The IPG Health leadership team.
In 2023, IPG Health was named Ad Age Health Care Agency of the Year, just one year after the merger between McCann Health and FCB Health that created it. Despite headwinds, the agency has now earned the honor two years in a row.
“This past year, a lot of therapeutic and vaccine bumps from the pandemic started to dull,” said Dana Maiman, CEO of IPG Health. “Our clients were in tough times—layoffs, cost cuts—but we were able to help weather that and thrive.”
While revenue for parent Interpublic Group of Cos.’ advertising and creativity segment was down 3.5% from 2022, IPG Health, which includes agencies Area 23, Neon and Humancare, saw more than 300 new business wins and more than 950 new hires last year. Those wins included Pfizer, Ascendis Pharma and Grifols, along with expanding work with AstraZeneca, Novartis and GSK.
In 2023, IPG Health launched a clinical trial tool to help marketers diversify their trials to better study treatments. From that data, FCB Health New York also created a prototype for an EQL Band, a smartwatch band meant to combat green light bias in typical smartwatches. Green light technology can inaccurately read heart rates in people of color, which is concerning because an estimated 50% of clinical trials will incorporate smartwatch data by 2025.
The EQL Band prototype is meant to combat biases in green light technology around reading the heart rates of people of color.
The network also rolled out Influencer ID to find social media influencers in the health field, including patients and caregivers.
“People don’t think about doctors or health care providers as influencers, but we listen to them more than our own family in some instances,” said Mike Guarino, IPG Health’s chief commercial officer. “We used data to identify who would be the most appropriate. This new generation of doctors grew up on social media, so it will be incredible to see how they speak to audiences over time.”
The network has also leaned into AI, building its own models to understand how patients and health care providers feel about a brand, disease or patient experience.
AI even showed up in Area 23’s work in partnership with Brazil’s Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre and software company WideLabs to help Alzheimer’s patients. The bAIgrapher platform could be used as a form of reminiscence therapy, recording patients’ and their families’ memories to create audio and a book to help strengthen cognitive function.
Not all of its work has been so technical. One project from McCann Health for Plant Drop made it easy for customers to identify houseplants that could be natural air purifiers for homes. The agency worked with a botanist to create a visual “Pollutant Absorption System” to help customers find plants to suit their needs. The symbols were based on an energy rating system, simplifying which pollutants plants can remove. Consumers bought multiple plants with Plant Drop, resulting in a 45% increase in sales during the first two weeks of the campaign.
An example of the Plant Absorption System that shows the toxins a plant can filter out of the air.
IPG Health’s work also showed up out of home. Following the 2020 COVID lockdown, the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice found that reported domestic violence incidents in the U.S. increased by 8%. The Love Me Not campaign, from Neon in partnership with DomesticShelters.org and Safe in Harm’s Way, put abuse-related questions on out-of-home billboards so that abusers could not prevent their partners from seeing them. The billboards read, “Are you living in fear of the next ‘I’m sorry?’” or “No one should make you feel small.” Each one had a clear website URL that led to resources for victims.
The out-of-home ads for the Love Me Not campaign.
Another campaign shined a light on doctors struggling with mental health. The Disposables, from FCB Health New York, created an art installation in Ohio featuring doctors who had been lost to suicide, their portraits made from recycled medical equipment.
