The AbelsonTaylor Group today announced the official launch of AT Activate, a full-service media company. The agency will start with 20 full-time employees and is making initial contacts with a number of AbelsonTaylor clients.
Although AbelsonTaylor has done more than its share of media work over the course of its 43 years in business, the evolving digital landscape has prompted the company to modernize and formalize its offering.
“In the past, for an agency that catered exclusively to healthcare professionals like we were, the media we looked to was just the usual trade publications,” says Jeff Berg, president of AT Group. “Things have become more sophisticated… With the digital revolution, we realized we can do more.”
Leading Activate will be Christie Volke, VP of Media Strategy, who joined AT in October 2021 after working at Klick Health and Havas Media Group. Volke, a 2023 MM+M Women to Watch award winner, has been entrusted with leading a 20-person team of specialists with diverse media experience.
“We have people with clinical backgrounds who have nursing training. We have people from the entertainment industry,” she noted. “This may be their first job in pharma and they bring this big, out-of-the-box thinking.”
The decision to strengthen AT’s media offering and brand it under the name “Activate” was actually a no-brainer. The agency had long partnered with other media companies when necessary – but while these partnerships were largely successful, they brought additional administrative complications.
“Clients were using a different partner for media – it was disjointed,” explained Lynnette Hunter, EVP and director of client services. “We saw an opportunity to solve a problem for them (by) taking the strategy all the way through to execution and measurement.”
Berg agreed, adding, “We looked at the opportunity and said, ‘What are we waiting for?’ We work incredibly well with other agencies that do different things than we do, but this was an opportunity to bring (media) to the forefront.”
Activate comes at a time when a robust healthcare media capability is just beginning to become a must for even modestly sized agencies. As Hunter noted, clients under their own pressures – financial, administrative and more – want a more streamlined relationship with their agency partners. A dedicated media offering signals that a company’s promises of being a one-stop shop are more than just superficial self-branding.
“This is a must-have now,” Berg stressed. “It makes things so much easier for clients and our account people to not have a third-party (media partner) adding another layer.”
Activate’s key services and platforms at launch include media mix modeling (which AT says “determines the optimal allocation of advertising investment across all channels”), a multi-touch attribution model (which “quantifies how much each touchpoint in the marketing journey contributes to conversion”) and a reporting suite (with “user-friendly dashboards to monitor campaign performance”).
Customers and AT employees have responded positively to what they have heard about Activate so far, Volke reported.
“The initial challenges are always around buy-in. When you do something new, you need buy-in from all the teams,” she said. “We had to do a lot of education and promotion internally and with customers. Once we had the plan in place, the challenges were minimal… The organization was super supportive.”
According to the 2024 MM+M Agency 100, AbelsonTaylor Group reported a 17% jump in revenue to $70.2 million in 2023. Key clients include Astellas Pharma, Takeda, CSL Behring and Radius Health.
