Former McCann MD launches patient-focused agency
pharmafile | March 4, 2011 | News story | Medical Communications | Craig Mills, Frontera, healthcare communications agency, medical communications
An agency specialising in professional, consumer and public health has been launched by a former managing director at McCann Healthcare.
Craig Mills said Frontera London is an “integrated ideas agency” rather than a comms shop, although he has spent 18 years in traditional marketing and advertising with positions at PAN Advertising, MSC and Sanofi.
“We are looking at things from a patient perspective,” he told InPharm. “I hope we’re able to be successful with pharma because empowerment for patients is coming. It’s going to be a challenge.”
The starting point of all its work will be patients – or “health consumers” as Frontera calls them – with planning, digital, social media and research the cornerstones of its modus operandi.
Although he envisages doing work such as awareness campaigns around drugs or diseases, Frontera will aim to take a more complex look at pharma issues, says Mills.
“Creative agencies are primarily asked by pharma to support sales operations, with campaigns to populate sales support materials which will be taken into the field and used in direct sales,” he goes on. “But our question to pharma would be: where are you with your patients?”
Mills is particularly interested in those pharma companies which know they should be doing more to connect with patients but are open to how they should achieve this, he says.
The agency has no clients yet but he hopes to announce two pharma clients shortly who would be signed on the back of work with patients in cystic fibrosis and a platelet disorder.
Frontera’s work with pharma is likely to be in chronic, rather than acute, therapy areas. “And it probably needs to be in an area where patient interactivity is strong,” Mills adds.
His plan is to partner with an existing agency, taking a space in their office, but for the moment Frontera operates from a Teddington studio.
Mills has signed three members of staff but cannot reveal their names since they are in the process of leaving their existing companies.
With its launch, the company has also put in place an initiative called DoGood, in which it will provide a health charity with pro bono support for a public awareness campaign.
Frontera is inviting submissions from charities outlining the challenges they face and will notify the successful applicant next month.
Adam Hill
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