Seven Stones expands into market research with Strata
pharmafile | June 28, 2005 | News story | Medical Communications |Â Â Â
Healthcare communications agency Seven Stones has launched a new market research company to be run by a former head of business research and consulting at In2Focus.
Jonathan Roberts will lead Strata Healthcare Market Research for the agency as it seeks to explore the synergies between market research and brand planning when developing creative campaigns.
"Truly understanding customer beliefs, motivations and behaviours is not a simple matter of just asking them. There are techniques which can get beneath the surface and peel back the layers and these are what we will be applying at Strata," Roberts said.
Strata will act as a stand-alone division of Seven Stones, formerly known as Brader Perryman. The agency anticipates that Strata will be selected to work alongside it providing market research for Seven Stones clients as well as carrying out projects on other non-competing brands.
Dominic Owens, head of brand planning at Seven Stones, whose background is in brand planning at leading consumer agencies like Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Abbott Mead Vickers, working on campaigns such as: 'The number 118118' said: "Having worked in pharmaceutical branding for the last 18 months it is clear that there are market research techniques used in consumer branding which can benefit pharmaceuticals."
This is in agreement with findings from a survey that Seven Stones recently completed with pharmaceutical marketing managers where 'emotive consumer-like branding of pharmaceuticals will become increasingly important in the future' was the trend with the strongest agreement from respondents.
Meanwhile, Seven Stones has also recently been appointed by contract sales organisation Alchemy, following a three-way pitch. Commenting on why they chose the agency, Alchemy director Jon Hughes said the agency "showed a thorough understanding of the market and the unique experience and skill set that Alchemy provide. Their branding strategy, strong team approach and the style and creative flare they showed in communicating their ideas set them apart."
Graham Hewitt, managing director of Seven Stones, said: "Seven Stones have worked closely with Alchemy to understand and help define the brand's essence and will be developing materials to communicate this to Alchemy's target audience. We don't want to reveal too many details at this stage but this has now started with the press campaign."
Prior to joining Seven Stones Hewitt was formerly a vice president of global marketing and business analysis at General Electric, previously known as Amersham Health.
Hewitt added: "As a supplier to pharmaceutical sales and marketing teams Alchemy's target customer base is the same as ours. This, and the fact that I worked with CSOs when I was on the client side, gave us great insight into the customer needs and attitudes.
"We just knew we had something really good for this campaign and we are really looking forward to working with Alchemy."
Founded in 1991 as Brader Perryman, Seven Stones is an independent agency, providing branding, advertising and design services across all direct communication media to predominantly healthcare clients.
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