Drugs And Ad News
January 16, 2008
We got one of those press releases just now that is so jam packed with sunshine and Care Bears that we couldn’t even finish it.
“Saatchi & Saatchi Consumer Health+Wellness (SSCH+W), a Publicis Healthcare Communications Company, announced today its third straight new business win in just six months, heralding in what hopes to be a second new year of tremendous success for the recently repositioned agency. The new win as agency of record is Acorda Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ACOR) a biotechnology company that is developing Fampridine-SR, which is currently in Phase 3 clinical trials to evaluate its safety and efficacy in improving walking ability in people with MS. The assignment includes corporate branding as well.
We are thrilled to be working with Acorda on an exciting, first-in-class product for MS. Fampridine-SR-”
Yeah, yeah. You guys are pumped. Which reminds us… speaking of medicines… WE HEAR THAT… MRM Gillespie, a part of McCann Relationship Marketing, is “falling apart at the seams.” It’s pharma division is losing clients at Mach 5 speed. Our tipster attributes the whole hemorrhaging to one Sr. VP.
Considering that we’ve never heard of MRM (and we’re guessing that many of you are in the same boat) we headed right over to Google to see what we could see. We found out that MRM is a full-service agency that delivers strategy, creative and technology to its clients. We also turned up a crap website. If these folks are actually losing biz, perhaps they should consider that their website isn’t helping. Otherwise, we couldn’t gather any data on account wins and loses, which brings us to our long winded point.
If you are going to give us tips about small segments of the business we need a little more to go on. We’ll do our normal crack journalism, but you know, we need some kind of lead. We do want to hear about the pharma wins, y’know. Where do they publish this stuff? Is there some AdPharma Weekly we don’t know about. Truthfully, we want to hear it all. Send it to us yeah? agencyspy at mediabistro dot com
January 16, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Uh, never heard of MRM? Read your own blog =)
Quote:
MRM Worldwide
Yawn. Their work is passable, but nothing coming out of that shop is going to blow your digital socks off. Rumors are, this agency is squashing some of its best creative talent. They’re sort of like the digital equivalent of Grey. Both agencies could have the slogan, “Don’t rock the boat.” We’re not saying the MRM is going to sink anytime soon, but boy… that place is a cipher. Creative talent may cut their teeth there, but they won’t stay and play. Odds: 11 to 2
January 18, 2008 at 4:46 am
Ha!That Gillespie website is leftover from their genius idea to go digital, merge with an agency in Minnesota and drop the “MRM” – the only thing even half recognizable in the industry. Of course that fell to shit when they realized Minnesota’s experience building a Cocoa Puffs website didn’t translate well to their pharma clients much stricter environment
January 18, 2008 at 4:37 pm
i’m pretty surprised you haven’t heard of MRM, given that they are the direct/interactive arm of your favorite agency—mccann.
mrm gillespie is in princeton. used to be an independent shop, but mccann swooped in and took over a while back.
January 18, 2008 at 9:16 pm
SSCH+W- shouldn’t an acronym be easy to say? Is that Glowworm or is that something else? Who cares. Their healthcare groups are circling the drain like so many other bad pharma shops- imc2, digitas anyone?
January 26, 2008 at 1:31 am
The only thing you need to know about this industry is that its full of really bad shops doing really bad work. I know- I work in it. We pitch all the time, but we always seem to get our butts kicked by a couple of shops- Heartbeat Digital and G2.
They win all the time and actually produce good creative work.
SSCH+W, Euro, Digitas, IMC2 are all overrated and aren’t very good.