The Bloc
32 Old Slip, 15th Floor
New York, NY 10005
Phone: 212-524-6200
Facsimile: 212-524-6299
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: thebloc.com

Accounts
Account wins        13
Active business clients    22

Brands by 2015 sales
Brand product accounts held    117

Services Mix:

By Audience*:
72% HCP
29% DTC and DTP
20% Managed Markets
*Most assignments begin by targeting HCP, but later target DTC, DTP and Managed Markets, which creates some overlap in audiences.

By Media:
49% Digital
42% Off-Line
9% CRM

Client Roster
Acorda Therapeutics
Allergan
Astellas Pharma/Basilea Pharmaceutica
AstraZeneca
Basilea
BioDelivery Sciences International
Bristol-Myers Squibb
Bristol-Myers Squibb/Pfizer
Convatec
GlaxoSmithKline Oncology
Guerbet
HAP Innovations
Merck
Mission Pharmacal
Montefiore Hospital System
Novartis Oncology
Novartis Vaccines
Pfizer Animal Health/Zoetis
Regeneron
Salix
Swedish Orphan Biovitrum
UCB Pharma
Vertex Pharmaceuticals

In July, The Bloc celebrated 15 years since Susan Miller Viray and Rico Viray founded the agency. Now 200 people strong, with offices in North America and Asia, the agency is considered a best-in-class destination for industry talent, executives say.

The year’s accomplishments
In 2015, The Bloc transformed its organizational model. “To realize our mission of delivering innovation and operational efficiencies, we determined that greater integration and sharper focus areas were required,” executives say. “As a result, we established five key teams across the agency with clear charters.”

The business team comprises client service staff focused on optimizing and expanding client partnerships. The strategy team integrates the agency’s bench in customer, clinical, and channel “to ensure that deep insights drive our ideas,” executive say.

The creative team integrates all functions supporting the creation of content and design.

The growth team was established to proactively drive new revenue opportunities and develop innovative products and services that anticipate the current and future needs of clients, agency leaders say. “Perhaps most importantly, we unified all aspects of execution with our operations team who are tasked with flawless delivery across clients, teams, and geographies,” executives say.

In 2015, the agency also rebranded itself, becoming simply, “The Bloc.”

“This is a reflection that our “bloc” of service offerings has dramatically evolved over the course of 15 successful years,” agency leaders say. “It’s also a nod to what our clients and Bloc’ers have called us for some time. We are proud to be Bloc strong.”

To set the stage for its next era of growth and expansion, the agency moved from two separate office locations in the Flatiron district to expanded, state-of-the-art, newly constructed offices in the Financial District. “With upgraded and expanded facilities (designed by NYC-based Foz Design) and breathtaking views of the New York harbor, we are energizing and inspiring our people on a daily basis and attracting clients,” executives say. “In fact, our space recently won the IFMA New York City Award for Excellence in Design & Construction, beating out Twitter (who came in second).”

According to executives, once again, The Bloc’s creativity and innovation was recognized as best-in-class, as the agency brought home no less than 70 awards across domestic and global forums. One of the highlights, Bloc executives say, was being named Agency of the Year at the PM360 Trailblazer Awards, “which celebrated not only our industry-leading creativity, but also our innovative products and service offerings, and our commitment to talent development and social responsibility.”

“We are particularly proud of the fact that we are driving exceptional quality across multiple clients, collaborating to deliver groundbreaking ideas that impact business,” executives say.

The agency’s work for BioDelivery Sciences International, Regeneron, Novartis Vaccines, and Sobi received numerous accolades in 2015, including MM&M Gold for Best Website for bunavail.com; Rx Club Gold for Best Website for diabetessightrisk.com; PM360 PharmaChoice Gold for Best Sales Aid for Bexsero; and PM360 Trailblazer Gold for Best DTP Campaign for Kineret. The wins, according to agency leaders, demonstrate Bloc prowess across stakeholders and channels, with its digital work continuing to lead the pack.

“We were also delighted to see our people recognized again at the Creative Floor Healthcare Awards where we secured Best Creative and Best Suit for the second year straight, and at the PM360 Elite Awards, a testament to our commitment to hiring and nurturing the best talent in the business,” executives say.

