Agency of the Year Category I – Biolumina Group: 2024

Biolumina Group

1285 Avenue of the Americas, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10019

646-364-1500 • [email protected] • biolumina.com

 

Quick facts

Accounts

• Account wins: 6
• Active business clients: 9

Brands by 2023 sales

• Brand-product accounts held: 16
• $25 million or less: 1
• $100 million to $500 million: 3
• $500 million-$1 billion: 2
• More than $1 billion: 5
• Products not yet approved/launched: 5

Services mix

• Professional and patient advertising: 60%
• Digital: 40%
  

Client roster

• AstraZeneca
• BeiGene
• CellDex Therapeutics
• Menarini Stemline
• Novartis
• Seagen
• Sutro Biopharma
• Revolution Medicines
• Takeda

Winner

• Agency of the Year, Category I

Curiosity continues to be the spark that drives record growth and achievement for Biolumina, the anti-cancer agency focused on bringing urgently needed change to every human impacted by cancer. Composed of hundreds of different diseases, this therapeutic category is rapidly growing with exciting and inspiring agents. Biolumina, its leaders say, is all-in on its anti-cancer focus and curiosity-driven approach to developing innovative and compelling brand experiences for its clients.

“Oncology continues to be one of the most dynamic and rapidly-growing disease areas,” says Kirsten A. Kantak, president and CEO of Biolumina. “It’s intellectually stimulating and emotionally rewarding to see the profound gains that are being made. People with cancer are living longer and sometimes even decades in advanced disease settings, and that fuels our collective drive to do better, to question, and to elevate our work. Since 2016, ‘Curiosity builds’ has been our agency mantra and last year our curiosity built remarkable success for our agency, our clients, and our team.”

Recent accomplishments

The agency experienced another year of record growth with key business wins from new and existing clients expanding the agency’s roster. Takeda selected Biolumina as agency of record (AOR) for the global and U.S. launches of its colorectal cancer drug, spanning HCP and patient audiences. The agency was also selected by Revolution Medicines to develop HCP communications to support its RAS(ON) Inhibitors Pipeline. AstraZeneca added another AOR assignment to the agency for savolitinib in the lung cancer space. The agency’s relationship with Novartis continued to grow with an AOR assignment in prostate cancer for HCP and patient communications. Seagen awarded Biolumina an antibody-drug conjugate in clinical development for solid tumors.

The agency continues to be inspired by its anti-cancer focus, executives say, and remains committed to the development and delivery of Creative with Purpose – bold ideas executed with craft and skilled work because they have a role in helping bring therapeutic advances and change to those who need it most. ”We continue to be inspired by the purpose of our work,” says Diane Iler-Smith, chief creative officer.

Biolumina was “proud and grateful” to receive the 2023 Agency of the Year, Category II award from the Manny Awards and the PM360 Trailblazer Agency of the Year Award.

In addition to 93 promotions, leadership talent increased with the additions of Alaina Mendoza, senior VP, director of client services; Robb Brady, senior VP, director of client services; Denise Ficano, senior VP, creative director/art; Jessica Smith Housner, senior VP, creative director/copy; Darah Semancik, senior VP, creative director/art; Rich Valdes, senior VP, creative director/art; Christine Mavridis, senior VP, creative director/copy; and Brett Courtright, Pharm.D. and Sean Markwardt, Ph.D., as senior VPs, medical directors.

Structure and services

According to executives, Biolumina’s Customer Experience team is a leading partner of clients, including AstraZeneca and Novartis, in developing methodologies and tools such as the Biolumina Customer Experience (CX) Roadmap to translate market and product insights into omnichannel content more efficiently and effectively. “We can deliver messages that are relevant, useful, and focused on the needs of each recipient across coherent and consistent customer journeys, utilizing a wide variety of machine-learning optimizations to deliver these messages at scale,” says David Cherry, executive VP, managing partner, customer experience.

Biolumina is pioneering the use of an AI-based tool that is intended to enhance and improve agency employees’ experience – not replace them – by enabling teams to create and prepare content for marketing and MLR review faster, without compromising accuracy and compliance. This technology, agency leaders say, is the first tool of its kind for the pharmaceutical space. The tool provides teams with support across the creative process in areas like claims/message development, claims management, annotating and referencing, fact checking, and competitive-message comparisons.

