Chicago-based Purohit Navigation had a very strong year. Revenue was up 18% and the agency continued to deliver outstanding specialty brand work for both new and existing clients.
“Every year we get more and more specialty work, and the more work we do, the better we become,” says president and CEO Ahnal Purohit. “It’s a very exciting time.”
New additions to the roster included CareDx, which awarded project work on a diagnostic test to assess heart-transplant rejection called AlloMap and on pipeline assays. The agency also won corporate work from CareDX. OncoPlexDx, another new client, awarded project work on a number of oncology assays.
Relationships grew with existing clients Gilead, Promius Pharma and Eisai. Work on Gilead’s HCV franchise expanded to include AOR status for new market development.
Promius named the agency AOR for Trianex (topical corticosteroid), and work on Eisai’s obesity treatment Belviq expanded to include nurse-engagement programs.
Purohit counts ongoing market development work with Gilead among last year’s highlights.
“Gilead employs fantastically intelligent, driven people,” she says. “It’s a blessing to work with them.”
The agency has always worked in a very integrated manner with clients and it helps breed strong relationships as well as operational efficiency.
“Our goal is to give clients our best work as quickly as possible and to ensure that it’s easy and simple for brand teams to work with us,” Purohit says. “Clients have so much going on—particularly specialty companies where brand teams tend to be leaner. Just because there are fewer people working on a brand doesn’t mean they have less work. We want to relieve some of their burden any time we can.”
More so than in past years, business on several brands requires agency teams to work cross-functionally and with other agencies.
“We operate in a different way than many network agencies operate,” Purohit explains. “All our services are provided under one roof with one account person and no handoffs. With networks, we see clients working with multiple functions across multiple agencies, and it makes the work more challenging. We want to do our best for clients, and seamless service really helps.”
Access and affordability are certainly issues for many specialty brands, and Purohit believes agencies can help find solutions.
“To serve a brand well you have to understand access and affordability,” she says. “Agencies |should play a role in looking at both, and determine how we can make it easier for our clients and their patients.”
“Everything we do now is patient centric—even what we communicate through physicians,” she says. “And it’s very important to think about how best to communicate with audience segments. For example, communicating with millennials—both doctors and patients—is very different from communicating with other generations. Knowing your audience and ensuring you communicate the right message to the right people at the right time in the right format is essential.”
Specialty product pipelines are robust, and Purohit looks forward to continuing to win more of that business. It’s shaping up to be another great year. As always, existing client relationships continue to grow, and revenue is trending higher than it was at this time last year.
From the July 01, 2015 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
