Lita Sands, who once headed CRM at Pfizer, has been hired by Ogilvy Healthworld as client services strategy head in its Healthcare unit.

Sands came to the WPP shop after leaving as chief marketing officer for relationship-marketing boutique Unit 7, in search of a bigger agency. She said her new responsibilities will involve developing Ogilvy’s relationship-marketing offerings further.

“When I was at Pfizer, I had to have a lot of capabilities,” Sands said. “They couldn’t put them all at the agency, because [the agency] didn’t have people who specialized in it.” One of these areas was operations.

“The call center, fulfillment and database…ideally you want all that integrated, but a lot of agencies didn’t have that core expertise. We really want to create that here and make it a lot easier for clients to operationalize.”

The CRM specialist may contribute to Ogilvy’s work on recently won CRM accounts for five Wyeth women’s health brands, including Premarin, Prempro and Lybrel.

Sands said she also will focus on integration. As part of its push to combine the consumer and professional advertising parts of its business, which are named Ogilvy Healthcare and Ogilvy Healthworld respectively, Ogilvy recently promoted Mike Guarini to oversee both units. He is now president, Healthcare, North America.

The goal of integration is for different account, planning and strategy groups to work together on pitches and to show clients that Ogilvy understands “how to market to both their target audiences…which means for them consistent messaging, greater synergy when doctors and patients meet with each other,” Sands added. “It’s all going to be beautifully seamless and create a much more efficient and higher quality interaction. It’s everything Pfizer wanted to do in terms of being an advocate for a stronger relationship.”

Sands joins another ex-Pfizer employee at Ogilvy, hired in August: John Gillespie, MD, who worked on Pfizer for Living and the CNS portfolio and is now in Ogilvy’s planning group.

From the November 01, 2006 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media