Marc Iskowitz
- Editorial Director, Beghou Consulting
New Jersey, United States
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Editorial director, Beghou Consulting; dad/husband; hobbies: sports, writing about pharmaceuticals.
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Articles by Marc Iskowitz
Is Eli Lilly using ‘granfluencers’ to raise awareness of its Alzheimer’s med?
Influencers are becoming a bigger part of pharmaceutical companies’ marketing mix, and not just for helping firms gain a better understanding of their audiences. The industry is also employing savvy patients for a more distinctly bottom-line goal: drumming up awareness for launch brands.
How AI may give pharma brands a human touch
Elaine Gamble, former MM+M Awards jury chair and Otsuka Pharmaceutical executive, tells Marc Iskowitz how AI may facilitate pharma brands’ social-care strategy. In her policy report, Lecia Bushak discusses a new bill signed into law by New York Governor Kathy Hochul aiming to protect kids from some of the damaging effects of platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
Agency 100 2024: ConcentricLife
With the caveat that every company in the MM+M Agency 100 claims to have had a transformative year, Concentric- Life had a seriously transformative year. The agency began the year under the Stagwell umbrella as Concentric Health Experience. After a Q1 merger with sibling agency Scout Health, the agency rebranded as ConcentricLife. “We were well on our way to becoming acquirers in the market for additional depth and scale,” recalls Ken Begasse Jr., founder and CEO of ConcentricLife.
Agency 100 2024: FCB Health New York
Network-owned agencies’ abilities can vary significantly among work streams, disciplines or channels. FCB Health NY, on the other hand, continues to find its sweet spot acting as a one-stop shop for clients — but with “absolutely no sacrifices and no compromising of quality,” promises the agency’s longtime head, Dana Maiman, CEO of IPG Health. Often referred to as the “mother ship,” FCB Health NY enhanced the consistency of its messaging and the strength of its branding last year, Maiman says.
The shift is on
Like the years immediately preceding it, 2023 saw plenty of merger and acquisition activity in the medical marketing space. Much of it has been driven by the creation of private equity platforms and a subsequent obsession with amassing “best of breed” offerings through buying sprees. Each year, MM+M surveys the industry on its performance, basing its Top 100 on information gleaned from agencies’ responses as well as its year-round reporting.
Agency 100 2024: ConcentricLife
With the caveat that every company in the MM+M Agency 100 claims to have had a transformative year, Concentric- Life had a seriously transformative year. The agency began the year under the Stagwell umbrella as Concentric Health Experience. After a Q1 merger with sibling agency Scout Health, the agency rebranded as ConcentricLife. “We were well on our way to becoming acquirers in the market for additional depth and scale,” recalls Ken Begasse Jr., founder and CEO of ConcentricLife.
Agency 100 2024: Relevate Health
Partnering with pharma companies on their HCP-oriented launch challenges is where Relevate Health derives much of its growth. To that point, in 2023 the agency supported 29 launches and indication expansions. It’s not surprising, then, that CEO Tim Pantello hails the rollout of the latest version of its data platform, ELE, as the year’s crowning achievement.
The shift is on
Like the years immediately preceding it, 2023 saw plenty of merger and acquisition activity in the medical marketing space. Much of it has been driven by the creation of private equity platforms and a subsequent obsession with amassing “best of breed” offerings through buying sprees. Each year, MM+M surveys the industry on its performance, basing its Top 100 on information gleaned from agencies’ responses as well as its year-round reporting.
Healthcare Marketers Trend Report 2024: A techno twist
It’s become cliché to proclaim the demise of the pharma industry’s main fallback to scoring a quick product shmooze with doctors. But there are unmistakable signs that companies aren’t paying college grads to show up in medical offices toting boxed lunches quite as much as they once did. Step aside, sales reps. Move over, medical congresses. When it comes to engaging professionals, the latest healthcare marketing spend data reflect a higher level of enthusiasm for technology and digital programs.
Healthcare Marketers Trend Report 2024: A techno twist
It’s become cliché to proclaim the demise of the pharma industry’s main fallback to scoring a quick product shmooze with doctors. But there are unmistakable signs that companies aren’t paying college grads to show up in medical offices toting boxed lunches quite as much as they once did. Step aside, sales reps. Move over, medical congresses. When it comes to engaging professionals, the latest healthcare marketing spend data reflect a higher level of enthusiasm for technology and digital programs.
Elanco’s Jeff Simmons talks launch planning on Apple Podcasts
Elanco president/CEO Jeff Simmons says the animal health firm will ramp up advertising as it enters a “historic” launch phase. Lecia Bushak explains how Sen. Bernie Sanders got his showdown with Big Pharma back on track. And news out of Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain implant company tops our Trends segment.