Additionally, Biolumina is piloting the use of several generative AI text-to-image offerings, engaging in partnerships that may reinvent the creation and delivery of creative content, helping the agency deliver more impactful customer experiences at scale. Leaders note the pilots are being carefully monitored to ensure no source material copyright is infringed, and no work goes to the public without human oversight and approvals.

Future plans

Continued focus on the connection between HCP and patient is at the center of the agency’s plans. “Over the last 10 years, the medical community has made tremendous strides in oncological care,” executives say, noting that today, patients with cancers including prostate, breast, and lung have better mortality rates and access to therapies, and that the pace of scientific advancements has been incremental with frequent, huge step changes.

“The complexity of recent clinical breakthroughs makes it imperative for patients and providers to have access to the most up-to-date information in a simple, understandable, human, and empathetic way,” says Brenda Aske, RPh, chief strategy officer. “As our brands step up their communication efforts to patients – who are increasingly becoming experts in their own care thanks to information accessibility and patient advocacy groups and support forums – we are focused on ensuring synergies between messages created for patient and HCP audiences.” The majority of the agency’s assignments span both groups, allowing for consistency in brand storytelling so that conversations between HCPs and people living with cancer are optimized.

The continued presence of significant unmet needs make it more essential than ever to launch into an educated market that is ready to elevate standards of care. “Biolumina has the scientific and strategic expertise to help inform and prepare the oncology community for the introduction of new therapeutic advances,” agency leaders say. The agency helped develop “The Treatment Gap,” a disease-state initiative for Novartis that calls attention to patients with HR+/HER2- early breast cancer who are without an optimal therapy that can reduce their risk of disease progression. The campaign debuted at ASCO, capturing the attention of thousands of attendees.

Biolumina is committed to attracting more people to make the move to oncology. According to a recent McKinsey study, people want to connect to the “why” behind what they do. “The ability to focus on oncology, which affects so many of us, gives a lot of people purpose,” Kantak explains. Some teammates, she says, are motivated by the actual science, others by communicating that science in compelling ways.

For a few, the work has personally “helped their loved ones navigate the cancer experience,” Kantak points out. Biolumina’s leadership believes that with all of the growth and opportunity that’s happening in the world of cancer, it’s time to spread the word and love about working in a space filled with purpose, intellectual stimulation, and creativity.

Agency leaders also believe that maintaining Biolumina’s culture and living the agency values are critical to its continued success. Biolumina continues to update and expand its training programs, including building a dedicated team for employee development, to support the culture of Curiosity. Every employee at Biolumina spends the first two weeks learning all about the agency and department they will be working in, and the brand they will be supporting as well as meeting people across the agency to help create connections. Only after completing their two-week training program will they start contributing to client billable work. With an open mind, Biolumina has implemented several new solutions submitted by employees through its “Change Challenge,” to make the agency a better place to work. “We fully believe that great ideas come from everywhere, and the many insightful and innovative ideas – large and small – submitted to The Change Challenge prove that,” says Chris Lee, VP, agency engagement.

Philanthropy/citizenship

Biolumina continued to support In God’s Love We Deliver, an organization dedicated to alleviating hunger and malnutrition in people with serious illnesses; The Family Reach Foundation, whose mission is to remove financial barriers standing between cancer patients and their treatments; and The Equal Justice Initiative, an organization committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society. The agency supported Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and worked closely with MerkelCell.org to help them generate insights to inform future content updates to best serve patients and their caregivers.

The agency also furthered its partnership with COOP, an organization focused on overcoming underemployment of low-income and first-generation college graduates from diverse backgrounds, by hosting a virtual open house to educate participants on pharmaceutical advertising.

Biolumina is an active participant in OHG Health of Advertising, which provides real, on-the-job healthcare communications training for students sourced from diversity-rich schools. Two senior creative leaders from Biolumina served as instructors and mentors to the OHG Health of Advertising participants this year. The agency recognizes and celebrates diversity through employee resource programs, such as Omnicom’s OMNIwomen, OPEN Pride, OPEN Disability, Black Together, AcentO, Omnicom Asian Leaders Circle, OHG’s The Black Collective, and The Jewish Cultural Alliance.

The agency also continues to focus on health inequities, launching the Health Inequities Challenge in 2023. Over the course of the year, the agency developed and presented a range of ideas on how to tackle health inequities. These proposals will be ideated by teams across the agency.