Healthcare marketing Relevate Health is boosting its digital marketing scope and videography services with its second buyout in the past 18 months.
The Ohio-based group bought out Arteric, a New Jersey-based digital marketing consultancy with a track record in data analytics and machine learning, in late 2020.
Then, as part of the integration of the two companies, the pair last October undertook a brand refresh, dropping "Group" from its former Relevate Health Group name and adding a new logo and tagline—“Right. On.”—that aims to play up its new digital marketing muscle.
Now, it’s steaming right ahead with another buyout, also focused on digital, as it snaps up Boston-based Axon Communications—and in the process gets its hands on a host of new data-driven marketing work.
Axon has a suite of digital healthcare professional (HCP), field team, and patient engagement marketing and education products.
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This includes MyDoc Personalized Patient Education, its flagship program, which “helps bridge the learning gap that patients experience after a doctor’s office visit,” Axon says, while its other leading product is KOLCast, a digital platform for marketing messaging to be sent to local doctors.
The combined companies will now offer “an integrated suite of insight and engagement solutions for brands targeting HCPs and patients,” the pair said in a statement.
It’s a big change for the Massachusetts firm, which began life in a small basement office back in 2006. It went on to work with 20 top biopharmas (including AstraZeneca, Novartis, Gilead Sciences and more). Sixteen years later, it's becoming part of Relevate. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.
“When selecting a new partner to elevate our HCP engagement capabilities, Axon was the clear choice,” Jeff Spanbauer, Relevate Health CEO, said in a statement.
“By integrating Axon, we now offer clients the market’s most comprehensive, data-driven marketing capabilities that create local relevance at national scale through unique insights, enhanced HCP access, and an enhanced platform to continuously engage HCPs in a relevant manner.”
With a roster that includes Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca, Genentech and Janssen, Relevate Health is looking to offer its clients a more digital-first approach, as sales reps and marketing continue to be hit hard by the pandemic.
Relevate Health’s headquarters will remain in Cincinnati, with additional offices in New Jersey and Boston.