Pharmaceutical Market Europe • October 2021 • 41
HEALTHCARE COMMS
OPEN Health acquires
London-based agency ARK
OPEN Health has announced the acquisition of London-based agency ARK.
Integrating the ARK business with the OPEN Health Group further strengthens the Group’s global creative, digital-first resources and its ability to offer global clients measurable omnichannel campaigns.
In terms of scale, the acquisition means OPEN Health will now consist of approximately 875 people in 16 locations across six different countries including the USA, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, India and China.
Dominic Marchant, Founder and chief creative officer of ARK, said: “Over the past three years, we have proudly grown both the core ARK business and the ARK Comms sister agency to ensure clients receive data-driven campaigns where digital is truly integrated. In joining OPEN Health, we are significantly expanding our geographical reach and will be able to work with the expert in-house digital team to deliver a wider range of omnichannel creative services to our clients. We very much look forward to working with the OPEN Health management and Amulet teams to contribute to the long-term growth of OPEN Health.”
Rob Barker, chief executive officer at OPEN Health commented: “We are delighted to welcome ARK into the OPEN Health family – this is a strategic acquisition to enhance our already excellent creative and digital capabilities, further supporting our unique range of offerings and opportunities for innovation to support industry change and growth.”
Dominic Marchant
Rob Barker
Resonant Group announces Anthem Public Relations
L-R: David Youds, CEO Resonant Group and Barney Mayles, Director Anthem
In line with Resonant’s mission to enable effective engagement in health, the Group has announced the strategic acquisition of OPEN Health’s PR business, with immediate effect.
It will be renamed Anthem Public Relations and work alongside Resonant’s existing brands, Bedrock Healthcare Communications and Origins Insights.
Director of Anthem, Barney Mayles, will continue to the lead the team of 15 as the new healthcare PR and media relations agency starts to work alongside Resonant’s existing brands: medical communications and education agency Bedrock Healthcare Communications and healthcare market research and health insights firm Origins Insights.
“As part of our client-focused strategic growth plan, we had planned to build or acquire a specialist health PR offer alongside our existing offerings of authentic, actionable patient insights and creative medical education, so this opportunity was very timely,” said David Youds, CEO and owner of Resonant Group. “We are excited to welcome the Anthem team to the Group, creating compelling new opportunities for their clients, while maintaining outstanding service.”
“The chance to grow our already successful offering with the guidance and support of David and the Resonant leadership team is a fantastic opportunity,” said Mayles. “Our new name and brand represent the deep emotion and sense of connection we seek to create between people with our communications campaigns, and we are incredibly excited for what lies ahead.”
Resonant chief development officer Stephen Marchant said that the Resonant Group had “international growth plans” and aimed “to grow in the healthcare communications space by organic growth of our businesses or through acquisitions”.
In addition to Youds and Marchant, Anna Korving is also part of the Resonant leadership team.
She is a part-time non-executive director and advisor to the Board. Known in the industry for taking a group of agencies from start-up through to acquisition by Publicis Health, Anna built one of the first truly integrated service offerings, Publicis Life Brands Resolute (now Langland). In 2015 she created the informal networking group Women in Health Agency Management, which supports women working at director-level and above across the advertising, digital, medical communications, market research and public relations industries.