Chandler Chicco Companies

Name: Chandler Chicco Companies

Address: : 151 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8AL

Telephone: 0207 632 1800  

Email: fhall@chandlerchiccocompanies.com

Website: www.ccapr.com/

Ranking in Health Top 25: 1

% growth in Health Fee Income: 32% (the equivalent of a mid-sized agency)

Ranking in Top 150: 23rd 

Healthcare fee income 2008: £9.6 million

Total fee income 2008: £9.6 million

Total staff 2008: 90

Who is in the hotseat? Fiona Hall, European Managing Director

Sum up your agency’s 2008 in three words:
Another great year!

Three best healthcare client or campaign wins:
Bayer Schering, Merck Serono, GSK

Healthcare highlights of 2008:
We recognise that for our clients every challenge needs a unique solution and unique sets of skills to deliver it, CCC has never taken a ‘cookie cutter approach’ and this led to our strategy in 2007 of evolving and diversifying whilst maintaining our flagship brand CCA, to continue to meet the dynamic and changing needs of our clients and it served us well delivering above industry growth year on year on an already substantial base, 40% in 2007 and 32% in 2008 achieving almost £10 million in fees (effectively adding a medium sized agency’s fees to our books each year). We believe by remaining true to our core values of putting our clients and people at the heart of our business and genuinely empowering our teams success will follow! It secured us recognition in Best Companies to Work For and The Holmes Report European Healthcare Consultancy 2008, both of which the teams are immensely proud.

Significant hires in the healthcare team in 2008:
Carsten Edwards joined us from BMS, where he focused on rolling out clearly defined programmes in the field of market access that represent best practice and where a model for pan European best practice.
 
Staffing overall 2008:
We have an amazing team who really deliver, it’s just a constant challenge to find and recruit the best in the business to enable continued growth!

 
Plans and predictions for healthcare PR in 2009:
We’re receiving an increasing number of requests to provide integrated communications programmes to support our clients understand, empower and partner with increasingly diverse stakeholders across the healthcare spectrum – we expect Brandtectonics Access, our market access communications company to continue to grow in 2009 and have just launched it in the US. The EU team has been sharing their market access expertise with our US based colleagues in preparation of the anticipated healthcare reforms.

You can also expect to see further demonstration of our commitment to growing our social media leadership with some surprising new offers and insight in that arena.

Any new ways of working?
Clients expect even more during times of recession and really need to demonstrate an ROI to justify their spend. This means we need to ensure we provide truly strategic support and counsel to avoid being perceived as commodity services – we’ve evolved a client leader role for all our major accounts to ensure transparency, consistency and to maximise the synergies for these clients. These individuals usually have a minimum of 15 years experience could easily be Managing Director’s in their own right but actually enjoy providing hands on services to clients and want to focus on delivering outstanding programmes with their teams. It’s about delivery and quality of delivery that really counts!

We’re also seeing more client briefs looking for synergies and we are increasingly programming with multi-faceted, seamless CCC teams from the various business units within the network.

Healthcare business or brand to watch in 2009 and why:
That’s a tough one, I’d have to say some of health and well-being type consumer brands as they look to differentiate themselves as much as possible as consumers continue to tighten their belts. Then, of course, there’s big pharma who are preparing for the loss of patent protection on some major block buster products and need to ensure payers and patients recognise the value of their worth.  

Our existing strategies put us in a great place to help support them face these challenging times and ensure they are well prepared to communicate the right message to the right stakeholders at the right time. Only by doing this will healthcare companies be able to convince diverse stakeholders that their products have value.

How were you affected by the swine flu issue in 2009?
Fortunately, we haven’t been, although we have a business continuity plan in place to ensure we are always able to deliver for our clients.

How is the recession affecting the healthcare market, in your eyes?
It will be a more challenging year for everyone; I suspect we’ll see some agencies disappear this year particularly the smaller independents or they’ll focus on cost cutting to survive which will bring its own challenges post recession. I also believe we’ll see even greater differentiation between the major healthcare consultancy brands, away from commodity services and those types of business models, and focused on providing real added value to their clients.

We are predicting growth and so far I so no reason to think we won’t meet our goals – like last year it will be challenging, liberating and exciting for everyone involved.

One thing you won’t know about the agency:
We have a ‘beanstalk fundometer’ in our reception area and proudly match pound for pound funds raised for charity by our staff.