While traditional holding companies may have once reigned supreme, the rise of independent agencies suggests that things are shaking up in the realm of multi market healthcare communications.
A major decision facing mid-sized agency owners is whether to sell their company or to maintain their independence, a decision that UK based GLOBALHealthPR partner, Aurora, recently made.
The advantage of an independent agency is the ability to deliver the best possible services to clients without also reporting to a parent company and shareholders. According to Aurora’s CEO and co-owner, Neil Crump, the decision to retain your company’s independence does not reflect a loss of business vigor but rather shows resolve to build and innovate on the solid foundation laid down by the owners themselves. Maybe then, there is no right answer to the ‘Sell, Not Sell’ question, but rather the questions to ask are: what are you building for, and what is right for you? Read more at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sell-dont-ask-yourself-question-fellow-agency-owner-neil-crump
Every year GLOBALHealthPR agencies come together for our Annual General Meeting, AGM for short, and it’s a celebrated event! Months in advance partners start circling the dates on calendars, eagerly anticipating the opportunity to learn, share and connect.
This past January we welcomed James Yi as the Executive Director for GHPR’s APAC regional office. Not only has James brought a wealth of experience in regional healthcare communications, but he’s also provided invaluable perspective on the network itself – and what he sees as our value to clients. James took a turn at the mic during the AGM, sharing his reflections from his first 100 days, and one of the first things he talked about was the strength of the network, commenting:
“A network is only as strong as its weakest agency.”
It’s an intuitive statement, but the context surrounding it is important – especially in the healthcare space. Most global holding companies lack true health expertise in many, if not the majority, of markets they operate in. This means you have non-specialist communicators implementing in a highly specialised and regulated area, leading to huge variance in the levels of success achieved locally.
At GLOBALHealthPR, health communications is all we do. Every agency that is part of our network is a true expert in both health and communications in their respective markets. Supported by a strong client-first infrastructure, our agencies work together seamlessly to deliver around the globe.
We are often approached by agencies from all over world that are interested in joining the network. Within each market we only have one partner agency, and their focus must be on healthcare. For these reasons we are highly selective about those choices – our partner relationships are built to last, and becoming a partner isn’t easy.
Every year when I come back from the AGM I think about how lucky I am to be working with a network of partners—and friends—who share my passion for healthcare and communications. We’re bound by a common vision of building the best healthcare communications network in the world. Rome wasn’t built in a day (fun fact, Ancient Rome took somewhere in the range of 760 years to reach its peak population, or over 200,000 days); we’re only 16 years into our mission and continuing to add strength each year.
Our network is built such that it doesn’t have a weakest agency. And that’s a big piece of how we are able to deliver exceptional communications globally, regionally and locally for our clients.
This post comes to us from Renato Póvoas, Founder and Managing Partner of GLOBALHealthPR Portugal partner, Guess What.
Renato Póvoas of Guess What
Despite being somewhat averse to speculation, Guess What‘s editorial board asked me to write about trends for 2017. I leave here my 12 guesses. At the end of the year, we will take stock of what has actually materialized.
Predictive analysis: Use of data, statistical algorithms and machine learning techniques to anticipate consumer behavior.
Customer-Centric Culture: Put customers ahead of the direct interests of your brand. Surprise and provide an unforgettable experience to your client that he or she will defend your agency owing to fantastic results.
Geo-location: Massive spread of the use of consumer data via geolocation. With the ever-increasing use smartphones, there is great potential for collecting and processing this information, being a precious tool for brand marketing.
Native advertising: With the proliferation of ad blockers, it will become increasingly common to use native advertising in various media and formats. This type of advertising has the advantage of not being interrupted by the intrusive banners and pop-ups that disturb us daily.
Multi-touch Attribution (MTA): A system that lets you know which clicks are the most important in converting customers online and how they relate. An extremely important topic for communications agency wants to make money providing digital services. Coming in the very near future.
Data-driven marketing: Base decisions and actions on marketing through concrete data. Get to know people and customers to the smallest detail. This implies looking at the marketing, communication and commercial areas from an integrated, 360º perspective.
Targeted Creativity: Develop creative and relevant content for your customers. From the digital point of view there are numerous tools that allow you to adapt and segment content so that your campaigns are increasingly effective.
Cross-device: It’s already coming out of 2016 and will continue to be a reality this year. The mix is getting bigger and bigger. The challenge is to integrate the contents with coherence and in an appropriate way to the support.
Live video: Explosion in the volume and level of interaction of this type of video. YouTube, Facebook and Instagram have recently incorporated more and more features in this field, thus contributing to the popularization of these videos, namely at the level of public events. It will not take long for brands to seize this opportunity.
