Lane, Earl & Cox acquired by Open Health
pharmafile | April 8, 2011 | News story | Medical Communications | Chime Communications, Lane Earl Cox, Open Health
Chime’s newly-launched healthcare comms shop Open Health has bought established UK health advertising agency Lane, Earl & Cox.
It will be rebranded as Open LEC, with deputy managing director Matthew Baker promoted to managing director as well as taking a partnership in Open Health.
LEC was founded in 1993 and has worked on brands including Lipitor, Losec, Vioxx, Aricept, Symbicort, Atripla and Prozac.
“LEC has a very good reputation,” said David Rowley, founding partner at Open. “It is a well-known brand and they have done world-class work.”
The presence of Matthew Baker appears to have been – if not quite a ‘deal maker’ – an important factor in the transaction going through. “Matthew worked for me at Huntsworth Health,” Rowley said. “I know the synergies will work because we have Matthew.”
Rowley was chief executive of Huntsworth Health and resigned in September 2009 without a job to go to. He was on gardening leave for more than a year before launching Open Health.
As well as Baker and Rowley, other senior Huntsworth alumni at Open are founding partners Sandy Royden and Marcus Perry. Meanwhile Mike Lane and David Earl, who founded LEC, will become consultants to the business.
Lane welcomed the agency’s new ability to tap into the experience of Open and Chime. “In essence, we’ve taken something strong and just made it stronger,” he said.
Rowley would not comment on how the LEC team, which is currently in Uxbridge, would be integrated into Open’s Marlow-based operation. “We will make decisions on that in the next two or three weeks,” he said.
Chime has a 51% stake in Open, which was launched in January, and is bankrolling the business, while Open’s directors share the remaining 49%.
At launch, Open billed its areas of expertise as advertising, brand development, medical communications, PR and market research.
“We are building the business organically and making core acquisitions we think will strengthen those areas,” said Rowley. “We’re having conversations now with one or two potential targets.”
When it comes to clients, Rowley has already suggested that medium-size companies are likely to be more realistic targets in the new agency’s early days.
“Larger companies tend to have fairly tough procurement lists and it will take time to break them down,” he told InPharm in December.
Adam Hill
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