PulseCX has been through quite a few changes over the course of the past year—the most obvious of those changes being the agency’s name. The Montgomeryville, PA firm, formerly known as Roska Healthcare Advertising, took on its new name this past May 1. And while the people and the client roster at the agency may remain the same, its leaders say that the new name will help connect the brand to what has become its major focus: the customer experience.
“Over the last 12 months or so we’ve been working on a new brand,” says agency CEO Jay Bolling. “PulseCX (the CX stands for ‘customer experience’) is really a reflection of the work we’ve been doing over the last year and a half, two years or so. It really captures a lot of our heritage in direct and relationship marketing, looking to deliver the brand through the customer experience. We’ve put together a process that explores the customer experience, and not just to mine the insights but really to look at where those moments of truth are where we can assert the brand into that experience and tell a story to which our patients and healthcare professionals can relate.”
The name change, though, is hardly the agency’s only piece of big news; the past year was filled with plenty of more substantive achievements. In 2013 the former Roska grew revenue by more than 20% while winning a stack of new business, including four brands in the Actavis women’s healthcare portfolio; another three brands from Emergent BioSolutions; agency of record status for Silvergate Pharmaceuticals’ Epaned, a powder formulation of the ACE inhibitor enalapril; and social media strategy work for Amgen’s bone cancer med Xgeva. The agency also added a number of new senior staff members, including executive VP chief creative officer Tina Fascetti, VP client services Ken DePinto, VP marketing operations Rob DiDio, and VP finance Marc Loeb.
The social media opportunity with Amgen is a particularly exciting one for the PulseCX team. “This was the first time (Amgen has) ever engaged a partner to be a social media strategy hub, and we were honored to do it,” says agency president David Zaritsky.
“With the FDA regulations loosening up, they engaged us to create a roadmap of how they would connect with physicians and patients from a social media standpoint,” he added. “They’re really building some immersible experiences in the social media space. We’re incredibly excited not only to work with Amgen because it’s Amgen, but because this, we feel, is going to be a benchmark relationship for the rest of the industry.”
PulseCX is also finding itself doing more comprehensive AOR work for both patient and physician audiences on the same brand, most notably in its relationship with Emergent BioSolutions to support the hemophilia B community. According to Bolling, this sort of “both sides of the fence” approach is beginning to catch on in the industry after the pendulum moved a bit too far in the other direction.
“We as an industry should really de-silo our target audiences, especially around professionals and consumer,” he says. “They’re often looked at by different teams and different sets of strategies and approaches. But we’re starting to work with them on both sides so that we can affect that dialog and bring them together. If we’re changing behavior, it’s got to come from both sides. It cannot be just one way facing each other.”
From the July 01, 2014 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