According to executives and new business growth was strong in 2015. In all, The Bloc won 33 new assignments across existing and new client partners through competitive pitches. Partnerships expanded with AstraZeneca for payer assignments, Merck for merckvaccines.com, Zoetis for the global diagnostics platform, Novartis for patient AOR for Promacta, and BMS for digital patient assignments in virology. New wins included The Bloc’s first hospital system, for which the agency is launching a major rebranding effort in second-quarter 2016; two portfolios for Mission Pharmacal representing 10 brands; professional AOR for Allergan’s Vraylar; AOR for an Acorda epilepsy brand; and global AOR for Basilea’s Cresemba. And, executives say, 2016 is off to a terrific start with wins from ConvaTec, HAP Innovations, and KemPharm.

For many of The Bloc’s client partners, 2015 was a tumultuous year, which also affected the agency. GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis traded their travel and meningitis vaccines and oncology portfolios. Salix, a 10-year client partner, was sold to Valeant. AstraZeneca pitched out their diabetes brands across professional and payer. The agency said goodbye to Vertex when it declined to participate in a pitch and the company decided to consolidate its cystic fibrosis portfolio. The Bloc lost an important piece of payer business when Celgene prioritized investment in other areas. “Despite these challenges, we won where we could and retained our relationship with Votrient when the brand transitioned to Novartis,” executives say. “We also successfully defended our four-year relationship with AstraZeneca’s diabetes franchise in both professional and payer, following competitive pitches.

Other key accomplishments included the expansion of digital work, which now represents more than 50 percent of The Bloc’s revenue, qualifying it as a Med Ad News Category 2 agency on its own. “We are also very proud that the work is being recognized as best-in-class, with 35 industry awards,” executives say.
 
The agency also rapidly expanded its game-changing business model, BlocSky, to service projects across nearly all clients, and sold it to two additional top 10 pharma clients. Executives say the model, which uniquely couples growth of top-line revenue with operational efficiencies that improve the bottom line, is proving to be a significant competitive advantage and an offering that clients value.
 
The Bloc developed and launched Caregivers Speak Up (caregiversspeakup.com), the first social platform focused exclusively on the caregiver community. “With more than 4 in 10 adults acting as a caregiver for someone requiring assistance, we saw an opportunity to develop an engagement platform to better understand the unique needs of this often overlooked stakeholder,” executives say. “Launched with a panel at the Lions Health Festival in Cannes, the platform has wildly exceeded expectations with 2.4 million people reached in nine months on Facebook, over 750,000 video views, and over 10,000 members in our community.”

At the beginning of 2015, the agency launched a new social media initiative called HealthAwareNext, which focuses attention on a different disease condition or therapeutic area every month to create a “Year of Disease Awareness.” Frequent posts included infographic posters, contributed articles, videos, retweets, and hashtags. Posts also linked to topical educational materials at public health sites, private health centers, and nonprofit organizations. “With a focus on what users could do next, the Year of Disease Awareness aims ultimately to inspire healthy actions in daily life,” executives say.

The agency also sponsored and presented at a number of industry events, including the Lions Health Expo in Cannes, EXL Digital Pharma East and West, mPharma, EXL Transforming Healthcare, and the Managed markets and Payer Marketing Strategies Summit.
 
Structure and services
Agency leaders characterize The Bloc as a leading healthwellness creative engagement agency based in New York. The Bloc is also the founding partner of Indigenus, an international network of award-winning, independent healthcare agencies, which will celebrate its 12th anniversary in May 2016.

“Since our earliest days, we believe that to be effective, we need to challenge convention,” executives say. “And that has never been more needed than now because it has never been more complex than it is today. Marketers are fighting across multiple fronts – fierce competition from branded and generic options, increasing barriers to access, resources stretched to the limit – to build value for their customers and for their brands.
 
“We seek clients who require a bold and nimble approach. Together, we will challenge convention and develop groundbreaking ideas that will build value for our clients’ customers and brands.”

The Bloc offers a full suite of services, including branding, engagement, payer, global, ad adaptation.

Future plans
According to Bloc executives, “We are the Healthwellness Agency of the Future. What does this mean? We will combine our deep strategic and creative heritage with technology solutions that deliver compelling experiences across every conceivable platform. Our thought leaders will stay ahead of the curve and continue to set industry trends that others will follow. We will enhance our creative edge, attracting top talent across disciplines and clients. We will pilot new technologies and processes to improve workflow and enhance output.”

Philanthropy/citizenship
In 2015, the agency continued a long history of donations with $42,000 contributed to charities that staff believes in and supports, such as Doctors Without Borders, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the National MS Society, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, and the March of Dimes, among others. The Bloc supported pro bono work for Rock and Roll for Children. For the Arthritis Foundation, the agency had a team of eight cycling from San Francisco to Los Angeles in eight days for the California Coast Classic Bike Tour.