Dale Taylor, AbelsonTaylor

We don't want to be the folks traveling to North Carolina to sell cigarettes better. Most of us who work in healthcare advertising are in it to promote pharmaceutical products responsibly and effectively. That means you find the essence of what is attractive about the brand to the clinician, and personify that essence into a brand identity that can reinforce the quality of the sales call over and over and over again ... especially in nonpersonal settings.

Most agencies don't have the systems in place to develop great creative. And some clients are afraid to use innovative ideas because that's not what they have done in the past. Many companies are going to the trouble of finding the best-in-class supplier for each of the services they need. Many agencies are using the "other services" banner to generate revenue from the client relationships they have. This is fine if the work they provide is world-class, but most of the time the services are mediocre, albeit served up homogeneously. The best agencies know what they offer to their clients, and it centers on their core competency—delivering great creative product that builds brands.

The principal decision makers will continue to be clinicians, and reps will continue to be the most effective vector in generating the trial and adoption of pharmaceutical products. More and more work with clients is being done using interactive visual aids (IVAs) based upon tablet PCs. Today, this allows reps to bring motion and sound into the creative branding. It also allows a key opinion leader to enter into a product discussion with the clinician. In the future, there's the potential to integrate call planning, call reporting, and segmentation of messages with this powerful tool. We see lots of evolution in this arena in the next five years.

The Skinny

One of the largest independent healthcare agencies in the world, Chicago–based AbelsonTaylor is known for having a creative staff that stays put (unusual in this business).

Telephone: 312-894-5500

E-mail: info@abelsontaylor.com

Web site: abelsontaylor.com