Juice Pharma Advertising touts itself as being part of a new breed of healthcare agency: one that
realizes that the world is a multi-channel one and that the direct model is no longer king in the pharmaceutical industry.

“One of our biggest achievements is being a young firm and having our footprint in the marketplace as an agency of record,” says managing partner Lois Moran. “We’re not a project agency and that’s not typical. Typically you would start out and build your way to become an agency of record shop. We started out that way and we maintained that, and I think—from a business standpoint—that’s a great accomplishment.”

The New York-based agency also places a high premium on its work environment, and recently expanded to fill two complete floors of its Chelsea loft. The openness of the work space helps to foster more collaborative communication between the creative and account groups within the agency.

“The kind of environment that we have here at Juice is the kind of place where people really enjoy being here,” says managing partner Lynn Macrone. “They enjoy working with each other and they enjoy the brands that they’re responsible for. There’s a great kind of energy, a lot of collaboration and a lot of great work being done.”

Juice is continuing its work with Merck for allergies and asthma medication Singular, and for the post-launch of adult vaccines Gardasil (HPV) and Zostavax (shingles), both of which hit the market within the last year. The agency also recently won the professional and direct-to-patient interactive business for Endo’s migraine treatment Frova.

“It’s exciting to be part of this burgeoning market of adult vaccines,” says Moran. “It’s a new trend that we’re going to see in the marketplace and it’s no longer going to be a handful of clients in pharma bringing research and discovery to bear on adult vaccines. We’re going to see that branch out because it is becoming more profitable and it’s just going to be a new way for consumers to be able to benefit from adult vaccination.”

The three managing partners—Macrone, Moran and Forrest King—emphasize that their multi-channel approach benefits both the agency and the client.

“We’re able to provide all of those services to our clients and they don’t have to go looking elsewhere to piecemeal it together,” says Macrone, who adds that by utilizing core teams that know the brand intimately—as well as its purpose and history—they can help disseminate the message to its audiences in the same clear voice.

“It makes sense to have that same voice, that same message, that same experience,” she says. “We call it a holistic approach. When you have a core creative strategic team that is at the head of all of those channels, our clients can be assured that the same message and the right message is being perpetuated through whatever channel the customer needs to receive it.”

But sending that message to patients, physicians and customers in pharma’s ever-changing regulatory landscape can become quite an issue, warns Moran.

“It takes a special group of people to have so many restrictions and yet have so many wonderful creative solutions. Not everybody can survive in that environment. Not everybody can be creative and yet live within that rather rigid set of rules.”

From the July 01, 2007 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media