The Bloc: 2021

,
Jennifer Matthews, The Bloc

The Bloc

32 Old Slip, 15th Floor

New York, NY 10005

Telephone 

212-524-6200

E-mail 

[email protected]

Website 

thebloc.com

 

QUICK FACTS

Accounts

Account wins 10

Active business clients 20

Brands by 2020 sales

Brand-product accounts held 35

 

SERVICES MIX

Digital 50%

Traditional 40%

CRM 10%

HCP 60%
Consumer 20%

Payer 20%

 

CLIENT ROSTER

Acorda 

Alkermes 

Allergan 

Amarin

AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals 

Bayer

Becton Dickinson

Bristol-Myers Squibb

Eli Lilly/Boehringer Ingelheim

Greenwich Biosciences

Illumina

Jazz Pharmaceuticals

Merck

Northwell Health

Novartis

Otsuka

Otsuka/Lundbeck

Regeneron

Regeneron/Sanofi

Relipsa

Sanofi

Sanofi/Genzyme

United States Pharmacopeia

Vertex

 

For The Bloc, 2020 was the best of times, during the worst of times, according to agency leaders. 

“We were thrilled to pass the $50 million revenue mark for the first time during the year we celebrated our 20th anniversary,” The Bloc executives say. “We were honored and humbled to be recognized as a Med Ad News Agency of the Year, as a MM&M Agency of the Year, and received widespread industry acclaim for our creativity. And, while our success was sweet, our true inspiration came from our community of Bloc’ers who came together to weather the COVID-10 pandemic and the loss and disruption it brought to all of us.” 

Leaders at The Bloc say the agency is “on a mission to ‘be great to do good.’”

“Even as scientists with a creative flair and artists with a passion for science, it’s not easy to change health behaviors,” management says. Under the leadership of Associate Partner and Chief Scientific Officer Barbara LePetri, M,D., the agency has made significant progress in establishing the science of communication as the The Bloc’s foundational approach to communications development. “In partnership with strategy, account, and creative leadership, the team is focused on ensuring behavioral science principles are informing all stages of our process, with the end goal of driving greater health impact for our client’s customers.” 

RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS

According to the leadership team, The Bloc’s success in 2020 was built upon the foundation set in 2019, when the agency grew nearly 50 percent in revenue. “With the goal of stable and sustainable growth for our people and business, we expanded the business at a more reasonable pace last year,” agency executives say. “Intent upon realizing our mission to ‘be great to do good,’ and in celebration of our 20th anniversary year in 2020, we made significant strides to lay the foundation for The Bloc’s future success.”

Bernardo Romero joined The Bloc at the beginning of 2020 in the role of chief creative officer. The Bloc leaders say Romero has brought a tremendous legacy of world-class creativity, and his work has been recognized at the highest level. And, his leadership brought immediate results, including the agency’s first D&AD pencil and MM&M Titanium award. 

The Bloc expanded its capabilities by launching a medical communications practice, The Bloc Science Foundry, where “scientific narratives are forged to give brands the strength they need to succeed.”

According to agency executives, “As a woman-owned business and in the wake of current events, we examined and amplified our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion – with specific workstreams focused on advancing education, advocacy and recruitment at the agency.”

The Bloc management says, “In recognition of the great strides made last year, we continue to celebrate our independence as an agency even as we nurture our interdependence as a network. Further, we believe we occupy a unique and attractive position that no other agency can match.”

According to the leadership team, the agency’s “People First” approach “never proved more critical than in 2020, when we had to quickly pivot to support a fully remote model. Ensuring that our Bloc’ers had the tools needed to successfully connect and communicate from home was an immediate priority and our Office Services and Technology teams were excellent in their endeavors. We quickly realized that we had to introduce new, and more frequent methods of communication – moving to twice monthly all-hands meetings, versus once monthly; trialing new ways of interacting internally and with clients over zoom conferences; providing best practices and tools for ensuring healthy boundaries could be established between work and home life.”

