The IPG Health leadership team.
IPG Health won nearly 300 new client accounts in 2022, hired more than 1,700 employees, grew revenue by double digits and received many accolades for its work, including prestigious Cannes Lions and Clio Health awards.
Not bad for its first full year of operation.
“It really was the perfect marriage,” Dana Maiman, IPG Health’s chief executive, said of the merging of two existing agencies that form the bedrock of IPG Health: McCann Health and FCB Health. The former enjoyed a “really strong, award-winning presence” through Europe, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region, while the latter had tremendous established strength in North America. “Bringing those two together made so much sense,” Maiman said.
In the ensuing months, the consortium of full-service, specialized and communications agencies that also includes Area 23, Neon NYC and Humancare has seen a projected 13% year-over-year revenue increase compared to 2021—three-fourths of it new business—and has expanded its collective team to more than 6,000 across six continents.
While its work is health-centric, it's not all about humans.
For the ASPCA, for example, FCB Health New York created “Dogs Eat Everything,” a multichannel campaign aimed at educating pet owners—particularly those who adopted their first dog in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic—about the dangers of accidental pet poisonings.
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Taking shape as social media videos, a children’s book for veterinarian waiting rooms and a website that let people upload an image of what their dog ate and determined how toxic it is, the campaign took a quirky approach to teach people about common dangers for pets, how to recognize symptoms and what to do in an emergency.
Ahead of the United Nations COP26 summit in Scotland last summer, McCann Health London partnered with research initiative Epilepsy Climate Change to create the “EnvironMental Issue,” a one-off newspaper that calls attention to climate change’s link to neurological disorders.
With just 2,000 printed copies and an online version, the effort generated 370,000 impressions and spurred then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to commit to investing more resources into studying climate change’s impact on the brain.
Since IPG Health’s inception, it has handled a number of initiatives pro bono, such as the Blood Equality initiative with GMHC (formerly Gay Men’s Health Crisis) and the Trial for #ClinicalEquality, which are pursuing legislative means to end discriminatory blood donation policies and racially imbalanced clinical trial practices, respectively.
IPG Health employs a chief medical officer, Dr. Sommer Bazuro, and a team of more than 450 in-house physicians, Ph.D.s and health experts whose knowledge makes the agency’s campaigns accessible, actionable and accurate.
“You can’t really do breakthrough creative if you don’t have an understanding of the science,” said Mike Guarino, chief commercial officer of IPG Health. “We have the recognition that, in order for us to be a standout agency, we need to have a seat at the table,” he said. And that expertise is an asset that IPG Health will likely continue to call on as its agencies tailor their strategies for a world moving past COVID-19.
“The pandemic really elevated the role of health care. It has put health care front-and-center everywhere,” said Maiman, who notes that while progress is being made on managing the pandemic, it’s not yet eradicated.
“All of us have become like mini physicians and nurses. So to us, while the pandemic was devastating,” she said, “what it has done for us is elevated health care [to be part of] every single conservation, and our constituency is even more informed and educated than ever.”
