The Top 60: EvoLogue

CommonHealth’s freshly established consumer group, EvoLogue, was founded in September 2007, and made strides during its first year. “We rebuilt the consumer offerings from CommonHealth to reflect and redefine communication between patients and physicians,” says Meg Walsh, managing partner, president EvoLogue and e-Business. 

Key hires and personnel include Shelagh Brooke, chief strategic officer; Mark Robinson, chief operating officer; Mark Kosak and Steve Pashkoff, co-chief creative officers; and Ann Friedman Ryan, managing director, CRM, eCRM, interactive. 

“We’ve done a good job getting back into bigger pharmaceutical clients, like Pfizer, Novartis and Merck,” says Walsh. “We spent a lot of time innovating what is called ‘consumer communications.’ Our Motivational Efficacy program is a new look at behavior modification. Patient/consumer communications needs to change to increase compliance and consistency. We need to help patients understand the context of their disease in their life, and that occurs through dialogue and interactions,” she says.

“EvoLogue,” a portmanteau word combining “evolution” and “dialogue,” is a full-service agency heavy on strategy. “Our strategy includes physician panels, patient story tellers and interactive tools. We tag everything, linguistically analyze it, note pattern recognition, and act on that information,” explains Walsh. 

In several areas, EvoLogue is breaking new ground. “[Reckitt Benckiser Inc.’s] Suboxone was the first pharmaceutical product on MySpace,” says Walsh. “Whether it’s wireless communications, social networks or web development, we’re integrating the technology into all of our work. We see it as a way to give patients a tool and opportunity for high engagement—not just information posting. Most of our strategies have a call to action on the web,” she says.

In 2007, the agency won the AOR account on AstraZeneca’s Symbicort that includes multicultural duties. Walsh says multicultural work is handled exactly the same way as a traditional campaign. “The reason we work on multicultural, whether it’s customer relationship management (CRM) or an ad campaign, is that it’s no longer a separate effort.” 

That doesn’t necessarily mean the creative is identical. “Does [the work] have cultural nuance? You bet,” says Walsh. Other new wins in 2007 include Novartis’ influenza vaccines and McNeil Nutritionals’ Splenda.

Regarding CRM, Walsh believes that new needs have to be addressed. 

“We’re moving into milestone marketing,” she says. “People don’t relate to scare tactics, like people with missing limbs in smoking campaigns. If you look at the way Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers have approached this, they’re good examples of promoting a lifestyle commitment, not a punishment, and that’s what milestone marketing is all about. We have to set expectations properly with medications. If a patient is going to experience a side effect, they should know that beforehand.” 

EvoLogue has transitioned from a majority of professional accounts to huge DTC clients. “In the next five years, we’ll continue to promote interaction, follow-up dialogue among patients, with an emphasis on compliance and consistency. We’re looking for clients who understand that,” says Walsh.