2015 shattered all previous records for Concentric, with overall growth of 75 percent, an increase in worldwide staff of 65 percent to 226 employees, and a 75 percent new business winning percentage, having won nine of 12 pitches.

AGENCY OF THE YEAR CATEGORY II

CONCENTRIC HEALTH EXPERIENCE

APRIL 2016 MED AD NEWS • 63

oncentric Health Experi-ence, last year’s Category III Agency of the Year, is still winning with cul-ture, and winning big, its

executives say.

2015 shattered all previous records, with an “astonishing” overall growth of 75 percent, an increase in worldwide staff of 65 percent to 226 employees, and a “remarkable” 75 percent new business winning percentage, having won nine of 12 pitches, according to agency leaders. “Incredibly, the agency deployed 13 inte-grated creative campaigns and launched four brands in 2015,” executives say.

As great as the growth is, Concentric executives agree that the most inspir-ing results from their unique culture are measured in relationships and retention. The agency has a healthy organic growth rate of 38 percent; fi ve out of seven leg-acy clients expanded or deepened their relationship with Concentric, and the agency was awarded four new accounts based on stellar performance within ex-isting brands. At the same time, Concen-tric also maintains an industry-leading 88 percent employee retention rate.

“Performance, relationships and ac-countability create a winning combina-tion,” says Ken Begasse Jr., co-founder

and CEO of Concentric. “We are a testa-ment that building an inspiring culture can have measurable impact for our peo-ple, our clients, and our agency. Employ-ees feel that they can do their best work at Concentric, and that opportunity is here for them to explore their interests, learn and grow, regardless of their level.

“This leads to outstanding retention. Without a doubt, our clients benefi t from having an agency fi lled with deep institutional knowledge, experienced leadership and long-standing continuity on their accounts. Lastly, our focus on culture and commitment to people has powered our outstanding growth over the past fi ve years.”

Growing smart is a clear focus for the

leaders at Concentric. As the agency planned for signifi cant and sustained growth, the company invested in both people and culture in order to ensure a sustainable value proposition for em-ployees. With 2016 promising to be an-other year of impressive growth, with 17 clients and 31 brands already engaged, Concentric wanted to ensure the agency was well positioned to lead clients for-ward, so they strengthened their lead-ership with 30 managerial hires in 2015 and solidifi ed key capabilities, depart-ments, and offi ces. Managing Partner Jennie Fischette describes the game plan for 2015: “Leading and never following means learning how to feed growth. For Concentric, this consisted of growing key

assets like Concentric Health Intelligence and our London offi ce, reimagining our engagement group with the launch of Radius-Hx, and expanding our content strategy department to match the evolv-ing needs our clients.”

In London, Concentric added new leadership with industry veterans, Exec-utive VP, Managing Director Peter Carr and Executive VP, Creative Director Ar-ron O’Hare. Carr is the former owner of Courtney Alexander Consulting Limited, and O’Hare was the Creative Director at award-winning DJM PAN Unlimited.

In New York, Concentric fortifi ed re-sources across the board, but particularly strengthening the medical strategy, op-erations and account groups. Key lead-ership hires included Ed Cowen from Medicus International to run Concentric Health Intelligence and VP, Medical Di-rector Paula van de Nes. Begasse says, “I can’t emphasize culture enough. It’s al-lowed us to attract some of the brightest minds in the industry, and at the same time develop our internal talent and pro-vide them a path to grow along with the agency. Our investment here continues to pay dividends over and over.”

