GCI Health has been named a finalist for PRovoke Media’s Global Healthcare PR Agency of the Year! This is the seventh time the agency has been a finalist and they won this award in 2015 and 2017. The finalists are drawn from more than 15 markets around the world and were selected from among the Agency of the Year honorees in the Americas, EMEA, Asia-Pacific and LatAm, in which GCI Health was a finalist for Healthcare Agency of the Year in North America, EMEA and Asia-Pacific this year. Winners will be announced in a virtual ceremony taking place during the PRovoke Global virtual conference on October 21, 2020.
GCI Health (WPP)
GCI Health launched in 2010, when longtime MSL healthcare PR exec Wendy Lund was brought in to develop a specialist healthcare public relations business for WPP. With a team of 30, the firm made a strong start, and in the decade since then has increased its revenue by 500% and its headcount to more than 300 people globally, spread across 16 offices, now including a fast-growing European operation (with a strong presence in the UK and Germany) and a fledgling Asian footprint with offices in Hong Kong and Singapore.
The firm has built a roster of exceptional healthcare brands, spanning the pharmaceutical, biotech and medical technology sectors, as well as a host of nonprofits and—in recent years—large global health organizations. Notable clients include Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Sanofi and more, with new business in 2019 from the American Academy of Ophthalmology for its Vision 2020 campaign; GSK, supporting the company’s respiratory franchise; and Jazz Pharmaceuticals, managing corporate and brand communications in the US and globally.
GCI Health has also been on the forefront of progressive thought leadership in the healthcare sector, with its emphasis on a patient-centric approach to healthcare marketing—putting patients at the center of its campaigns—evolving in 2019 to encompass people-centricity, which encourages staff and clients to consider their target audience as whole human beings, defined by more than just their medical conditions. The “Inspired by People” tagline is reflected in work like its “Touch of Sugar” Type-2 diabetes campaign featuring actress Viola Davis; the “Survivorship Today” celebration of cancer survivors on behalf of BMS; and the promotion of an off-Broadway show that helped GSK tell the stories of African-American men with HIV.
GCI Health opened its first international office in London in 2013, and has rapidly established itself as one of the leading healthcare specialists in the UK. The rapid growth accelerated in 2019, with organic growth of 33%--meaning that the firm has more than quadrupled in size over the past five years. In EMEA as a whole, however, the growth was an even more impressive 83%, thanks to the acquisition of Hering Schuppener Healthcare, a specialized unit of the leading German corporate and financial communications specialist.
In Asia, GCI Health launched in Singapore at the start of 2019 as a new hub office of WPP’s only global specialist health PR agency, and has already grown from one to 16 employees, adding a Hong Kong office and exceeding its 2019 revenue target by a staggering 228%. The firm is expected to double in size again this year, under the leadership of MD Rikki Jones, a career health specialist who has now been GCI Health’s founding leader in two regions, having also set up the London office five years ago. Jones is supported by Singapore MD Dan Blomfield and Hong Kong MD Yvonne Yeung, part of a plan to assemble a deep regional leadership team that can address the relative paucity of healthcare specialists in Asia-Pacific. —PH/MPS/AS
