A national merger in the works for several months is ready for its close-up, including a prominent role for one of Orange County’s better-known medical device marketers.
DevicePharm—based in Irvine and with offices in Minneapolis and Austin, Texas—through late spring and early summer put the final touches on a merger with St. Louis-based Brado Creative Insight. Brado previously linked with Chicago-based SMI/Alcott and Ghergich & Co., also in St. Louis.
DevicePharm had been the 20th-largest OC-based advertising agency prior to the merger; with the deal it leapt 10 spots to No. 10, with revenue more than doubling to $34 million and companywide employment tripling to 140, according to Business Journal data.
Trade publication MM&M, formerly Medical Marketing & Media, said the deal helps the merged company bring top talent together under one roof and could help it acquire new expertise in the future, while offering one agency instead of multiple relationships.
The new firm’s aim is to offer end-to-end advertising and marketing to medical technology and pharma firms.
About 70% of its work is expected to be for medical companies, with the rest coming from tech and mobile firms.
Notable current clients include Merck and Sprint.
Muskeeters
Andy Parham is chief executive of the merged firm; Eric McCauley is chief marketing officer.
Former DevicePharm Chief Executive Clay Wilemon—now chief strategy officer of BCI, and president of its brand activation efforts—told the Business Journal multiple firms in several cities operating as one entity can offer a full slate of services: creative insight, business transmission, and brand activation.
The company said each former firm involved in the new one brought specific expertise—SEO work or branding, for instance—a focus area, or particular clients.
DevicePharm has long been strong in devices and diagnostics for companies including Abbott Laboratories and Bausch & Lomb and supplied a good deal of the creative heft of the new entity.
Wilemon said client strength, area focus and a net cast wider across the U.S. is amplified by technology growth in digital capability and social media—even for august medical clients.
“The power of social media is amazing,” he said, and it’s not just about tweets and likes.
From Instagram, for instance, the company can generate data analysis about followers, content, posts, and how much engagement a particular profile is generating.
“We couldn’t do that two years ago,” Wilemon said. “We didn’t have the technology—now we do.”
AI
One key in the new wave of social media marketing, Wilemon said, involves artificial intelligence. AI may be a buzzword—creatures near and dear to admen and marketing mavens—but it is one for a good reason: the move produces value.
Coupling traditional work—creativity, branding—with new-breed AI in the form, for instance, of data analytics, affects all areas.
Marketing data can lead to trend detection, new tools, understanding who responds to social media efforts, and to what extent—even a bit of the “why” they do so.
And all this happens in real-time, meaning adjustments can be made quickly, if needed, or successful work can expand.
Wilemon gives an example of a surgeon with 9,000 followers on one social media platform—almost all of them are surgeons. A fly-over glance means it looks like a typical friends-of-friends echo chamber; what use could such an account be?
He explained that “if you want to sell something to surgeons” what’s called “organic reach”—items posted and distributed for free—matters.
The idea is surgeons trust other surgeons, more than yet another paid ad from a company selling the product.