In 2020 The Bloc invested more in staff training and development than it ever had before, including specialized training to help staff cope with remote work, agency executives say. “In addition, our BlocSquad team planned for and sent celebratory care packages to every Bloc’er at home – first to celebrate our 20th Anniversary in July and then again at the holidays. We also followed up by offering each Bloc’er a stipend to enhance their work from home set up. And, throughout the pandemic, our chief science officer has provided ongoing information and guidance on the pandemic and vaccine/treatment development in an effort to spread truth vs. misinformation.”

The Bloc executives say an employee satisfaction survey in the fourth quarter told leaders that their efforts were paying off – 98 percent of employees strongly agreed/agreed that the agency responded appropriately to the COVID-19 crisis; 94 percent strongly agreed/agreed that they were proud to work at The Bloc; and 87 percent strongly agreed/agreed that they would recommend The Bloc as a place to work.

In 2020, the agency grew by 12 percent over 2019 to reach $53.4 million in revenue, the largest the agency has ever recorded, The Bloc leaders report. The primary growth driver was organic wins from existing clients, with new assignments including Otsuka/Lundbeck (Abilify Maintena), Amarin (Vaszepa global), Regeneron (REG COV2), and BD (Global Diabetes Care). Significant new clients include Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly (Jardiance). 

“A significant highlight was the success of our Value Builders market access team, which experienced unprecedented growth in 2020,” agency executives say. “Early in 2020, the Value Builders were awarded an important launch assignment for Jazz and subsequently launched three oncology brands – all extremely successful virtual launches in the pandemic lockdown. More success followed, as the team drove expansion within Sanofi-Genzyme, achieving the AOR role for several brands, in addition to franchise wide assignments. The pattern continued with the expansion of assignments at Novartis. Overall, the team grew from 16 dedicated staff to over 30 with zero turnover. These numbers, and the achievements previously mentioned, speak in no uncertain terms about the clear and strong momentum of the Value Builders.”

2020 proved there has never been a more relevant time to be in healthcare, according to agency leaders. “Instant Doctor,” a short film written to celebrate the importance of humanity in healthcare, has earned more than 60 prestigious international film awards. “The Call”, an experiment created for EmpowHer NY, addresses how racism and unconscious bias in medicine negatively affects health outcomes for the Black community, specifically Black women, and resulted in an increase of more than 1,000 healthcare workers enrolling in unconscious bias training, potentially saving countless lives. “The Call” has won numerous awards including Gold in Diversity & Inclusion and Titanium (Best of Show) at the MM+M Awards, and was also awarded a pencil at the D&Ad Awards. MM&M named Grace Helmer Young Marketer of the Year and Epidiolex (Greenwich Biosciences) Best Marketing Team. 

“We will keep up this momentum in 2021 and beyond, dedicated to our commitment to ‘be great to do good,’” agency executives say. 

STRUCTURE AND SERVICES

As an independent agency, The Bloc’s success has been inextricably linked with its global network, The BlocPartners. “In 2020, we celebrated the network’s 16th anniversary. The network grew stronger in 2020 as we welcomed agencies in Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and Greece – thus strengthening our global reach in this strategically important geography. The network is now present in 34 markets with over 1,300 employees across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

The Bloc leadership says in 2020, the agency continued to build upon its business model of driving strategic and creative innovation that drives top-line growth for clients, while also focusing on operational innovation that stretches budgets and shortens timelines. 

“Joining BlocSource (our global model that insources talent and thinking from our award-winning global network to deliver world-class ideas at a great value), and The Bloc Value Builders (our strategic team focused on advancing the Triple Aim of population health, net cost reduction, and patient experience), we added two new offerings: The Bloc Science Foundry, our medical communications practice where scientific strategy takes behavioral change models into account to inform effective interventions; and The Bloc Storytellers, which delivers production and narrative power, previously only available in Hollywood movies, to the healthcare industry. The result is industry-changing, award-winning work that has massive impact on customers’ minds.”

