IPG launches Mediabrands Health, a COE within IPG Mediabrands

IPG launched Mediabrands Health, a center of excellence (COE) that sits within IPG Mediabrands, on Wednesday morning (28 August).

The formalised establishment of Mediabrands Health is intended to support IPG Health’s existing capabilities with scaled global media services, leverage its relationships with pharma companies and assist brands in the health and wellness sectors.

In practice, Mediabrands Health will serve as a strategic hub for IPG Mediabrands’ collective network and provide marketers access to insights derived from the agency’s data and analytics tools.

Mediabrands Health will partner with IPG Health’s Solved(d) and Acxiom Health, the company’s category-specific customer intelligence product and data spine, to offer clients market-tested healthcare solutions. 

Additionally, the COE will collaborate with sibling companies to address industry challenges faced by health clients.  

While other medical marketing agencies have launched COEs in recent years, Gordon-Ring said Acxiom Health is a key differentiator that allows Mediabrands to provide a more streamlined and simplified offering to clients.

By collaborating with like-minded components of the broader IPG infrastructure and relaying insights as a singular unit, Gordon-Ring said it should make the experience simpler and easier for clients, which is something they’ve sought from agency partners.

“We’ve been quietly growing our health businesses across IPG Mediabrands for the past number of years by working with large pharma companies,” she said. “We decided to create a COE—not another agency—as a place to bring together our best-in-class processes, practices, tools and talents in a way that allows us to supercharge growth for our clients and set us up for success.”

The arrival of Mediabrands Health comes at a time of continued change for the agency as a whole.

The launch was announced the same week IPG Health announced the formalisation of its influencer offering called Influencer ID. 

This was also months after the agency consolidated its agency brand roster, folding McCann Health New York into Area 23 and consolidating McCann Health New Jersey and Hill Holliday Health under the new Rise & Run banner.

For Mike Guarino, chief commercial officer of IPG Health, these moves are a matter of staying ahead of the curve and giving clients what they expect.

He estimated that 90% of IPG’s media business is embedded within their creative agency offerings, allowing for tight integration of media, strategy and creative operations.

Guarino said IPG’s broad range of media offerings, including both standalone and integrated solutions within their creative agencies, allows them to offer flexible, customised solutions to meet client needs.

“If you look across all of IPG and our offerings, we have those that want this discrete, standalone [solution] and the COE is able to scale and do that,” he said. “We also have those [solutions] that are tightly embedded within the creative agency. There’s a value and benefit to both, so we can offer a choice and variety to our clients.”

He added the COE will focus on developing new tools, research and thought leadership to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving healthcare landscape—particularly in areas such as patient privacy and clinical trial diversity.

On the latter topic, he said IPG Health is committed to using Mediabrands Health’s wide-ranging resources to tackle disparities in clinical trial enrollment and bring together partners across the spectrum to find solutions that go beyond individual client needs.

The ultimate goal is growth—both for Mediabrands Health and its clients. Gordon-Ring acknowledged that this is a broad metric to track but remains a key focus for the agency, in addition to developing new types of partnerships and finding ways to extend current client relationships. 

As for what Gordon-Ring expects her industry peers to take away from this announcement, she hopes they see the larger vision at play. 

“I want them to say, ‘Wow, I think this is a great approach,’” she said. “[This COE] allows us to be client-agnostic and can set us up for incredible partnerships for the future.”