When live meetings and engagements evaporated in March 2020, the teams at Evolution Health Group that focused on those offerings saw a huge decrease in their workload. However, instead of laying off huge swaths of people, the agency made alternate plans.
“Our approach was, well, let’s figure out ways to retrain, cross-train or leverage folks from one side of the business to another — to help develop some new skills and capabilities, rather than part ways,” recalls managing partner Carolyn Vogelesang Harts. “We thought, ‘We’re in this together and we’re going to get through it together. We’re going to be creative and innovative in how we rise to the challenge.’”
At the same time, Evolution made the conscious choice to double down on its proprietary engagement platforms, adding new features and functionalities within its Blulava innovation lab division. It supported the push by bringing on former Avanade exec Scott Reese as senior director, digital strategy and customer engagement.
Today, 90% to 95% of all Evolution clients use the platform, according to managing partner Andrea Lanzetta. “Biogen uses it and one of our customers who left Biogen and went to Akebia is taking it with her,” she reports. “We’re seeing that our platform strategy is really being valued.”
That’s not to say that the company didn’t absorb its share of blows during the pandemic year. Revenue dropped 17% in 2020, to $30.2 million from $36.6 million in 2019. The company also reduced head count and ended the year with 130 full-timers on hand, down from 138 a year prior.
Some of the losses necessarily stemmed from the events side of the business. “If you take the two-year average, we still had growth in the neighborhood of maybe 10%,” notes managing partner Mark Edfort. “But with some of our business, such as live events, there was not a lot of travel. A virtual meeting is two or three hours long, while a live advisory board is two or three days of work.”
Still, even during a difficult year, Evolution managed to add a host of clients and engagements, including work from Ferring Pharmaceuticals (on four brands), Takeda (five brands), Incyte and Janssen Biotech (two each). “We had never been busier from a closing-of-business perspective than we were during the pandemic,” says Harts.
She points to the addition of the Janssen assignments, both within the company’s oncology franchise, as particularly validating. “We’re integrating several of our business units, including our Blulava hub and our med-comms hub, right from day one,” she notes.
Edfort expects Evolution to rebound in a big way during 2021, predicting that the agency will clear $40 million in revenue by the time the books close on the year. To accommodate the anticipated growth, the firm has bulked up on the personnel front. Recent additions included VP, client engagement Jessica Goldstein; SVP, speakers bureau strategy Lynn Alter; digital experience producer Michelle Wolfson; director, employee engagement Miriam Alonso; and virtual events managers Megan Kavanagh and Jessica Tuohy.
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The idea I wish I had…
With Love, Me builds an emotional connection between Merck and its patients in a way that talks directly to outcomes while remaining highly personalized. It focuses patients on the tactics needed for successful patient/physician dialogue. On the HCP side, the program creates sinew between major cancer associations and research centers and the physicians who are members of those organizations. It is a powerful example of empathetic integrated omnichannel marketing. — Mark Edfort
From the June 01, 2021 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
