FCB Health Network: 2021 – PharmaLive – PharmaLive

FCB Health Network

100 West 33rd Street

New York, NY 10001

Telephone 

212-672-2300

E-mail 

[email protected]

Website 

fcbhealthnetwork.com

WINNER

Network of the Year

FINALIST

Heart Award

Reflecting back on a year that, in decades to come, will actually seem even more incredible and implausible than it feels now makes discussing agency performance feel so very strange,” according to the leadership team of FCB Health Network. “We’re living through a time of transformation – personal, social, cultural and, yes, professional – forcing each one of us to re-examine our person, our place and our purpose. The FCB Health Network purpose, our Bedrock – Passionately committed to doing what’s right for our clients, their brands and our people – has never been more appropriate and motivating than it is today.”

“When we created our Bedrock five years ago, we really challenged every single word because we wanted to ensure that, no matter what came our way, there would be a guiding light to keep us steady, true and focused on what matters most,” says Dana Maiman, President and CEO of the FCB Health Network. “This only proves that when you care about what you do and never finish challenging and re-challenging yourself, you create a solid foundation that can not only survive the unknown, but thrive.”

RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS

By all measures, this past year was far and away the most successful in the network’s history, according to the leadership team, in terms of wins, growth, launches, hires, new work, offerings, and other factors. 

“In an unbelievable year, our success was beyond astonishing, with revenue growing by the size of two large agencies,” network executives say. “Our network won an unprecedented 100-plus new business pitches, with 25-plus major new brand assignments alone. We extended client engagement with global biopharma giants including Novartis, Merck, Pfizer, Lilly, Genentech and Sanofi, and added new clients to an already extensive roster. With the addition of Bristol-Myers Squibb, FCB Health Network works with 19 of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies.”

“Every single one of our operating units grew this year, most at levels beyond anything achieved before,” Maiman says.

However, focusing on business metrics alone leaves out an equally compelling and inspiring part of the network’s story. 

“When we said ‘Goodbye’ in early March, there were so many unknowns,“ says Chief Commercial Officer Mike Guarino. “But, an amazing thing happened; the bonds that we had created with colleagues and clients grew stronger, bringing us closer together. When you walk into (or Zoom into) an FCB Health Network agency, that focus on our purpose is palpable, unmistakable and undeniably energizing and enables us to accomplish all that we have this year and every year, after year.”

This past year, FCB Health New York and FCBCURE were named to MM&M’s “Best Places to Work” list – marking the third consecutive year FCB Health New York received this honor. 

“What a testament to our dedication to our people,” Maiman says. “Any accolade that’s awarded based on anonymous feedback from your people feels special, but it’s especially poignant this year.”

 Other wins included 10 Manny Awards, including Most Admired Agency, Agency of the Year – Category I, and Most Creative Agency for AREA 23 (the third time the agency has taken home the coveted trifecta); most awarded company at the DTC Nationals, with 11 wins, including six Golds; and 10 MM&M Awards, including FCB Health New York’s Silver for Large Agency of the Year. 

FCB Health Network’s specialized agencies – Solve(d) (data and media), BX – Brand Experience Design Group (branding), YuzuYello (patient support), Studio Rx (productions), and Mosaic Group (market access) – what leaders call “true growth accelerants” – have grown collectively more than 25 percent each year for the past five years. Solve(d) achieved 40 percent growth, expanding both the data science/analytics offerings as well as both the DTC and HCP media strategy teams. The agency also achieved International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 certification for marketing services – an internationally recognized standard of excellence. This certification is rare in the advertising sector. 

“During the pandemic, we launched YuzuYello, a new patient services unit, to help fill the gap in care present before but exacerbated by COVID-19,” network executives say. “In the almost 12 months since launch, YuzuYello has hired 20-plus staff and added numerous clients, including Pfizer and AbbVie.”

Studio Rx opened an offshore studio in South Africa to provide a “follow the sun” model for U.S. markets, management says. The agency expanded its digital capabilities, including re-imagining the design and development of emails and banners, using a pre-built component library that creates infinite possibilities and significant savings. Studio Rx also managed to produce more than 100 film and photography shoots during the pandemic, pioneering remote-production processes to keep the work moving and employees, clients and communities safe. 

According to network executives, COVID-19 did not slow down BX – Brand Experience Design Group. In 2020, this agency created more than 12 product-launch brand identities and worked to brand COVID-19 prevention and treatment products that address the health crisis around the world. 

