Ogilvy & Mather Transforms Healthcare Communications With 360-Degree Integrated Approach

Newly Aligned Offering Enables Agency to Provide Transformative Business Solutions to Healthcare Clients

NEW YORK, Sept. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Ogilvy & Mather announced today the completion of a fully integrated 360-degree healthcare offering, connecting Ogilvy PR's healthcare practice with Ogilvy & Mather's global healthcare marketing communications group, Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide, to better serve the complex needs of clients in the healthcare space. The healthcare industry faces many simultaneous forces reshaping everything from its business model, to migration to digital and shared records, to big data driving personalized medicine, to the entry of disruptive, new players.

"As the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries undergo huge transformation and consolidation, they demand a new agency model," noted Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide Chairman & CEO Matt Giegerich. "The new model blows up the old-world agency architecture built on separate discipline pillars, and instead pulls together and integrates the experts around their domain expertise regardless of their function (advertising, med ed, direct, PR, or social)."

Ogilvy PR and Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide today announced a management change designed to provide further support to this new model. Following her dual role as global healthcare practice leader for Ogilvy PR, and simultaneously, New York office head for five years, Kate Cronin will join the Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide global board and lead the integration of the global Ogilvy PR healthcare community into this specialized 360–degree offering. She will continue to report to Ogilvy Public Relations Global CEO Christopher Graves, as well as to Mr. Giegerich.

"I've long admired Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide's depth of healthcare expertise and commitment to clients. Our joint vision is to be experts in healthcare marketing communications and bring our deep industry knowledge and forward-thinking approaches to our clients. Transitioning to the healthcare role full time affords me the ability to bring my heritage and expertise to clients, while establishing the precedent for future integrated communications efforts in the healthcare sector," said Ms. Cronin.

With Ms. Cronin's transition into this healthcare role, Robert Mathias, President of Ogilvy Washington and 17-year veteran of Ogilvy PR, will serve as New York's acting office head throughout the search period.

"It's about domain expertise—not company silos," Mr. Graves remarked. "Beyond the immense expertise required in understanding the healthcare world, our people need to be experts in restrictions and regulations surrounding healthcare communications of all kinds including social media, and it all varies by country. By knocking down traditional agency discipline silos to bring together our healthcare experts across all disciplines from advertising, to direct, to PR, to social, we are creating the kind of cross-discipline offering only Ogilvy & Mather can craft."

Building on the success of Social@Ogilvy, Ogilvy & Mather's cross-discipline social media practice launched in February, this innovative healthcare offering formally acknowledges the agency's commitment to aligning disciplines across all sectors. In addition, global consolidation with holding companies and agencies is the growing trend among large pharmaceutical companies. Ogilvy PR and Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide have proven success working together for a variety of healthcare clients.

"We've long enjoyed our great relationship with Ogilvy PR's healthcare practice. Ogilvy PR completes our offering and we're thrilled to more formally venture further with Kate and her team to continue to develop 360-degree solutions, matching client needs with one agency partner. This new approach sets Ogilvy apart from other firms and gives us the ability to deliver on any client request," said Mr. Giegerich.

Ogilvy PR and Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide are both award-winning in the healthcare space. Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide offers clients a specialized suite of healthcare-specific marketing services and social/digital capabilities that can be applied to almost every therapeutic category and drug class, including a number of first-and-only entries and launches. Transactional insights on healthcare stakeholders to restructure dialogue among various audiences and analytics expertise are a few examples of its many services. Ogilvy PR brings extensive healthcare capabilities, including scientific communications, branding & corporate initiatives, support for FDA approvals, advisory committee and major medical meetings, policy/issues management,  material development, clinical trial branding, communication and recruitment support, product launches, executive visibility, media relations and social media.

Ogilvy & Mather 
Ogilvy & Mather is one of the largest marketing communications companies in the world. In 2012, O&M was named Cannes Lions Network of the Year and Most Effective Agency Network by the Effies Global Effectiveness Index. The company is comprised of industry leading units in all of the following disciplines: advertising; public relations and public affairs; branding and identity; shopper and retail marketing; healthcare communications; direct, digital, promotion and relationship marketing; consulting, research and analytics capabilities; branded content and entertainment; and specialist communications. O&M services Fortune Global 500 companies as well as local businesses through its network of more than 450 offices in 120 countries. It is a WPP company (NASDAQ: WPPGY). For more information, visit www.ogilvy.com, or follow us on Twitter at @OgilvyWW and on Facebook.com/Ogilvy.

Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide
Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide (www.ogilvychww.com)--the health behavior experts of Ogilvy & Mather (www.ogilvy.com) -- committed to creativity and effectiveness in healthcare communications, everywhere. The group represents the largest assembly of creative talent in the world of healthcare communications with 63 offices across 33 countries. Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide provides marketing services including brand identity and development, clinical trial recruitment, digital/interactive services, direct-to-consumer, direct-to-patient, global integration, managed care marketing, market research and analytics, media planning and buying, medical advertising and promotion, medical education, relationship marketing, and strategic consulting. The network also offers scientific communications and publications services through a wholly owned separate legal entity. The organization houses and maintains individual Ogilvy CommonHealth and Ogilvy Healthworld brand identities within the marketplace and is a WPP company (NASDAQ: WPPGY, www.wpp.com).  For more information, visit www.ogilvychww.com, or follow us on Twitter @OCHWW and on Facebook.com/OCHWW.

Ogilvy Public Relations
Ogilvy Public Relations (Ogilvy PR) is a global, multi-disciplinary communications leader operating in more than 80 offices across six continents. In 2011, Ogilvy won more Cannes PR Lions than any other agency worldwide, was named Global Digital/Social Consultancy of the Year by the Holmes Report, won Specialist Agency of the Year in Asia Pacific (Campaign Asia), and won the WPP global, top award (WPPed Cream, Crème de la Crème) for the fourth time in five years. Ogilvy PR integrates deeply with all Ogilvy & Mather disciplines (advertising, direct marketing, activation, promotional, digital and entertainment) through the proprietary Ogilvy Fusion™ approach to delivering comprehensive, business solutions through content creation, community building, and communications with measurable results. Ogilvy PR is a unit of Ogilvy & Mather, a WPP company (NASDAQ: WPPGY), one of the world's largest communications services groups.  For more information, visit our Web site at www.ogilvypr.com or follow us on Twitter at @ogilvypr.

SOURCE Ogilvy Public Relations