The unflappable CEO ensures his or her agency remains positioned to pounce on growth opportunities, regardless of whether revenue is up, down or sideways. That, in a nutshell, encapsulates Calcium founder and CEO Steven Michaelson’s role, especially in a year that saw revenue dip to $21 million, from $22.5 million the year prior.
“Last year compared to 2018 was not the year that we wanted it to be,” Michaelson acknowledges. “Having said that, in 2019 we really accomplished a lot.”
The CEO minimized any fallout by not only keeping his agency’s brain trust intact, but by bolstering it for an eventual rebound. Sure enough, two Q4 wins came in the form of assignments from Blueprint Medicines (on oncology drug pralsetinib, set to launch later this year) and Acceleron Pharma (on a forthcoming pulmonary arterial hypertension treatment, poised for a 2022 debut). Calcium is AOR on both, handling professional and consumer work.
“We would not have won that business had we not added staff and capabilities,” Michaelson says.
Head count declined from 90 at the end of 2018 to 85 a year later, due to what the CEO calls “attrition.” At the same time, Calcium also fortified its talent base, most notably luring former Havas Health Plus president Greg Lewis to become its new managing partner and president. Additionally, SVP creative director of copy Josh Righter was brought in from Digitas Health to help manage Calcium’s creative team, which continues to be led by managing partner and chief creative officer Steve Hamburg.
Meanwhile, Calcium bolstered its scientific acumen with the addition of Marina Paul, Ph.D., a Digitas Health vet and Princeton-educated microbiologist who was named SVP, medical director in November. Paul “gives us a lot more depth, particularly in the high-science areas,” Michaelson says. Finally, Garth McCallum-Keeler was promoted to managing partner, chief growth officer and Melissa Morrow was put in charge of talent acquisition and recruiting.
The personnel additions and promotions have positioned Calcium for a stronger 2020, although pandemics have a knack for frustrating projections. “Two new business wins in Q1 have put us on a trajectory of 2020 to be 25% higher than 2019,” Michaelson reports.
Harmony Biosciences awarded Calcium digital AOR duties, both branded and unbranded, for Wakix, a novel, non-scheduled treatment for narcolepsy. Similarly, Chiesi assigned Calcium the full AOR brief for the 2021 launch of a Fabry’s disease drug.
The agency’s total number of AOR accounts remained constant year-over-year at nine, which softened the sting from the loss of ITF Pharma’s ALS drug Tiglutik (due to client budgetary concerns) and Nektar’s oncology med NKTR-214, also known as bempeg (chalked up to a change in marketing management).
Next up for the agency is expansion of the NYC office — which happens to be Calcium’s HQ, although it’s smaller than the company’s Philadelphia outpost. “We’re not in a hurry to do it,” Michaelson says. “Our first job is taking care of our clients and our people.”
The best marketing we saw in 2019…
Know the Signs of Postpartum Depression by Concentric Health Experience for Sage Therapeutics. Using signs has been done to death in our industry, which is why this new creative rendition is awesome. Instead of using typical street signs, they used neon bar- and restaurant-like signs and placed them in multiple environments where they (or the patients) wouldn’t normally be seen together. — Steven Michaelson
From the June 01, 2020 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
