The Role of the Customer-Centric Agency Stonefly Communications Group The Agency Structure Today’s rapidly evolving pharmaceutical industry is a landscape of pharmaceutical giants, emerging biotechs, and agile entrepreneurs — all working hard to develop products and services into brands that will potentially change patients’ lives for the better. While these companies share a similar focus, they are vastly different in their size, structure, and the ways in which they bring their products to market and establish their brands. Likewise, a variety of different types of advertising agencies have evolved over the last several years. Those agencies enjoying the greatest success are the ones that have created dedicated teams that can be truly focused on their clients’ marketing, commercialization, and communications needs. For a company with a billion-dollar drug, a large, conglomerate advertising agency has been the traditional choice. For emerging pharmaceutical and biotech companies and those with specialty products, a traditional agency model may not provide the level of focused marketing attention they need. These challenger brands may be better served by a marketing partner with more specialized experience that is better able to match talent to task without taxing the client’s resources. Customer-centric agencies are focused on and organized to provide the resources, expertise, and passion needed by client organizations that require a nimble strategic partner to help them achieve their brand and marketing goals. These agencies have the innate ability to look through the lens of both the patient and the client when they craft a communication strategy. With the client’s permission, they focus with the end-patient result in mind rather than simply servicing the client. Size Doesn’t Matter Working with a customer-centric advertising communications agency offers clients a number of advantages over their traditional, more layered counterparts. These agencies by virtue of being focused on a therapeutic model, are unencumbered by layers of bureaucracy, enabling them to quickly organize internal resources to suit clients’ needs. The abbreviated layers also ensure the project is handled by experienced agency leads, who are able to provide one-on-one mentoring, dedication, and attention to a client’s brand and projects, and to whom a client is able to gain quick access, rather than having junior-level practitioners assigned to the task. Some of the more innovative agencies employ a client advisor model to further capitalize on the unique advantages of their structure. The client advisor model is organized to create, in effect, a number of agencies within an agency, each led by a senior-level executive. Because of this arrangement, client advisor-led agencies hire top-level talent in all account and creative service disciplines, ensuring a high level of knowledge and experience throughout the agency. Within the client advisor model, the senior-level executive typically works on-site at a client’s office, partnering directly with the marketing, clinical, and sales teams and providing an immediate impact and local expertise. Again, it’s the entrepreneurial structure of the customer-centric agency that enables this arrangement to work. Creating Win-Win Partnerships Working with a customer-centric agency is not for everyone or every company, but it is a great fit for companies that are looking for experienced professionals who are proactively engaged in the marketing and communications process. Partnering with an agency like this is ideal for brands that need a focused marketing partner that can most effectively use a client’s resources. These agencies are accustomed to managing accounts in a way that ensures return on all objectives by being highly strategic with the integration of marketing and creative services when developing client outreach tactics and selecting audiences. To further ensure fiscal discipline and flexibility, most customer-centric agencies use labor-based compensation agreements that can be easily tailored to meet specific client needs. Rather than setting a standard fee for all members of the agency team, the fee is determined by the composition of the assigned team and the appropriate resources needed to fulfill the client’s and end-user’s expectations. Compensation can be scaled up or down throughout the brand’s life cycle. Using this arrangement enables both parties to agree upon the scope of work and resources needed at the start of the relationship, and creates flexibility for the future. All for One With the growing number of emerging pharma and biotech companies, customer-centric advertising agencies are going to continue to play a larger role. Like their would-be clients, these agencies are agile, entrepreneurial organizations with the professional expertise, creative vision, resources, and passion to succeed. With the growing number of emerging pharma and biotech companies, customer-centric advertising agencies are going to continue to play a larger role. John Racik, President and CEO Stonefly Communications Group, Westerville, Ohio, a part of the inChord Communications division of Ventiv Health Inc., is a customer-centric healthcare advertising agency. For more information, visit stoneflygroup.com. VIEW on Advertising March 2006

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