If nothing else, the first few months of 2020 have demonstrated beyond all doubt that sometimes the best-laid plans have to be revised in the light of unforeseen events. For Sound Healthcare Communications, that meant hitting the brakes on an overhaul of its offices.
“We had moved from a start-up space to a massive full-floor office that would allow us to expand for years when COVID-19 shut down construction,” managing partner, strategy Nick Rhodin laments. “Out of an abundance of caution and in advance of many of the notifications, we shut down construction. We didn’t want our staff or construction workers to get sick.”
Rhodin nonetheless believes the disruption has revealed something encouraging about Sound — and its agency-world peers. “I’ve been impressed with the innovative ways that agencies have figured out how to preserve their cultures and keep employees engaged, despite being isolated in their homes,” he says.
The move to the new space was prompted by Sound’s growth spurt, which took the company to $15 million in 2019 revenue from $12.2 million in 2018. That latter sum, in turn, represented a substantial jump over Sound’s 2017 take of $7 million.
While staff size didn’t grow at the same pace — Sound added five people during 2019, running its total to 70 — Rhodin says the additions were important ones. “The first couple of hires, when you go from one employee to 10, are absolutely critical,” he explains. “Moving from year five to year six, we’re preparing for the next phase when the agency will grow in revenue and add larger, more complex accounts.”
SVP, medical strategy director Lisa Eapen, who arrived from FCB Health in February 2019, has helped reinforce Sound’s strength in strategy. “We needed someone to be the counterpart of a medical affairs lead on the client side and to truly, deeply own the medical strategy,” Rhodin says, noting that Eapen has been charged with building out the department. Other additions included VP, associate creative director Mariann Bisaccia and SVP, account group supervisors Christie Whitehead and Carol Ahmad.
Sound parted ways with two accounts in 2019 (Pharmacosmos, which took its Monofer work in-house, and Incyte’s JAK1/JAK2 inhibitor Jakafi), but added eight others. Rhodin is particularly enthused about two of them: Natera’s cancer detection test Signatera and Sobi’s hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis drug Gamifant.
“We have a good deal of orphan experience and we’ve worked on pediatric illnesses, which is part of why we like working with Sobi,” Rhodin says. “These are things that are near and dear to our heart.”
While nobody at Sound professes to have a bead on what the immediate future might hold, the agency is methodically devising a strategy to guide it during the months ahead. “Once physicians and employees begin to return to their offices — possibly in a world which may have many travel restrictions — we will see how much physicians want to engage with the industry, especially when their office visits may have dropped off 70% to 80%,” Rhodin explains. “It is anyone’s guess what the ultimate outcome will be.”
The best marketing we saw in 2019…
The Down and Out Kidney campaign, for Horizon Therapeutics by Area 23. It has a unique cartoon style and an interesting narrative around a kidney inviting in uric acid as if it were a bad boyfriend or girlfriend to ruin the rest of the body. It’s a very smart way to tell a story. — Nick Rhodin
From the June 01, 2020 Issue of MM&M - Medical Marketing and Media
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June 08, 2020 at 07:00PM
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Agency 100 2020: Sound Healthcare Communications - Agency 100 - MM&M - Medical Marketing and Media
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