Evoke has marked the new year with a new name. The change sees the health marketing agency adopt the name of its parent company, becoming Inizio Evoke, in a push to try to simplify its brand once again.
Private equity group Clayton, Dubilier & Rice bought Evoke’s parent company, Huntsworth, in 2020 and inked a deal for Ashfield-owner UDG Healthcare the following year. Ashfield Health, another marketing and communications agency, became part of Evoke in 2022. Around the same time, Ashfield united with Huntsworth to create Inizio.
When Inizio launched in 2022, one of its five business units, Inizio MarComms, was described as being “represented by Evoke.” The unit was made up of Evoke’s specialty agencies but carried the MarComms branding.
Now, Inizio has dropped its MarComms brand. The fifth business unit has been rebranded as Inizio Evoke and undergone internal changes. After the Ashfield integration, Evoke listed nine specialty agencies with names including Evoke Galliard and Evoke MicroMass that reflected years of acquisitions.
Inizio Evoke has consolidated and rebranded the agencies, for example by bringing Evoke Canale, Evoke Galliard and Evoke Kyne together to create the health communications agency Inizio Evoke Comms. It is now more obvious what each agency does, with suffixes such as Comms, Access and Media replacing old branding based on the names of previously acquired businesses.
Reid Connolly, who remains CEO of Evoke, set out the thinking behind the changes in a statement. “In better aligning our organization with clients' needs and challenges, we are not just changing our name; we are evolving to become a more effective partner and go beyond what most think is possible from one agency partner, putting us and our clients at a unique competitive advantage,” Connolly said.