Like the network, Mosaic Group has grown immensely by adding clients through new agency-of-record wins and organic growth, and close collaboration with the network’s full-service agencies. This growth – in both U.S. and global business – has primarily been related to specialty therapeutics, an area demanding differentiation and proof of value more than ever before, management says. New clients include Bayer, Genentech, Heron Therapeutics, Lilly, and Sunovion.

The network’s three medical communications agencies – ProHealth, Trio and AREA 23 on Hudson – all experienced organic and new client growth, adding clients such as Gilead, Takeda, Unilever, and Novartis. 

The network’s EU offices, led by Joerg Hempelmann, continued their growth trajectory with clients such as Novartis and have realized the tremendous value of living at the intersection of data, creativity, media and technology.

The network welcomed more than 800 new staff, and 10 percent were boomerangs. “615 new hires were onboarded during lockdown,” says Chief Talent Officer Lisa DuJat. 

At FCB Health New York, Laura Mizrahi joined as Executive Creative Director and Jenna Brownstein joined as Group Management Director. “I felt connected to my teams almost instantly, despite never being in the same room,” Brownstein says. 

Kathleen Nanda was promoted to Chief Creative Officer. Jesse Kates returned to Neon as Co-Managing Director, while Sebastian Mallarino joined as Group Creative Director. Dr. Sommer Bazuro, Ph.D. was promoted to the newly created role of Chief Medical Officer, Jill Lesiak joined Mosaic Group as Executive Creative Director and Marcus Kawamura was onboarded at AREA 23 as Executive Creative Director. 

“Whether investing in creativity and innovation, or in the growth of our people, we constantly challenge ourselves to raise the bar,” management says. “It’s what has led to our extraordinary success year after year, and what will continue to drive us.” 

STRUCTURE AND SERVICES

The leadership team says the network’s ability to pivot and adapt to a changing environment is one of the reasons why clients love to work with FCB Health and the main reason it was able to rapidly adapt and thrive in a “work-from-anywhere” environment. 

“We’ve been able to provide flexible and consistent operations that meet the highest expectations of our clients and our employees,” management says. “We reworked our learning and development content for a virtual format with over 2,600 employees eagerly participating in live learning sessions.”

“In late 2019, we’d launched our network-wide genius bar, ’SOS,’ to help everyone navigate our day-to-day,” says Chief Product Officer Graham Johnson. “By mid-March (2020), SOS was serving as a central hub to help facilitate remote work and provide IT, office services, HR and finance information.”

Agencies’ 2020 interns worked virtually, and the network received a record-breaking 5,000-plus applications for its Summer 2021 program, according to the leadership team. “Our revolutionary program ‘The Residency’ continued training new hires who are also new to healthcare.”

“We are passionate about finding, supporting and developing the best and most diverse talent,” DuJat says. “The Residency allows us to do so by fully immersing talent in every discipline.” 

“Our mantra when it comes to our talent is P.C.M. – Proactive Career Management,” Maiman says. “Our focus on our people is a major part of our bedrock. That means providing everyone with opportunities to grow and develop within our network. From transferring roles, departments, clients, agencies – even countries – we encourage it all.” In 2020, more than 170 staff transferred within the network, including five internationally and 71 across agencies. 

2020 was a year like no other, and network leaders say a raging pandemic in combination with political turmoil and the Black Lives Matter movement’s call for crucial, tangible progress affected all of us. 

Maiman says she has always been devoted to equity and inclusion. Because meaningful change requires nothing less than cultural transformation, Maiman indicates that she is all-in, proclaiming at each Town Hall, “We have done much, but there is much to be done.” 

Unconscious bias training has been mandatory at the network for six years. In 2020, the network invested in the Inclusive Manager’s Toolkit, a customized, intensive 10-week program that every manager (more than 1,000 people) will complete by the end of 2021. “We reintroduced the Disrupting Everyday Bias program as a weekly offering, launched Intentional Allyship, Microaggression and Disrupting Thought Patterns workshops, and created a new Employee Relations group to ensure our internal culture reflects what she preaches.”

“Employee Relations will provide our people with a path to raise concerns and ensure that all voices are heard,” says Katy Price, Director, Employee Relations. “It’s an agency-agnostic resource that supports a fair and equitable environment, and healthy work relationships.”