“With fi ve years of consecutive growth, you would expect the work to suff er,” says cofounder and Chief Cre-ative Offi cer Michael Sanzen. “But as we say, ‘Inspiring people do inspiring work,’ and I’m inspired to come into

categorytwo – agencies with income between $25 million and $50 million

C

Concentric Health Experience 175 Varick StreetNew York, NY 10014Telephone: 212-633-9700E-mail: info@concentrichx.comWebsite: concentrichx.com

(left to right) David Drucker, managing partner, chief financial officer; Ken Begasse Jr., founder, CEO; Michael Sanzen, founder, chief creative officer; Jennie Fischette, managing partner, director of account and strategic services; Adam Cohen, managing partner, executive creative director

The year’s accomplishments

Agency of the Year, Category II

Best Launch CampaignVision Award

ACCOUNTSAccount wins 14Active business clients 17

BRANDS BY 2015 SALESBrand-product accounts held 31$50 million – $100 million 7$100 million – $500 million 18Products not yet approved/launched 6

6

Digital 65%Print/collateral/o� ine promotion 35%

AllerganBecton DickinsonBayerCollegiumFerring PharmaceuticalsGuerbetInterceptLeo Pharma MedtronicNovartisNualtraOtsuka/Lundbeck AllianceP� zerRouses PointSun PharmaceuticalsSunovionTheravance

digital edition available at medadnews.com

QUICK FACTS

SERVICES MIX

CLIENT ROSTER

With its unique visuals and messages, the “Out of the Woods” campaign allows physicians to understand the product bene� ts and the emotional perspective of the patient. The forest symbolizes the frustrations that arise from unresolved symptoms, side e� ects, and the isolation that patients can feel. The clearing represents the patient’s treatment journey, with REXULTI o� ering a clear way forward.

FINALIST – BEST LAUNCH CAMPAIGN

WINNER

FINALIST

64 • MED AD NEWS APRIL 2016

categorytwo – agencies with income between $25 million and $50 million

work everyday to create alongside our inspiring people. We believe a life well lived, both personally and profession-ally, is the key to building ideas with empathy and connectedness, which leads to inspired work. That philosophy makes us attractive to the best talent in our industry, and they have come to Concentric to do great work, with great people, for great clients.”

Executives say in 2015, with an eye to-ward the future, Sanzen set his creative vision into motion, literally transforming the agency’s ability to create meaningful engagements across all customers and media. First, he bolstered creative lead-ership with the addition of seven new creative directors across four groups to lead the agency’s expanding creative team, which grew 300 percent last year. Second, Sanzen led the realignment of the creative-services team, creating a design-focused vertical and fi nally, spin-ning out the Radius-Hx engagement group, refl ecting a continued emphasis on inspiring, game-changing work on behalf of the clients of Concentric across all sectors. The early results were out-standing, with Concentric being honored with 15 creative awards globally. The in-corporation of cutting-edge animation and technologies like Google Cardboard has helped enhance Concentric’s already innovative work.

Looking ahead, 2016 promises even more honors to come, with most of the 13 newly minted creative campaigns el-igible in 2016. “I am extremely proud of the work we did together in 2015,” says Adam Cohen, managing partner, exec-utive creative director. “First and fore-most, each campaign is performing well for our clients. Creatively, the work is bold, simple and inspiring, and the shear amount was mind-blowing. This being our most prolifi c creative year yet, we continually raised the bar from one cam-paign to the next.”

Concentric means “common center.” According to agency leaders, by un-derstanding the core value proposition across all key stakeholders, Concentric eff ectively develops brands that connect in a deep and meaningful way. In 2015, the agency restructured its off ering to best align with the evolving needs of the industry. Concentric Health Group

now consists of three integrated ar-eas of excellence: Concentric-Hx, the brand-building and communications arm, Concentric Health Intelligence, the strategic insight and research arm, and Radius-Hx, the engagement team with-in Concentric that was created in 2015 to extend that common-center strategy across the entire customer journey.

“The modern agency model requires expertise effi ciently integrated across the value-chain,” Begasse says. “By giving each discipline an identity, a focus, and ownership, we’ve created ‘intrapreneur-ship’ that openly collaborates within our growing organization. This benefi ts our clients, of course, but also our employees because it empowers ownership.”

“We created a structure that allows areas of expertise to thrive while still working together to build a stronger whole,” Fischette says. “Concentric-Hx continues to provide our clients with the strategic thinking and fl awless execution they’ve come to expect on all matters of branding and communication, but now this off ering is turbo-charged by our growing expertise in other areas.”

