Holyer unveils health PA agency

Advocate is run by Jamie Holyer, whose most recent full-time role was at Fleishman-Hillard (F-H) where he was a senior consultant. He left F-H, where he worked for clients including Bayer and The American Pharmaceutical Group, almost 12 months ago.

His new enterprise shares premises in London's Camden Town with recently launched healthcare PR agency Aurora Communications; the agencies are describing themselves as ‘strategic partners'.

Advocate and Aurora already share one client - Belgium-based pharma company UCB. Advocate's two other launch clients are Bayer and The Medical Defence Union.

Holyer worked alongside one of Aurora's two co-founders, Claire Eldridge, at Fleishman-Hillard.

Hoyler said: ‘The days of the public affairs consultancies providing PA services to a broad remit of industries is over. To provide really expert and innovative public affairs services requires in-depth knowledge of the respective policy area.'

He added: ‘The healthcare policy environment is probably the most exciting and challenging area for PA professionals - it is highly regulated, under increasing financial constraint and subject to a difficult government reform agenda with numerous stakeholders.'

Prior to F-H Holyer worked at GPC (whose brand dissolved into F-H just over 18 months ago) and Political Intelligence. He has also spent two stints in the Labour Party press office (working for South-East MPs from 1998-2000 and on a one-month sabbatical for the 2005 general election).