Advertising start-up is UK’s ‘first virtual healthcare agency’
pharmafile | October 7, 2008 | News story | Medical Communications | digi
A new advertising agency has been launched as the UK’s first ‘virtual’ healthcare outfit, and aims to undercut traditional agencies and offer a more flexible service.
Drew Creative Advertising is owned and managed by ex-Sudler & Hennessey Healthcare advertising creative Andrew Short and he wants the agency to operate almost entirely through the internet.
In this way he aims to offer a fast, flexible and creative service at a lower cost than traditional agencies.
The twin drivers of keeping costs down and being green see potential clients directed to an online 'office', rather than a bricks and mortar address.
"Whilst many agencies offer creative, on-message, targeted communications for their clients, they have to consider the bottom line and add their outgoings to their budgets – often large ostentatious buildings and heavy contracted staff costs," Short explained.
"My vision is to offer clients all the creativity of a traditional agency but without the overheads, through virtual teams which are built and designed for each project – drawn from a network of advertising professionals."
The agency offers a full advertising service, covering print, TV, radio and digital media, targeting consumers and healthcare professionals.
It will have a small number of permanent staff and joining Short in his new venture is director and TV producer Kirsty Painter.
She has worked in television production for 10 years, producing and directing factual and entertainment programmes across all the main UK channels. Projects she has worked on include BBC 1's Fame Academy, Channel 4's Shipwrecked and the Bafta award-winning series Faking It.
The team also includes senior account director Richard Edwards and will be bolstered by the addition of a client services director and a group account director, both of whom are joining soon.
Short himself has over 19 years of experience in the healthcare sector, working as creative director and across a wide range of disease areas. He has previously worked for some of the UK's largest healthcare advertising agencies, including Ogilvy Healthworld, Paling Walters, Sudler & Hennessey and Torre Lazur McCann.
He acknowledges the virtual agency model has already reached other sectors, but believes Drew Creative is the UK's first truly independent virtual specialist healthcare advertising agency.
A green agency
Drew Creative also aims to be greener than its peers, and Short said its virtual model would cut down the amount of travel to meetings as well as reducing the environmental cost of supporting an agency with large buildings and excessive wastage.
Short says the idea for a completely virtual healthcare advertising agency first occurred to him while waiting in an airport.
"I was thinking about flying and its environmental impact, which started me asking how an ad agency could help pharma marketers reduce their impact on climate change in a cost effective way. With the online environment being so important now I realised that the green future for so much of business is through virtual networks.
"The Drew Creative way of working will not mean an end to all face to face meetings which are obviously necessary at key moments in projects planning and execution. But it will mean that much more business will be done by phone or email cutting cost and reducing carbon footprint."
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