In 2015, Concentric expanded its in-novative research off ering, Concentric Health Intelligence, which is now used by nearly all clients, agency executives say. “Concentric Health Intelligence pro-vides a 360-degree immersion process that leverages a wide variety of tradition-al and nontraditional methodologies to mine insights from all stakeholder audi-ences, including patient, payer, and phy-sician,” executives say. “Insights gleaned are then used as a foundation for inte-grated channel strategies that lead to more eff ective and more substantive en-gagement with desired audiences.”

Radius-Hx is an integrated depart-ment consisting of content strategy, UX, analytics, communications planning, design, and development. “Working seamlessly with brand teams, Radi-us-Hx breathes life into strategic and tactical plans by facilitating more pro-found communication connectivity,” executives say. “This process begins with unique customer research and ends with a sophisticated point-of-con-tact strategy.

“Everything we do at Concentric cen-ters on creating better health experienc-es,” says James Driscoll, senior VP, di-rector, user engagement at Radius. “It all starts as we uncover moments of truth along the customer journey, and then

we apply best-in-class user experience in order to make the strategy actionable.”

According to managers, Concentric Health Experience is a single, integrated, global agency and will build out its pres-ence in every major global market via its existing hubs in New York City and Lon-don. “Growing globally is a continued focus in 2016,” Begasse says. “However, knowing how important corporate cul-ture is to success, we believe it’s imper-ative to grow with our own people, grow intelligently, and minimize our reliance on repetitive infrastructure. Regional presence makes sense, local insight is a must. Our expanding global model will be adaptive and built for the modern healthcare environment. It’s not a sur-prise with the extraordinary growth Con-centric has experienced that plans for a new headquarters are in motion. Con-centric NYC will be more spacious, with the agency relocating to 330 Hudson in August 2016, and plans for new space in London are following.”

“Contribution is the most important aspect of our culture,” says Lourdes Molina, head of talent and culture. “At Concentric, we think it’s our privilege to further the causes closest to our employ-ees, improve the health experiences of those below standard, and amplify the smallest voice to ignite change.”

Concentric leveraged the agency’s growth to deepen its long-standing com-mitment to social responsibility and

community contribution, executives say. Most notably, Concentric continued its established series of wide-ranging phil-anthropic initiatives labeled “The Health Fix” (thehealthfi x.org), designed to help fi x health experiences here and abroad.

The newest Health Fix is the e-NABLE Community Foundation, an organiza-tion using 3D printing technology to provide prosthetic devices to children who need them at little to no cost. The company was named one of the top 10 business opportunities for 2016 by Springwise, a global innovation discov-ery engine that identifi es the latest start-ups, innovations and businesses around the world. Concentric is partnering with e-NABLE to help them build a sustain-able development infrastructure that connects innovative designers to open-sourced fabricators around the world.

“This is satisfying on a number of lev-els,” Sanzen says. “It excites because this is true healthcare disruption in practice, it fulfi lls because e-NABLE is provid-ing more than a helping hand, they are treating the entire patient and their families by enabling futures.”

Concentric also had another success-ful Dare to Stair campaign for World COPD Day, earning more than 34,000 impressions on Twitter in the fi rst day alone. In addition, the agency support-ed the following causes in 2015: Togeth-er We Can: Uber/City Harvest Food Drive, Tree Census, Melanoma Re-search Walk, MS Bike Ride Team Bike Event, Hudson Square Daff odil Plant-ing Hudson Square Connection, Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Central Park Walk, NY Cares Coat Drive, Dare to Stair, In God’s Love We Deliver: Bag Decorating, and StrongMom (strong-mom.org). medadnews

Philanthropy/citizenship

Future plans

Structure and services o� ered

Concentric Health Intelligence (CHI) fully integrates customer insight mining and application across all major components of brand planning.

FINALIST – VISION AWARD

Storks have been associated with babies and families for centuries. Concentric used this auspicious bird to symbolize Ferring Reproductive Health’s commitment to physicians and patients throughout the IVF journey.

We have room for plenty more. Step right up.

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