Agency executives cite “Humanovation” – innovation for positive human impact at its core – as the guiding principle for innovation at The Bloc. “This thinking led us to create new technologies in 2020. SafeCode is a patent free invention that The Bloc shared with the world at large in the early days of the pandemic to inspire higher levels of biosafety in our supply chains – from food services to the last mile of eCommerce. The concept prototype combined the ubiquitous barcode scanner used by deliver and point of sale systems with industrial grade UVC light to irradiate packages to sanitize them. This simple combination of two existing technologies to create value greater than the sum of the parts is exemplary of how we approach technological innovation for everyday impact.” 

Another invention, Wheelcare, “was born of the desire to care for the caregiver,” agency executives say. “Among older couples it is common for spouses to be the caregiver pushing a wheelchair when they themselves might have undiagnosed heart conditions. By integrating EKG monitoring into the handles of wheelchairs and integrating them with a readout printer attached to the back, we created a device that could be adopted across homes and institutions alike to improve outcomes by early detection of arrhythmias and related cardiovascular conditions.”

Agency leaders say, “Our further aspiration is to help create a more equitable health world by empowering brands to understand and address core drivers of outcomes like social determinants of health through data and analytics. In doing so, we marry the science of communications with the art of analysis in unique ways. RADAR (real world active data analytics and reporting) is a suite of products that informs decisions across sales, marketing, payer and medical strategy by leveraging big data for brand impact modeling. Our partner ecosystems of best in breed data and technology platforms helps deliver brand intelligence and experience in ways that neither a technologist nor a marketer can do alone.”

The leadership team consists of Ane Jones, executive VP and managing director; Dan Sontupe, executive VP and associate partner; and Chris Panetta, senior VP, managing director. In addition to Romero, there is Kim Barke, Ph.D., executive VP, creative director, and Aaron Sidorov, senior VP, creative director. Romero rounded out his creative leadership by adding Helen An, senior VP, creative director, Amy Fortunato, VP, creative director, and Andrea Bistany, VP, creative director.

The strategic team is led by LePetri; Prodeep Bose, executive VP, innovation; and Antoinette Bobbitt, senior VP, brand planning. In 2020, the agency added Franklin Williams, senior VP, digital experience, responsible for advancing and expanding the user experience and technology teams. Mia Salibello leads the people team, and The Bloc executives say she made significant headway in 2020 to support the agency’s focus on talent experience with expanded benefits, investment in training, and a focus on DE&I. Wai-Man Leung is executive VP, finance.

Services offered by the agency include branding, strategy, omni-channel, CRM, global, medical communications, customer experience planning, channel planning, social, market access, consulting, adaptation, and analytics. 

FUTURE PLANS

We are at a transformative time in history,” agency leaders proclaim. “Our ways of working and living have changed and we will not be going back to a “pre-pandemic normal.” At The Bloc we embrace this and will be architecting our new hybrid model to ensure our people can be successful in our new reality and that we can support our clients’ best business outcomes by delivering world–class health solutions.”

What does that mean? According to agency executives, “We will combine our deep strategic and creative heritage with technology solutions that deliver compelling experiences across every conceivable platform. Our next generation of 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. Above all, we will continuously strive to be the preferred partner for all of our clients.”

PHILANTHROPY/CITIZENSHIP

Jennifer Matthews, president and CEO

Leaders at The Bloc say in 2020, the agency increased its charitable giving by more than 15 percent. The Bloc has historically matched 100 percent of any individual or Bloc team charity and made a commitment last summer to match 200 percent of any donation to programs and organizations supporting racial and social justice. “This continues a long history of donating to charities our staff believes in and supports, including Doctors Without Borders, American Heart Association and Food Bank NYC,” management says. 

Some of the organizations added in 2020 include The CDC Foundation, ActBlue, The Equal Justice Initiative, The Innocence Project, The ACLU, and The George Floyd Memorial Fund.