Content marketing: It has been said and recognized for some time now that “content is king”. Therefore, I believe that the content evolution that we will see in 2017 will be with regard to the level of sophistication, creativity and format.
AR / VR (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality): With some experiences in this area – Pokemon Go is perhaps the most universal example, there is still a long way and a lot to do in this specific field. Technology is important, but content and creativity are equally critical.
AI (Artificial Intelligence): This will be the year in which more and more companies and brands will advance in this area. Personal assistants, chat bots and other instant messaging programs promise to give birth to a new generation of digital services.
What do you think will be the top communications trends in 2017? Leave a comment to let us know!
A version of this post originally appeared on the Guess What blog.
Here at GLOBALHealthPR, we go to all ends of the earth to deliver recipes for successful global and regional communications programmes to our clients. With offices in more than 40 countries, we know how to find the right mix of local insights and ingredients in order to satisfy the unique tastes and needs of each programme.
In the spirit of the holiday season, we’re sharing some of the traditional recipes that are enjoyed in our local markets around this time of year, delivered by our expert agency partners. Bon Appetit!
Americas
Argentina – Vitel Tone
Italian (peidmontese, to be specific) in origin, Vitello Tonnato or Vitel Tone as it’s called in Argentina is a chilled summertime dish traditionally served at Christmas. Vitel Tone is prepared at least a day in advance, when veal is braised and sliced thin then covered in a thick mayonnaise of tuna with oil and egg yolks, as well as other seasonings. The veal may then be chilled for up to five days to develop the flavour before it is served.
Panettone is a tall, spongey sweet bread stuffed with candied fruits and raisins, originating in Milan but served at Christmas and the New Year in Brazil, Argentina, Spain and many other countries. Panettone is left to rise for more than 20 hours, giving it the distinctive cupola-like shape. There are a number of colourful myths involving the invention of panettone, ranging from a priest’s love of his hat to a wedding officiated by Leonardo di Vinci.
A favourite in Quebec and across Canada, tourtière is a meat pie of diced pork or veal of beef. The exact filling depends on what is regionally available. On the coast, fish such as salmon may replace the meats. The slow-cooked deep dish pie may have originated in Quebec, but by the 19th century Quebecois immigrants to the northeastern United States had brought tourtière with them. Beyond differences in meat, some regional variants include potatoes or various spices, and condiments range from ketchup and mustard to maple syrup and mango chutney.
Ponche, a hot punch consisting of local fruits including tejotes, apples, prunes and pears as well as hibiscus, walnuts, raisins and cinnamon, is traditionally served at Christmas Eve celebrations, and the posadas, a nine day celebration leading up to Christmas. Ponche is frequently served warm, but can be chilled to taste, and can include liquor like tequila, rum or brandy for adult holiday festivities.
Mincemeat pie originated in the British Isles centuries ago, as crusaders brought back with them spices and recipes for sweet meat and dried fruit pies. Over time, they became a Christmas tradition around the Anglophone world. In the U.S. they are usually eaten as full sized pies, but smaller individual pies are not uncommon. Oftentimes, modern mince pies skip the meat entirely, containing only fruit. Many families will serve the pie with Hard Sauce, so called due to the sherry mixed in with the butter and sugar, hence “hard”.
Called Inlagd Sil in Danish, pickled herring is traditional holiday fare in Denmark and across the Nordic region and often paired with akvavit, a spiced spirit. Pickled herring has been a northern European tradition since the middle ages and is used as a way to store and transport fish without it spoiling. The herring is served on rye, crispbread, sour cream or potatoes depending on the flavouring given to it during the curing and pickling process, which can include mustard, lingonberries, onion or garlic.
Foie Gras, as defined by French law, is a duck or goose liver that has been fattened (up to 10 times its natural size) through the forced feeding of corn through a feeding tube. The techniques to force-feed the birds can be traced back all the way to 2500 BCE Egypt. Due to the lengthy and delicate production process, foie gras is considered a dish for special occasions, including Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Traditional French preparations are served cold, but the use of hot preparations has been increasing.
Duck is the traditional centerpiece of a German Christmas Eve dinner. In addition to the duck, classic sides include red cabbage and potato dumplings. There are two schools of thought on the preparation of duck. Traditionalists cook it low and slow with, celery and apples in the cavity. Alternatively, some cooks simmer the duck in broth and then finish under very high heat in the oven.
