DDB Health rebounded to growth in 2023 after a flat year, and did so quite handily. CEO and president Jennie Fischette attributes her agency’s nearly 26% revenue surge — to $82 million from $65.2 million in 2022 — to work and relationships that her team set in motion the year prior.
Fischette credits managing partner, chief growth and innovation officer Eileen Yaralian for the firm’s 80% win rate. “We pitched quite a lot last year, more than we typically do,” Yaralian notes. But she adds that recent additions help put the right individuals in those pitch rooms.
“Over the past couple of years, we’ve hired more patient experts across strategy, engagement and creative, which enabled us to get a lot of wins that include both HCP and patient,” Yaralian explains. Notable joiners included EVP, creative director Kenley Diaz, who arrived in December from Havas Life NY.
Another big talent boost came in April 2023 when network higher-ups merged CDMP (née CDM Princeton), an Omnicom sibling agency with a similar high-science DNA, into DDB Health. The merger, which brought staff count to 255, “went past, ‘Hey, let’s just make sure this runs smoothly,’ to exponential growth,” reports managing partner, executive creative director Michael Schreiber.
Longtime CDMP leader Craig Romanok became a DDB Health managing director. The move also catalyzed an agency rebrand and revamp of its website, which now reflects the combined company’s new values: dream, dare, care.
All told, DDB Health added nine AOR engagements across five organizations, split between existing clients (Bristol Myers Squibb, Sun Pharma and Novartis) and new ones (Merck, Johnson & Johnson). Of the new assignments, 35% feature a mix of HCP and patient work; the other 65% are HCP-only.
As far as the work itself, Schreiber mentions a convention booth created for Novartis’ paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria(PNH) drug Fabhalta. Dubbed “the storm room,” the booth was designed to help doctors appreciate day-to-day life with PNH by immersing them in 360-degree video and audio of a patient’s story. It included mist, smells and other sensory activations meant to convey the “storm” in which these patients are living.
Among other organizational news, the agency’s DDB Health West office, formed at the end of 2022, came into its own last year as a functional, independent unit with its own leadership. Based in New York (it’s named for its location on the “west side” of the floor) but completely firewalled from the flagship, the office was started largely with Merck oncology business.
Last year, DDB Health West added Novartis as well as smaller, innovative firms such as Syros Pharma as clients. Having a bona fide second North American offering allows DDB Health to take on more brands, especially early molecules in the cancer area.
With the wind — and the CDMP merger — filling its sails, Fischette says DDB Health is better able to compete for assignments requiring a mix of customers. “Over the next three years, I see us continuing to be able to create that connective tissue and doing those full-level RFPs,” she predicts.
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Work we wish we did
I’ve always wanted to work on a brand that became a verb — Google, TiVo, FedEx. When the Moderna vaccine launched, it had a name that sounded a little unusual, Spikevax. The company did something I’ve never seen before in pharma: It made the name a call to action. And in doing so, it activated the community to take pride in its healthcare and highlighted the heroic nature of staying healthy. — Michael Schreiber
