Ketchum North America health leader Tom Jones joins Finn Partners

NEW YORK: Finn Partners has named Tom Jones as senior partner and head of the health and wellness group in its health practice.

Jones started at the agency on March 1. He is reporting to Kristie Kuhl, who was recently promoted to managing partner, overseeing the New York and Chicago health groups and the U.S. pharma team.

The newly created position is leading the health and wellness group, which is focused on patient engagement and education.

"We forget that before and after we’re patients, we’re people," said Gil Bashe, managing partner of the global health practice. "[Jones’] charge is to take a look at pharma brands and bring out the voice of a patient, [to] find what communications we are doing not just to engage healthcare provider, payer, and policymaker, but to make sure that the patient is being actively engaged in the effort of taking responsibility for gaining information and accessing and advocating for good care."

Bashe added that as the agency’s health practice grows globally, its work is becoming more interconnected among offices and countries.

Jones was previously MD of the North America health practice at Ketchum. Prior to joining Ketchum in 2016, he worked as an SVP at Makovsky, principal at Calvin Communications, and MD at W2O Group. Earlier in his career, Jones spent six years at Novartis as executive director of communications.

Ketchum has not named a replacement.

"Health and wellness is an area [for which] they brought me on because they understand the fact that consumers are increasingly taking charge of their own health, self-assessing and self-diagnosing, and our pharma clients are always looking for new ways to get their story across to these patients," said Jones.

In 2017, $17 million of Finn Partners’ revenue came from U.S. healthcare work. Its total revenue for that year was $81.9 million, up 5% from the prior year.

Finn Partners has acquired three agencies this year: creative marketing shop Small Army in Boston; financial comms agency Moorgate Communications in London; and hospitality firm CatchOn, which is based in Hong Kong.

This story first appeared on mmm-online.com.