Barszcz is a sour, bright crimson beetroot soup served during the holidays in Poland. Dumplings filled with meats, mushrooms and many other proteins and cheeses are served in the soup as well. The earliest variants of what would come to be known as Barszcz or Borscht were made with hogweed, and later versions would include poppy seeds, almonds, rye brand or barley in addition to the original hogweed and beetroot.
Bacalhau is the Portuguese word for salted and dried cod. There are thousands of ways to prepare bacalhau, and yet it is ironically the only fish that is not consumed fresh in Portuguese cuisine. Bacalhau has spread across the Portuguese world, including Cape Verde, Angola, Macau and Brazil. The iconic Christmas recipe for bacalhau is boiled with garlic and served with cabbage, potatoes, carrots and eggs. A friendly note of advice: be sure to soak the bacalhau in water for at least a day before cooking, or else you are in for an extremely salty meal.
Turrón is a remarkably simple but delicious sweet treat for the holidays. It consists of only four ingredients: honey, sugar, egg whites and nuts. Together they form a rich nougat, which is cut into bars to be served. The existence of turrón can be traced back to the 15th century. Depending on the amount of nuts and the addition of other ingredients to the core of four, turrón can range from crisp to chewy to the bakers preference.
Christmas pudding, sometimes called plum pudding despite the lack of plums (plums were a pre-Victorian term for raisins), can trace its origins back to medieval England. The pudding is made of dried fruits held together by eggs with treacle, or molasses, and flavored with spices and brandy. Because of the high alcohol content, a steamed Christmas pudding can be aged for months, and is sometimes “flamed” or set alight in an electric blue pyrotechnic display to burn off the alcohol and add flavour.
There are few things more iconically Aussie than Shrimp (aka prawns) on the Barbie, and with Christmas coming in Australia’s summer months, it’s only fitting that an outdoor barbeque favourite is also a Christmas tradition. The classic recipe is pretty straightforward: stick the shrimp on the grill and coat with a glaze of garlic, honey, chili sauce and a citrus, though many recipes will call for a little bit of marinating. For dessert, pavlova, a meringue (named after the ballerina) with fruit and whipped cream, is a favourite.
Tangyuan are sweet rice dumplings, that can be served either filled or unfilled and bite sized or large. Fillings include chocolate paste, fruit, peanuts or rock candy, though the most common filling is a paste made of ground black sesame mixed with sugar and lard. The name tangyuan is a homophone in Chinese for union, and as such they are served not only during the traditional Yuanxaio lantern festival and Winter Solstice, but also at family reunions and weddings.
Til Ladoos, or sesame ladoos are a popular treat served around the holiday of Makar Sankranti, celebrating the changing seasons in India and around the world. Ladoos are made from roasted and crushed peanuts, coconut and sesame stuck together with jaggery (cane sugar mixture) caramel. The mixture is then rolled into balls and served warm or at room temperature.
Yu Sheng is a raw fish salad with shredded vegetables and condiments popular on the Chinese New Year. Salmon, mackerel and occasionally abalone are popular choices of fish, with the veggies consisting of carrots, radishes, red peppers, turnips, ginger, cabbage and more. Toppings include plum sauce, sesame oil and seeds. Once the dish is made, everyone gathers around the table with their chopsticks and tosses the salad as high as possible. Sometimes called Prosperity Toss, the name itself is a bit of a pun, with Yu Sheng (raw fish – 鱼生) being a homophone for Yu Sheng (prosperity – 余升), a play on both the tossing of the salad and the belief that eating Yu Sheng brings good health and success.
We hope you fill your stomachs with great food and your hearts with love and joy this holiday season. Best wishes in 2017 from the GLOBALHealthPR family.
I’ve been in Sydney, Australia for just over a week now as a part of the GLOBALHealthPR® Professional Exchange Program. While I’ve done “heaps” of touristy things like check out sweeping views of the city from the Sydney Tower Eye, watched surfers catch some waves at Manly Beach and hung out with koalas at the Wild Life Sydney Zoo, I’ve also gotten a taste of what it’s like to live as a local Aussie. Here are a few things about working with colleagues at our partner agency Team VIVA! that I wanted to share:
PATIENT FOCUS
I’ve found my work at VIVA! to be highly patient-centric, and find it surprising that a recent Pharma In Focus white paper reports that one in three Australian pharma marketers felt they failed to focus on the patient. Most campaigns include regional or State-specific patient spokespeople who can provide first-hand commentary on what it’s like to live with a certain disease or condition. VIVA! has a real knack for media relations, and develops comprehensive patient case studies, videos and infographics (both still and animated) that are really easy for the media to reference and extract for use in their stories
NO PRODUCT MENTIONS
Under the Medicines Australia Code of Conduct, you cannot mention the names of specific pharmaceutical products or anything that might imply a specific type of treatment in communication to consumers beyond a new product launch, or when the product secures a second indication. So PR and marketing firms need to get creative and find ways to connect with consumers in meaningful ways on behalf of their pharma clients. Programs are often implemented through unrestricted grants to advocacy groups and tend to focus on disease state awareness.
