex Technologies for initiatives supporting its DS2 and DSX diagnostic analyzers for automated ELISA testing for both human and veterinary applications.
According to agency leaders, the holiday season was merry and bright when in December Excitant won pitches for two product launches, one from RedHill Biopharma and another from Teleflex Medical. Two other undisclosed clients indicated they would be bringing business to the agency beginning in 2019. One is an international branding and product launch creative assignment in the diagnostics space and the other an assignment supporting a broad portfolio of medical device products.
“We set a goal in 2018 to grow and diversify our client base by leveraging our extensive experience across animal health, diagnostics, health information technology, medical devices as well as specific pharmaceutical categories like gastroenterology, and our wins in those segments prove that new clients saw value in the experience of the Excitant team for their brands,” Perlotto says.
As the year came to a close, one of Excitant’s largest clients – the diagnostics group at Zoetis – also notified the agency that it would be moving the professional and consumer responsibilities for the AlphaTRAK pet diabetes monitor to Excitant beginning in 2019, expanding its seven-year relationship with the agency.
STRUCTURE AND SERVICES
The agency offers its clients a full-service menu of capabilities structured around a core offering of marketing strategy, creative and account service, as well as managing specialized service offerings from subject matter or technical experts for their clients. “With technology and media channels evolving so quickly we realized that trying to keep up and build those capabilities in-house made no sense for our clients and was based on an archaic client/agency model,” Perlotto says, “By focusing on our core expertise and managing outside experts on behalf of our clients, it allows us to bring a customized approach to their overall marketing efforts that can incorporate initiatives as diverse as programmatic advertising to professional relations to direct marketing deployment, all managed by the agency on behalf of the client.”
The agency reports that this client-customized approach not only simplifies things for client marketers, it also ends up being more efficient and cost-effective by providing only what a brand specifically needs based on its marketing strategy.
FUTURE PLANS
We’re excited about the new clients we are onboarding for 2019 and especially the two product launch assignments that clients have entrusted to the Excitant team,” Perlotto says. “Our main focus is always to make our clients look good and to make their brands a success.”
On the new business front in 2019, the agency plans to focus its efforts on leveraging Excitant’s extensive past experience in the areas of animal health, human diagnostics, dermatology, and medical devices (especially interventional cardiology) to keep its growth momentum on track.