Agency 100 2023: Publicis Health Media
Publicis Health Media’s maturation has coincided with a decade of channel diversification by the health industry. As advertisers have scaled their use of nontraditional media beyond smaller tests and pilots, PHM has flexed right alongside them. The result, according to agency president Andrea Palmer, has been a kind of reciprocal coming of age. Over the past few years, PHM has in-housed every capability formerly leveraged from its sibling Publicis agencies.
Agency 100 2023: Klick Health
The prototypical MM+M Agency 100 profile shapes the highs and lows of the last 12 months of an agency’s life into a smooth-running narrative. In the case of Klick Health, the ink had barely dried on the June issue last year before the material started accumulating for this year’s portrait. On June 21, just as the 2022 print edition started arriving in mailrooms and mailboxes, Klick announced that its global footprint had taken a leap forward with the opening of seven overseas hubs.
Agency 100 2023: Evoke
Like a new Hollywood power couple, midsize health marketing networks Evoke and Ashfield Health declared themselves ready for their closeup last summer. The post-merger unification under the Evoke banner spawned one of the industry’s most comprehensive service offerings. The backstory, months in the making, is equally eyebrow-raising. “We spent a lot of time behind the scenes, before we announced things publicly, to do things the right way,” recalls Evoke CEO and founder Reid Connolly.
Agency 100 2023: Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness
Call 2022 an even-steven year for Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness. Revenue was flat at an MM+M-estimated $87.5 million. The agency claimed as much new business from existing clients as from new ones. Staff count leveled out, with an MM+M-estimated 385 employees on hand at the end of 2022 compared to 400 a year prior. Which doesn’t mean that S&S Wellness spent the year satisfied with the status quo.
Amped Up: The agency world's post-pandemic surge
Medical marketers bobbed and weaved their way through a largely unpredictable 2021 and achieved record-breaking revenue. Then came 2022’s not-quite-post-pandemic reality, marked by COVID-19 variants, capricious quarantines and the general feeling of “being done with” the virus — even if it wasn’t yet done with us. But the so-called crossover year went well for the industry.
Agency 100 2023: Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness
Call 2022 an even-steven year for Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness. Revenue was flat at an MM+M-estimated $87.5 million. The agency claimed as much new business from existing clients as from new ones. Staff count leveled out, with an MM+M-estimated 385 employees on hand at the end of 2022 compared to 400 a year prior. Which doesn’t mean that S&S Wellness spent the year satisfied with the status quo.
Agency 100 2023: Publicis Health Media
Publicis Health Media’s maturation has coincided with a decade of channel diversification by the health industry. As advertisers have scaled their use of nontraditional media beyond smaller tests and pilots, PHM has flexed right alongside them. The result, according to agency president Andrea Palmer, has been a kind of reciprocal coming of age. Over the past few years, PHM has in-housed every capability formerly leveraged from its sibling Publicis agencies.
Health data 1:1: Mayo Clinic’s Vish Anantraman on navigating a ‘post-EMR world’
Partner Content Game Changers 2022 Check out the profiles for this year's Game Changers. Partner Content Google’s Android announcement compels marketers to harness real world data Real world health data is generated through offline events and completely de-identified, enabling a privacy-safe approach to activating an accurate patient audience using precision targeting.
MM+M Podcast 2.22.22: It's Robert Califf’s FDA 2.0
Partner Content Google’s latest cookie-less solution falls short for health marketers; it’s time to move on with privacy-safe real world data Smart health marketers have known all along that precise, privacy safe, AI-generated digital audiences built using offline, condition-specific Real World Data has always been superior to the use of online data. Partner Content Women making science meaningful Healthcare’s history is full of remarkable women who have transformed science.
The TikTokker who’s tackling racism in medicine
Partner Content Google’s latest cookie-less solution falls short for health marketers; it’s time to move on with privacy-safe real world data Smart health marketers have known all along that precise, privacy safe, AI-generated digital audiences built using offline, condition-specific Real World Data has always been superior to the use of online data. Partner Content Women making science meaningful Healthcare’s history is full of remarkable women who have transformed science.
MM+M Podcast 2.8.22: The metaverse for healthcare marketers
Partner Content The time is now: Apple’s iOS update compels health marketers to adopt privacy safe, AI-generated digital audiences Instead of using online behavior for targeting purposes, pharmaceutical marketers must embrace the use of privacy-safe real world health data, a more effective, safer way to reach patients that actually suffer from disease.
MM+M Podcast 2.1.22: Using telehealth to speed access to COVID treatments Original
Partner Content For the ‘UNagency,’ working through the pandemic remains business as ‘UNusual’ Owner Tim Frank gives readers a look under the hood of the pharma ad agency. Partner Content The point of inception: A timely story of patient empowerment to improve medication adherence There is a point in every patient journey that either leads to healthy outcomes or missed opportunities and unmet needs. Partner Content Is there life for health marketers after Facebook?
