Agency 100 Studio Session | Lumanity: How Lumanity is accelerating and optimizing access to medical advances: The origin, mission, and vision of a rising industry powerhouse

Larry I’ll give you a cue here. Mmm agency 100 Studio sessions the manatee. Okay. We’re rolling.

Hello, my name is Larry dobrow. I’m the editor-in-chief of mmm and I am ready for you to plug into this episode of the agency 100 Studio sessions a new podcast series, which gives members of the mmm agency 100 and opportunity to Riff on what sets them apart.

We have a terrific one today. We have our friends from Humanity Michael Parisi, who is the global practice lead medical strategy and Communications and Jackie Singley the head of Engagement innovation.

Michael Jackie, thanks so much for joining us here.

Thanks so much for having us great to be here.

Absolutely.

We’re gonna talk a little bit about Lou manity. You know, it’s a company that has a ton of momentum and we want to hear all about it. But I think the place to start a lot of our recent conversations between the three of us or when Humanity was guide Mark where I should say before God Mark was folded into Humanity. Why don’t you walk me through the transition kind of how Humanity came to be and a little bit about the rebranding.

Yeah, great. And thank you. This is really our first time doing this interview as Lou manity and Larry. It’s interesting because when we actually sold guide Mark Health to our private Equity partners and join the group the name hadn’t even been announced yet and what gravitated US towards this organization was the the mission and our mission very clearly is to accelerate and optimize access to Medical advances. What was exciting is when the name came out and it was announced to the team.

Two very clear parts to it is really around illumination and insights and the other part of it is is our Core Essence, you know humanity and what we do as a healthcare communication strategy and medical Affairs consultancy and Communications Partners. So the name landed on everyone in a really like proud moment, it felt natural. It felt really big and it felt like it had a lot that we could expand and build and we’re still a young organization. We’re new and people are aware of us. But now it’s really our time to come out and start to talk about the brand values acting with sense of urgency acting with purpose and precision and making sure that we live in up to our mission of accelerating and optimize access to advances. So it’s an exciting time. You’re gonna see a lot more of the brand Evolution you’re gonna hear a lot more about the brand Evolution, but consider us a global startup in our second year of existence,

you know, it’s funny a lot of people when they go on a rebranding slash

Naming exercise somehow they stumble onto something which is just so much worse than what they had before and then there’s of course the task of having to introduce it and sell it to everybody when Humanity rolled out that was certainly not the reaction. I think the industry had tell me a little bit about the conversations that you had once this became formal, you know, once the name got out there once the rebranding it got out there what did clients have to say what did vendors what did the competition have to say?

I think we’ve always been really connected to our clients. I think that’s one of the things that has differentiated us and certainly won’t change. You know, I think with the rebranding it was critically important that our clients be a part of that Evolution and the rollout of humanity.

So even though you know, we have more resources and there’s a lot of benefits that that come from that and we’ll get into that. We didn’t want clients to lose that sense of intimacy that that they had with us

just to add to that a lot of the companies that we acquired there was always sensitivity of losing your brand name in The Marketplace. And so when we did launch Lou Manatee as Jackie said we kept clients in in the loop.

And really wanted them to feel part of something bigger, but without being lost so that close to customer and staying close to what made us special as when we were in our previous lives. That was really important to us and still important to us as we continue today.

Which actually leads in nicely to my next question, um, I think guide mark one of the things that the agency always did there was a very keen focus on the customer / client experience. Tell me a little bit about that and how it’s carried over into Humanity.

It’s just expanded. I mean, we have an incredible breadth of resources across Humanity. I will say, you know of 1400 people the shared philosophy and putting clients and client challenges first is across the board a universal belief and behavior that we all had. So it really feels very natural. The transition was was quite natural, but we have a lot more resource and and really specialized skill sets in everything from medical Affairs consultancy commercial consultancy access Global access Solutions. So more friends to bring to the table more smart people to bring to help solve our clients challenges

for the two of you how much of a transition was that I mean certainly it’s not like guide Mark was a tiny operation it

Very big and very successful one but having access to those additional resources to so many other partners how has that changed the way that you go about your job?

Yeah. I can I can speak to that especially from like the engagement and Innovation perspective. I have to say that it really is like the first time in my almost 25 year career where I’m able my team is able to realize and see these opportunities like to take on more risks. So I see us making and we’re certainly making significant investments in technology tools talent and from a client experience perspective that means more exciting and transformative pilots and we’ve always had a mantra of staying one need ahead right that’s familiar to you Larry. But now, you know, I think it’s one step further. It’s really taking on our clients biggest challenges with them and the resources have been great. There’s things we dreamed about that. We’re building and it’s a very exciting time

over the course of that answer Jackie. You talked a little bit about technology and Innovation and certainly the industries

Ongoing technology Revolution is a you know topic that we’re going to be covering extensively in this year’s agency 100. Tell me a little bit about Humanities emphasis on technology the ways that it can do things better the ways that it can even humanize more than we saw previously.

Yeah Larry, so I’ve been leading our technology integration and it’s an exciting time. I’ll also say just externally never seen technology picking up momentum faster than we’re seeing today. I mean, it’s it’s it a catalytic moment where it’s really accelerating and we have Best in Class technology and development teams that are looking both internally how we work how we could be more agile how we could be more efficient and fast and then certainly externally how that comes forward to in the shape of Client Solutions. So it’s it’s a really exciting time. We’re doing a lot with patient communities and Technology. We’re doing a lot with engagement and also looking at insight.

To Insight inside generation as a key areas of focus so really exciting time to take some of us like Innovative technology and just point it at very specific use cases that will help us achieve our mission again accelerating access to Medical advances.

Yeah, I think I’ll add

On a lid around technology. I think we’re certainly bullish on technology. I think that

also at the same time have

A very got it. We don’t want to you know be in a position three five ten years from now where we look back and say, you know, we focus too much on technology is the answer. Yes to our clients challenges at the detriment of focusing more on, you know, the right skills and the team collaboration. So I think Michael touched on, you know, insights actionable insights and I think from an engagement perspective Baseline things we’re doing around visualization data analysis helping our clients with insights to understand precisely of their target audience here are the eight that we could not reach in any digital channel. I mean that kind of level of insight is pretty fantastic and I’ve never seen that before, you know, and in other in other groups that I’ve worked with so we also pull insights around hcps that are not very digital and we show data to support we can reach them within workflow. We all know about, you know, EHR is really important, but we have data to back up where we’re not reaching these folks.

Ida vhr right so it justifies and helps with your channel mix and all of those sort of things and you have data that you can lean on but the visualization is great. I mean, I think that’s the Baseline. I think I want to be clear that technology Sports all of our engagement Solutions. So single channel to multi-channel to Omni Channel. It is important though to temporal all the excitement around like what can be done with what should be done into that point. I think it’s around business need first and foremost. And what is the right solution? You don’t need to bring, you know a fire hose out for for everything that you do and I’ve seen that, you know jumping right to that and we have to sometimes say like let’s let’s think this through and then I think the second point I’ll make is that the right solution for any challenge is always the most flexible solution. So, I mean that gets into kind of how we’re building out our Omni Channel engagement and making sure that that we’re functioning much like the analogy I use as a plug-in so, you know

Clients have existing technology and they’re at a point where they’ve onboarded some tools and we can plug in we can help them just like you would like an SEO plugin, you know on WordPress if I that’s the concept of really helping to extend what they’re doing from a closed loop marketing perspective to non-personal channels or sending the, you know, a plugin that something that needs to send the digital.