FUTURE PLANS

FCB WE, the network’s longstanding internal initiative committed to promoting DE&I, will continue to touch every part of its business, according to the leadership team. This includes internal culture and strategy and creative consultation. FCB WE is also pressure-testing strategies to ensure all client work is inclusive and intentionally diverse. From Black leadership roundtables to brave conversations to recruiting partnerships, DE&I will remain a major priority, management says. 

Like Solve(d), Trio will pursue ISO 27001 certification. “To my knowledge, this would make Trio the only medical education agency in the world with this designation,” Maiman says. 

“We were surprised to learn women typically only apply for positions when they fit 100 percent of the job description, while men will apply when they fit just 60 percent,” DuJat says. “This year, we are reevaluating our job descriptions to ensure our talent pool is inclusive.” HR will also be working more closely with staff on career development to ensure they are advocating for and putting into place the proactive career development philosophy. 

The network will also work with IPG to benchmark its benefits to ensure they continue to be among the best in the industry. “Your legacy is defined by the businesses you build, the careers you launch and the lives you touch,” network executives say. 

“FCB Health Network is just getting started,” Maiman says. “We’re passionately committed to doing what is right for our clients, their brands and our people. It takes a village, and no ordinary village could have thrived the way we did this year.”

PHILANTHROPY/CITIZENSHIP

Citizenship is at our core, and we build our pro bono campaigns with longevity in mind,” according to the network leadership team. 

In September, FCB Health New York launched Disappearing Doctors, a growing coalition dedicated to improving mental health care for healthcare workers – which network executives say is an especially urgent cause with the increase of suicides during COVID-19. The network’s partners include Sermo, National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Wilkins Media, Doctor Lifeline, Haymarket Media, Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global, and the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation. 

The network continued its six-year-old “Blood Equality” initiative with an emotionally charged “Blood Vessels” campaign, which artfully depicts two real COVID-19 survivors who were prohibited from donating their antibody-rich blood because they are gay men. Current FDA policy states that gay and bisexual men must remain celibate for three months before donating blood. “While our efforts have impacted the FDA’s recommendations over the years – the deferral period used to last one year – we will continue this fight until all donors are treated equally,” according to network executives.

In October, the network launched #WhyVote, a campaign that leveraged the stories of voting influencers to activate young and diverse nonvoters. Activists such as the youngest “Bloody Sunday” marcher Sheyann Webb-Christburg, award-winning director and producer Nicole Kassell, celebrity choreographer and dancer Jamal Josef, and independent recording artists and supporting vocalists RAII & Whitney contributed their stories to the campaign. “Five hundred people registered to vote through our campaign website, and we are scaling this activation to encourage participation in local elections in 2021,” according to management.

The Trial for #ClinicalEquality launched during November 2020, followed by a huge PR push on World Cancer Day 2021. This campaign is dedicated to achieving racial equity in clinical trials. African Americans have the highest cancer death-rate and shortest survival rate of any racial and ethnic group, but are woefully underrepresented in clinical oncology trials. Hispanic patients share a similar lack of representation. 

“This a scientific and a moral issue,” Dr. Bazuro says. “We are drawing clinical conclusions from data that is not generalizable to the entire population, and that does not reflect incidence and mortality rates. We are denying Black and Hispanic patients access to innovative care, which can mean the difference between life and death.” 

Network executives say the starkness of the palette, provocative copy, and intensity of the facial expressions in the work give it an emotional punch, bringing to life the depth and gravity of this very human issue. Numerous outlets committed hundreds of thousands of dollars in free media to the campaign, including JAMA Oncology, The Oncologist, AdPrime Health, PulsePoint and many more. Top-tier publications like Med Ad News, Ad Age, Campaign US, MM&M, and Clube de Criação wrote dedicated features spotlighting the network’s efforts.

In 2020, the network also contributed to numerous organizations, including Action Against Hunger, Feeding America, Black Lives Matter and Campaign Zero, and agencies delivered meals from local restaurants to first responders. 

The network also launched a new benefit with a charitable twist: The Sprint to Spring Challenge. “We challenged everyone to take 5,000 steps daily. Every time a person reaches that goal, we will donate $1 to Action Against Hunger or Feeding America,” DuJat says. “Future challenges will include biking, swimming and building wellness habits like meditation minutes and gratitude tracking. 

The network-wide Headspace subscription was also renewed to ensure employees have free access to mental health care. 

Favorite