MM+M Podcast 1.25.22: Overseeing comms for the firm that launched Moderna
Partner Content Caregivers need pharma’s help. What can the industry do? Caregivers are physically, financially and emotionally drained and don’t feel equipped or qualified to provide optimal care. How can pharma better support them? Partner Content Attracting and retaining top talent amidst the Great Reshuffle Kimberly Jones, President & CEO of Butler/Till, talks with Marc Iskowitz about how her company is thriving, despite an incredibly tight job market and the ever-evolving marketing ecosystem.
MM+M Podcast 1.18.22: Digital health’s funding frenzy (and what it means)
Partner Content HCP engagement in 2022 — The HLD HCP Communications Report Healthlink Dimensions’ 2022 Communications Report — your guide for provider-based insights into HCP marketing outreach as COVID continues to reshape the industry.
MM+M Podcast 1.11.22: Medical ad man David Chapman reflects
Partner Content Women making science meaningful Healthcare’s history is full of remarkable women who have transformed science. But it’s also full of everyday heroines who bring science to life.
J&J and the end of the consumer era
Partner Content MM+M Places to Be 2021 Get to know each of these companies by learning about their culture, work/life balance, D&I initiatives and more. Partner Content Spectrum Science: Evolving marketing communications following COVID-19 The agency’s biopharma, biotech, health tech and consumer science experts weigh in on how the public’s heightened awareness of science affects stakeholders across the entire healthcare continuum.
The orphan drug launch, reconsidered
Partner Content Spectrum Science: Evolving marketing communications following COVID-19 The agency’s biopharma, biotech, health tech and consumer science experts weigh in on how the public’s heightened awareness of science affects stakeholders across the entire healthcare continuum. Partner Content The power of purpose How Biolumina’s focus on oncology connects the personal with scientific progress.
MM+M Podcast 11.23.21: Nurx’s Varsha Rao
Partner Content The emergence of Evolution Health Group Larry Dobrow discusses the evolution of EHG over the past few years with Dr. Leo Francis, COO of EHG, and how his role will focus on creating transformative changes for both employees and clients. Partner Content MicroMass and the creative potential of Human Dynamics A look beyond the disease and demographics to understand the human inside.
MM+M Podcast 11.9.21: WOCIP’s Dr. Charlotte Jones-Burton
Partner Content Engagement as medicine: The essential role of healthcare communications Dave Nussbaum and Susan Manber of Publicis Health sit down with MM+M's Steve Madden, for an honest conversation about health’s future and the critical role healthcare communications plays in driving better outcomes.
Agency 100 2023: Evoke
Like a new Hollywood power couple, midsize health marketing networks Evoke and Ashfield Health declared themselves ready for their closeup last summer. The post-merger unification under the Evoke banner spawned one of the industry’s most comprehensive service offerings. The backstory, months in the making, is equally eyebrow-raising. “We spent a lot of time behind the scenes, before we announced things publicly, to do things the right way,” recalls Evoke CEO and founder Reid Connolly.
Healthcare's own 'Undoing Project'
Given our September issue's features on patient support services and behavioral science, I just had to read it for clues on the origins and applications of pharma's increasing tendency to incorporate behavioral insights into, well, everything. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky were an improbable pair — the former a Holocaust kid, the latter a swaggering native Israeli.
David Gideon, medical media icon and industry stalwart, dies at 75
His long and storied career saw him start one of the early audits of medical journal ad spend, called PERQ, which brought pharma media analysis into the technology age. Colleagues marveled at the diversity of his professional and personal talents--he was a musician, pilot, photographer, and devoted family man.
Media buyers form group to advance standards in POC
Several media-buying agencies have formed an association, bringing leadership and expertise together on the agency side to expedite creation of verification standards in the POC media channel. Multiple media agencies have signed on. “A buyers association has been formed in response to the events of the past [10] months,” a source told MM&M. “The group includes representatives from IPG, WPP, Omnicom, and MDC Media.” A formal statement is planned for later this summer.
Acquisition fever in July: What does it mean for agencies?
Indeed, at a time when pharmaceutical companies are bringing some capabilities in-house, and consultancies are competing for marketing business, this is a good time for agencies to gain scale in complementary services. M&A also provides smaller agencies with access to capital for their own acquisitions. At the same time, pharma is also finding it harder to differentiate brands in the marketplace, observed Blane Walter, managing partner for Talisman Capital Partners, a private equity investor.
CCO firings a sign of agencies' waning tolerance for misbehavior
Then again, the firing of its CCO, Jeremy Perrott, after the network investigated a complaint that he had violated the company's code of conduct, is in itself a sign of progress, women leaders have told me. Perrott, who had been with McCann for nearly three decades, was terminated after an internal investigation of a complaint he used “offensive and inappropriate language,” Campaign reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
2018 Agency 100 overview: firms adapt to stay ahead of nontraditional players
It's been a few years since a series of structural changes wrought wholesale reorganization within the health networks of the five biggest ad holding companies. Behind the rebranding, consolidation, and new sub-holding companies was a bid to grab a larger chunk of the burgeoning wellness market. But the real test of whether the wisdom of these changes is borne out may be yet to come.
