At many companies, 2021 was the year of the panic hire. With business booming and staffers freshly empowered, too often regret set in within weeks of a newcomer’s arrival.
That hasn’t happened at Entrée Health, according to CEO Andrew Gottfried. “When there is a tremendous amount of work in front of us, we have to be disciplined to not panic-hire and make sure that we hold true to our values and the kinds of people we want representing our organization,” he says. “That’s not always the easiest thing to do.”
The agency’s clever way of reminding its people of its company values? Giving them blankets, which chief creative officer Nina Manasan Greenberg proudly displays during a Zoom interview.
“It’s so important to make sure that the people who surround us are folks that are going to be great for us in the long run, because we work long and hard hours,” she adds.
Entrée Health adapted a hybrid work model well before the pandemic, so it has long since figured out how to forge connection between coworkers in different ways. For example, one business unit holds weekly meetings focused on learning more about who team members are outside of work. In other parts of the company, smaller groups are encouraged to create their own subcultures.
“It’s the kind of stuff that, in the olden days, would happen in the hallway. Now we have to structure it in,” Greenberg explains.
Not surprisingly, Entrée Health has managed to execute the nifty trick of simultaneously serving as both a consultancy and an agency. It’s what clients in the market access space want — and need, Greenberg believes.
“Most other companies are either pure-play consultancy or pure-play agency. Our vision is to have a 50/50 split, and we’re pretty close to that right now in terms of our people,” she adds.
On the client front, Entrée Health enjoyed a fine year, adding engagements with Janssen (for its oncology, immunology and retine strategic customer groups as well as its vaccine arm), Novavax (for its COVID-19 vaccine) and Boehringer Ingelheim (for a digital therapeutic and COPD payer marketing) to a roster that already included work for Genentech, Pfizer and Merck. Revenue jumped 14%, to $50 million from 2020’s $44 million. Staff size spiked from 180 people at the end of 2020 to 252 a year later.
Gottfried touts the jump in head count as the year’s greatest achievement. “We’ve experienced tremendous success in growth and that’s a testament to the kinds of people we have working here,” he says.
Come August, however, Entrée Health will subtract one important person from the agency’s employee rolls: Greenberg, who is retiring in August after 23 years at the company.
“It’s super-cool to have had the pleasure to help found this organization and know that they don’t need me anymore,” she says. “They’re in really good hands — not just Andrew, who is an amazing CEO, but our incredible next level and every level below that.”
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Work from outside pharma you admire…
I can’t get Gillette’s various approaches to updating The Best a Man Can Get out of my head. Contrast its heavy-handed take on toxic masculinity in The Best Men Can Be with lovely and light The Story of Samson, which (re)casts the trope of a father teaching a son how to shave. As the son says, “It’s not just about myself transitioning, it’s everyone around me transitioning.” What an amazing lesson on authenticity. — Greenberg
From the June 01, 2022 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
