The year in retrospect at WEFRA LIFE
Progress on many fronts
As the year wraps up, WEFRA LIFE CEO Matthias Haack and COO Niklas Kurz look back and take stock in this interview. What were – and still are – the challenges in the healthcare market and how has the company adapted to them? What were the milestones in 2024 and what expectations does the management have as it enters the new year? The management team at the marketing agency, in central Germany’s Neu-Isenburg, also offered information and answers about the ongoing development of its international plans following its spectacular acquisition of CMS.
Matthias and Niklas, when you look back on this year, what do you think were the finest hours of your entrepreneurial endeavours? What campaign highlights do you enjoy reminiscing over?
The year 2024 was full of change and innovation for WEFRA LIFE. We successfully recorded major success in the media area with 15% revenue growth. The Healthy Programmatic area met our high expectations and performed extremely well. Our exclusive, programmatic media buying service is highly appreciated by our clients and is seeing increasing take-up, thanks especially to the low-waste appeal to audiences after login – the first service of this kind – and the associated high efficiency for media budget spend. Another important milestone this year was the decision to orient internationally and, in doing so, serve the purposes of a number of our global clients. The acquisition of the market-leading, Paris-based agency CMS Conseil Média Santé, in conjunction with Mediaplus, was the beginning.
With their outstanding healthcare expertise, which we are bringing in house to complement our know-how, we are now leveraging synergies and serving clients transnationally. By creating a UK health media team in London, we are filling a strategic gap and furthering our international market position in the healthcare media sector. We were also very pleased with our success at this year’s Comprix, where we were able to take home a gold award for the #bademantelchallenge (#BathrobeChallenge) campaign. And, not least, we are also happy and grateful about the people making up our team, which saw positive developments with some outstanding employees now in new, high-responsibility positions and other strong personalities joining us from outside the company. With this fantastic line-up, we can take on 2025 with confidence.
WEFRA LIFE attracted attention this year particularly with its acquisition of French agency Conseil Média Santé. In what ways are we as an agency now increasingly establishing ourselves as a global player? What do the plans for the international market look like?
The acquisition of CMS pointed the way for our company’s future footing and for our service promise. In Germany, we – together with the MEDIAPLUS Group – were already one of the leading independent agencies in the healthcare sector. With the joint acquisition, we have now also become a market leader in France in one fell swoop. We want to keep advancing and cement our position as a global player in the healthcare market. In keeping with this intention, we established another office in London with experienced HCP media professionals back in April. We see our mission as being able to offer our business partners even better communications solutions, including on an international level, and we are shoring that up by changing name from WEFRA LIFE MEDIAPLUS 2 to MEDIAPLUS GLOBAL HEALTH GROUP. Moreover, we have access to a network of 24 MEDIAPLUS locations globally for rolling out international media campaigns.
Will our clients profit from that, too? If they will, how?
We firmly believe they will. In acquiring CMS and repositioning within the MEDIAPLUS GLOBAL HEALTH GROUP, we now have a global offering all under the one roof. The already vibrant cooperation with CMS and WEFRA LIFE will be maintained and made even more close. With 150 pharmaceutical clients in the RX and OTC segments, we are the leading owner-operated healthcare media agency in Germany and likely the EMEA economic sphere, too. The MEDIAPLUS Group is Europe’s largest independent media agency and contributes its international footprint and strategic expertise as well as extensive data and technology capabilities, along with a broad spectrum of clients in the OTC market segment and others. With the acquisition, we are also bringing consulting, communications and media services for RX, OTX, dental, medtech and OTC all under one roof.
How – and to what extent – will CMS integrate into the existing company network as a French healthcare agency? How will we adjust to this meeting of different work cultures?
CMS has already been a close cooperation partner of ours for over ten years. We not only serve shared clients, but also leverage technological synergies – for example, for our exclusive B2B Healthy Programmatic service for the post-login area. Now, our cooperation is becoming even closer, and not only organisationally, either, as the 48 CMS employees will now physically be located door by door with their MEDIAPLUS GLOBAL HEALTH colleagues at the Paris House of Communication on Rue de Villiers. Every agency has its own work culture, of course, yet we are excited about the pleasant harmony between all partners. Upscaling and upskilling by ‘learning from the best’ is fully under way on all sides and is already bringing in initial successes in international pitches.
Which new cooperation partnerships are you particularly excited about?
This year, we had the privilege of celebrating the win of – among others – multiple major, interdisciplinary projects, including a major vaccination company, Dexcom and Recordati. What is exciting about these projects is that we at WEFRA LIFE GROUP are collaborating with these clients with all units consolidated, which means that a wide variety of experts in the WEFRA LIFE MEDIA, WEFRA LIFE MEDIAPLUS, WEFRA LIFE SOLUTIONS and WEFRA LIFE INNOVATION HUB are drawn on. In this context, we have also successfully implemented our SPOC model for all three clients for the first time.