Executive summary of our diversity research
The inaugural MM&M/Publicis Health Diversity Survey was designed to provide industry with the most meaningful picture of diversity and inclusion in healthcare marketing agencies. A total of 36 agencies, mostly small organizations with less than $50 million in revenue, responded to the survey.
Transparency may have taken a back seat on this diversity drive
When we embarked on the first MM&M/Publicis Health Diversity Survey, we thought the biggest challenge would be finding the right survey takers. However, after months of outreach, including extensive promotion and a reboot of the approach — not unlike a pharma product launch — the bigger struggle was nudging enough people to open up about their diversity numbers. But not from enough agencies where we would have been able to issue an overarching stat on the percent of diversity across the sector.
How drugmakers are facing the entrance of consumer giants into healthcare
Celgene's Nancy Powell (speaking) along with Amy West of Novo Nordisk during an MM&M panel in March that was sponsored by Deloitte Digital Photo credit Ali Smith The wave of consumer companies deepening their forays into healthcare, coupled with broader health system change and questions about advertising effectiveness, has spawned a bracing set of conditions for drugmakers. On one hand, they're expanding beyond a traditional reliance on pharmaceuticals as a sole value proposition.
2018 Agency 100 preview: a complete guide to a year of disruption
One year later, it may be hard to recognize the 2018 agency world from its One year later, it may be hard to recognize the 2018 agency world from its predecessor . Most noticeably, there are three new healthcare ad holding companies, formed by Intouch Group, Precision Value & Health, and Ashfield Health Communications. Moreover, we see agencies' capabilities expanding to include not only creative, access, pricing, media, and data, but also newer kinds of innovation and enterprise technology work.
Five things for pharma marketers to know: Friday, May 4, 2018
The price of Daraprim is still $750 per pill despite Martin Shkreli's prison sentence. Prior to the price hike in 2015 by Shkreli, the pill cost $13.50. The price increase resulted in Shkreli being called before Congress amid widespread outrage. (Washington Post) Merck is investing $125 million in biotech company Moderna to support the development of a vaccine to treat cancer. The vaccine would be given to patients who have KRAS, a gene mutation found in some tumors.
Agencies enable staff to find well-being through work
Nearly every month, we receive pitches from healthcare marketing agencies asking us to write about their internal employee programs. These pitches range from the modest — “We believe your readers will be interested to learn about this initiative” — to the exaggerated — “Our efforts were met with wild applause.
Jay Appel, Bristol-Myers Squibb
Appel earned his reputation as one of pharma's digital wunderkinds in the mid-2000s. Back then, Facebook, YouTube, and other soon-to-be-dominant social platforms were mere curios to most pharma people. Appel had already been tasked with testing out these new channels and exploring their promotional potential for his then-employer, Sanofi. Appel earned his reputation as one of pharma's digital wunderkinds in the mid-2000s.
Five things for pharma marketers to know: Thursday, May 3, 2018
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Trump wants to go “much further” to address drug prices. HHS is working with Trump to create a strategy to address issues that are causing the increasing drug prices, Azar said at the World Health Care Congress. Trump is also expected to address drug prices in a speech next week. ( HHS is working with Trump to create a strategy to address issues that are causing the increasing drug prices, Azar said at the World Health Care Congress.
Health brands need to consider the human side of patients, HCPs, and stakeholders
Consider the planned CVS-Aetna merger, or the eventual impact of Amazon entering healthcare. These moves will challenge the status quo, driving up expectations for innovation, personalization, and customer-centric services. So what do health brand marketers need to do to keep pace? Be more human. Recognize historic relationship models and use data and best practices to help stakeholders engage in a supportive dialogue. The classic model saw the physician in charge.
Ryan Billings, Amag Pharmaceuticals
Billings has spent the bulk of his career in the health-tech realm, even before that realm was deemed of primary importance by A-list pharma and healthcare organizations. Prior to arriving at Amag, Billings handled social strategy for Merck and AstraZeneca – two companies, not coincidentally, that earned early reputations for their digital savvy.
Infographic | A closer look at co-pay coupons and programs
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Rbb Communications' Srikant Ramaswami on yoga, 'think time,' and his mentors
I have a sign that sits on my desk that inspires me when things get stressful. It says, “if you feel like quitting, think about why you started.” It uplifts me and helps me stay focused on the many patients we want to reach through impactful public relations. Average number of days spent on the road per year? I travel a fair amount to see clients or for new business pitches. Meditation and yoga are key to staying sane in any situation.
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