Jeff Winton Associates and Onyx Health have joined forces to provide clients with both U.S. and Europe healthcare expertise.
The two agencies created the partnership because clients were often seeking regulatory expertise for other parts of the world. The partnership brings together Jeff Winton Associates’ expertise in the healthcare market in the Americas and Asia with Onyx Health’s similar expertise in Europe and the Middle East.
“We had a number of our clients looking to launch their first product in Europe,” said Jeff Winton, CEO of JWA. “Because of the nature of our clients, usually earlier stage startup biotech companies, they have a lot of needs including expertise in countries where they’re not currently doing business. Once we started the relationship with [Onyx Health], we immediately had people knowledgeable about Europe. It would have taken us a longer period of time to build that capability from scratch.”
The partnership also allows JWA to tap into Onyx Health’s creative team to supplement its needs.
Onyx Health, led by managing director Karen Winterhalter had similar needs. The 16-person agency, based in the U.K., also usually works with small-to-medium sized pharma and biotech companies that are trying to launch their products all over the world.
Winterhalter said there was an “immediate need” for a client to have expertise in the U.S. She also hopes working with JWA will be a learning opportunity for the staff to expand their healthcare and regulatory knowledge beyond Europe.
“We expect this to be a long-term partnership,” Winterhalter said. “We’re committed to reaching and looking for those right clients with [Winton’s] agency and vice versa. Our focus now is about really making sure we’re doing the best job for our clients and making them look great, both of us trying to do the right thing for these small companies. I started Onyx because I wanted the small guys to have the same level of expertise and knowledge that big guys have, at a price they could afford. When I reconnected with Jeff he had the same vision.”
The two agency leaders, Winton and Winterhalter, had worked together more than 20 years ago. The partnership came about after Winterhalter saw on LinkedIn that Winton founded his own firm earlier this year and reached out to potentially work together again.
“When Karen and I reconnected, it was about two weeks before the world shut down, so we couldn’t jump on planes and meet with each other,” Winton said. “Trying to do this virtually is especially trying, but I think this partnership has taken off so quickly and is working so nicely because we already had that baseline established between the two of us.”
