Pharmaceutical Executive-06-18-2007

Track down standout healthcare agencies using legal means. Your purpose: to assist prospective clients in choosing the right agency for their brands. Find out what makes agencies tick. See what's in their toolboxes. Go behind closed doors. Observe agencies' physical environment, note how they work. Take stock of the company's internal culture. Are the employees engaged, happy? Gather whatever information (i.e., facts, gossip, samples of work) and/or anything else that might be helpful to prospective clients. Take pictures of key principals at work and at play (if possible). Deconstruct the agency's proprietary approaches and strategic processes. Translate them into language an eighth-grader can understand.

Everyone knows someone who knows everything about restaurants in a given city. Not just the best restaurants, but the restaurants best suited for whatever the occasion.

OK, a parent company is a holding company that owns enough voting stock in another firm to control management and operations by influencing or electing its board of directors. In other words, it maximizes shareholder value. Still, what does it mean for an agency and, in turn, a client to be under a big top? To find out AGENCY CONFIDENTIAL brazenly elbowed its way into the executive offices of two men who should know: Nick Colucci, recently named president and CEO of Publicis Healthcare Communications Group, one of the largest healthcare groups in the world; and Scott Cotherman, CEO of Corbett Accel Healthcare Group, a parent company for eight business units and a member of the Omnicom Group.

Women are everywhere. Healthcare advertising has to be one of the few businesses where so many women occupy top positions and actually make a living wage. OK, maybe they're not always at the top, top, but the glass ceiling is high and underneath is a mob of dynamic women (CEOs, presidents, creative directors, senior copywriters, etc.). We couldn't even begin to interview them all. Here are just a few.

Scott Cotherman has a thing for companies. He flat out loves them. Most of all, he loves making them into something bigger and better. He worked his magic on Chicago's Corbett Agency in the late '90s when, as COO, he transformed it from a regional agency into a global medical-communications company serving mega-brands. And in 2004, he was the brains behind the merging of the Corbett and Accel agencies that transformed them into the Corbett Accel Healthcare Group (a member of the Omnicom Group, the world's largest advertising holding company). Under his leadership, as CEO, the combined entity has since doubled in size. It now includes Accel Health, Corbett, Surge, Iris, and Kinect. Cotherman, who combines Midwestern warmth with CEO sophistication, describes himself as being passionate about organizations, transformational change, leadership development, and the future. AGENCY CONFIDENTIAL met with him recently over a lunch of chicken sandwiches, potato chips, and Diet Cokes. An engaging story-teller, he has..

It's easy to imagine a collective gasp from independent healthcare agencies everywhere last March on hearing the that news Dorland Global was bought by London-based Huntsworth. Dorland was one of the oldest independent healthcare agencies in the world. Is it right, then, to view the acquisition as significant, a sign perhaps of things to come? And what was it like for the Sweeneys to let go of their baby after all these years?