David Hunt thinks that healthcare marketing has been bogged down by the old way of doing business—sales aids, brochures and leave-behinds—and he aims to change that with his newly launched independent healthcare agency, The Considered Agency.
“It has been about investment, volume and frequency. It has been about who can shout the loudest and who has the most boots on the ground,” Hunt told Adweek. “Everyone has known this formula is failing but propped it up with greater investment and the idea of marginal gains. The pandemic changed all that. You can no longer rely on face-to-face engagements to build rapport, brand awareness and share of voice.”
Hunt was formerly CEO of Havas Lynx and global chief digital officer of Havas Health & You, and he decided to start The Considered with a team that includes professor Shafi Ahmed and chief creative officer Pete Armstrong to approach healthcare marketing in a different fashion.
The team came up with a concept they call HealthControl, a hybrid model that they claim is flexible but with a physical presence, going beyond geographic boundaries and promoting uncommon thinking, cross-pollination and cutting-edge technological solutions. They are able to source talent without having to think of geography, since people are connecting through technology, which cuts down on what Hunt says are outmoded practices and inefficiencies that persist within current agency models.
“Activation, preference, autonomy are clinically proven to improve clinical outcomes, always have been, but now in the tech-enabled society we can use our ideas, our communications, our innovations to deliver control and change lives,” Hunt told Adweek.
When the pandemic accelerated a more tech-enabled society, Hunt recognized that healthcare professionals, patients and consumers now have a deeper understanding of and greater confidence with technology than they had before the pandemic. “We need to create products and strategies that unlock this new reality and take this behavior into account,” Hunt explained in a statement.
The Considered utilizes data, its creative studio and tech-enabled solutions in its approach to healthcare marketing communications, but also leans on new social audio app Clubhouse to bring in diverse voices in healthcare. The team launched Health.Reconsidered on Clubhouse to create a global community, debating subjects ranging from diversity and inclusion to shaping a new way to communicate healthcare. In just several months it has attracted 2,000 active participants meeting daily, expanded to include a global webinar in pharma, all at no cost.
Current clients for the new agency include Reckitt and TwinStrand Duplex Sequencing.
Hunt explained that The Considered and its new way to approach healthcare marketing is an experiment.
“It is mad to think we’ve cracked how to work remotely. There’s loads to learn and improve. But we are going through an incredible technology push, an amazing learning curve, and we want to be at the front of that. It is the entrepreneurs that win in the end, the challengers, the rule breakers. What does it look like? Ask again in 12 months, but we are sure it is worth a crack,” Hunt concluded.