COLLABORATIVE TEAM
VIVA! starts each week with an all-agency meeting. The team works well together, and sometimes it’s all hands on deck. Even the agency’s Principal is not afraid to jump in and help, lending her expertise and experience to all aspects of client service. I’ve also found Australians to be quite direct with each other – no sugar coating feedback or direction – which helps keep projects moving along efficiently and boosts camaraderie within the agency, resulting in the best work for clients.
LIFE IN SYDNEY
The public transport in Sydney is very user-friendly. After only a few days, I was navigating the system like a local. The Opal card, like DC’s SmarTrip or New York’s MetroCard, is really simple to “top up” and each station has easy-to-read digital screens with a clear look at what stops are up next. Plus, the card works seamlessly for the train, bus and ferry systems.
From what I’ve seen, my colleagues and their fellow Sydney residents are a pretty active bunch. Most folks on Team VIVA! take a walk midday, go for a run after work, or hit the gym a few times a week. Overall, Aussies thrive on the outdoors (who can blame them with the country’s natural beauty and proximity to the beach?), which fuels a healthy outlook on life.
Kaitlin Bowen is participating in the GLOBALHealthPR Professional Exchange Program representing exclusive U.S. partner Spectrum. The Program aims to enhance the connectivity of GLOBALHealthPR agencies through collaboration, best practice sharing, and insights into the drivers that affect health and science communications in different markets worldwide, and to build professional relationships with other GLOBALHealthPR personnel around the globe.
Kaitlin is an account director at GHPR U.S. partner Spectrum. To follow her experiences on the GLOBALHealthPR Professional Exchange Program online, use #GHPRConnects to join the conversation and see all of the 2016 exchange programming.
Today’s post comes to us from Philipp Dieterich, Strategy Expert at GLOBALHealthPR Germany partner, fischerAppelt.
Earlier this year, the German pharma association FSA implemented the Transparency Code, which means that for the first time all pharmaceutical companies in Germany have to publish all monetary contributions they have paid to medical institutions, doctors and other partners throughout the previous year. Technically speaking, this is not a challenging request. However, companies that carry out their duty and publish those numbers let go of the opportunity to establish a new compliance culture and shape communication around it.
It is more than just a bothersome reporting practice:
The pharmaceutical industry claims their monetary contributions serve to transfer knowledge and help improve medical care. Yet the public is skeptical towards pharmaceutical companies and thus favour the transparent display of pharmaceutical partnerships and financial contributions. Companies that perceive the Transparency Code as a bothersome reporting-practice, and therefore limit their communication to the documentation of their contributions, miss out on a big opportunity. They could be highlighting on collaborative activities and the added value from their cooperation with not only the Transparency Code, but also with the partners they monitarily contribute to. The purpose their contributions should be made clear in terms of what they are serving and how they are advancing the development of pharmaceutical products. This is the main interest of patients and medical associations. This is where communication should start.
There is a need for a new compliance culture:
Future cooperation should be examined more closely to see whether the intended transfer of knowledge results in the improvement of research and medical care. Monetary-only cooperations will be replaced by content-related collaboration. The FSA Transparency Code is a prelude of this change. In the efforts to gain public acceptance and trust, the companies which go beyond regulatory standards will stand out from others. By doing so, they can demonstrate their serious interest in changing the existing structures. The latter is the biggest task as it will significantly impact how different actors collaborate. Consequently, this will lead to a new set of guidelines and rules of compliance.
Communication of change starts now:
In order to actually bring about change in a complex health care system, a comprehensive communication support is indispensable. Companies should actively participate in a constructive public dialogue. This requires being transparent about existing affiliations and their purpose, as well as mediating for future sets of rules. Companies will be evaluated on these points in the upcoming months, and the companies that go beyond communicating just the basics will be among the winners.
Privacy & Cookies
This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
While traditional holding companies may have once reigned supreme, the rise of independent agencies suggests that things are shaking up in the realm of multi market healthcare communications.
Every year GLOBALHealthPR agencies come together for our Annual General Meeting, AGM for short, and it’s a celebrated event! Months in advance partners start circling the dates on calendars, eagerly anticipating the opportunity to learn, share and connect.
I’ve been in Sydney, Australia for just over a week now as a part of the 