The SPOC model is a response to the increasingly extensive and complex requirements of clients, isn’t it? Niklas, do you want to explain that a bit more?
That is true, the solutions being sought are increasingly complex. Clients are seeking cross-media campaigns that cover the diverse and varied HCP user journey and draw on the areas of omnichannel marketing, social media, campaigning, PR and content, HCP and direct-to-patient communication, medical education, programmatic advertising, specialist portals, UX and analytics; and so on. This large number of communications services, with a rising number of extremely varied people involved, is all orchestrated by one person at the client’s organisation, and this is mirrored in the agency. It is a model which makes collaboration with the client significantly simpler while also making coordination within the agency more efficient. The budgets being provided are also more frequently centralised, with the agency’s task being to allocate them to the user journey prudently.
Matthias, which changes in the WEFRA LIFE team were particularly significant this year?
We are excited to have seen a few new productive appointments and additions, Can Yildiz being one of them. He was already Programmatic and Strategy Director at WEFRA LIFE and additionally took charge of digital media business at the start of the year. That means Can combines the programmatic approach with digital media planning and buying and puts a particular focus on developing and marketing innovative, digital products.
On top of that, we are also pleased to report that Dr Andreas Kloevekorn will be leaving Hill & Knowlton Strategies and coming on board with us in the new year, where he will join the management team at dk Life Science Communications – the healthcare PR agency we acquired in 2023. He will be forming a leadership duo together with Niklas. Andreas has over 25 years of agency experience and broad industry expertise, making him a valuable reinforcement for our team.
The same applies to Adrian Haack, who joined WEFRA LIFE in April as Director International Markets. He is responsible for building up and choreographing the international teams between MEDIA PLUS, CONSEIL MEDIA SANTÉ and WEFRA LIFE and for further developing MEDIAPLUS GLOBAL HEALTH. The international pitches originating from Germany also fall within his duties.
As a company, how did we develop or launch new products or tools this year? How relevant will they be to the future of healthcare marketing?
With our mission of being the driving force in the healthcare market, we attach particular importance to developing pioneering tools. This year, we are proud most of all of launching two innovative instruments: Mediadashboard and Pharmamonitor. The purpose of Mediadashboard is to take the data that is generated on various channels when performing communications activities, to prepare it consistently and to present it in a client-friendly way. We can use it to give our clients an extensive and, with that, detailed overview of their campaign performance, all in real time and across all touchpoints in the healthcare journey. Our dashboards deliver valuable insights and significant benefits for our clients as well as us as an agency, with decision-making about the use of a campaign budget being given a deep as well as transparent foundation through the intelligent merging of key data. This not only optimises the advice we give, but also is a reliable foundation for lasting success.
Pharmamonitor has also proved itself to be a high-performance tool following a demanding digital transition. We use it mostly for competition and market analyses as well as for derivations and projections of media spending in the pharmaceutical industry. The software enables modern competitor monitoring based on sales data in print and digital media. With it, aspects such as competitive standing, benchmarking, analyses of positioning and revenue, market segments and channel management can be presented in customisable reports. On top of that, we offer Pharmamonitor as a service not just for publishers, but also media agencies which can use it to precisely track ad campaign expenditure and revenues in the areas of digital and print media as well as newsletters. With the help of the digital insights supplied by the software, like about competitors’ media spend for example, we can identify market trends in a targeted way. So, with Pharmamonitor, we support media agencies and pharmaceutical companies with effective, data-based market analysis and media planning.
WEFRA LIFE initiated promising innovation projects in many fields over the last year. Niklas, what developments were there in relation to sustainability?
As a company, we champion the subject of health, which also means making efforts for a healthy planet. We wish to establish ourselves as the driving force in that field, too. We took some critical steps for this purpose in 2024, like working on further reducing our carbon footprint.
Three years ago, to gain efficiencies in this, we began determining how large our footprint is and what individual components it is made up of. Our calculations are based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and we have had our carbon accounting methodology audited externally by First Climate. Using this analysis, we developed targeted measures. They address two points, namely, direct emissions based on things such as heating and vehicles as well as indirect emissions relating to purchased energy and the upstream and downstream supply chains. By switching to solar panels and green power as well as using hybrid and electric cars, we have already been able to reduce our direct emissions significantly. In relation to indirect emissions, we maintain constant exchange with our suppliers so that they are aware of their possibilities for lowering emissions, for example, in the area of media strategy.
We have also cemented the targets we are pursuing and made them accessible for our clients in a sustainability strategy and a sustainability report with the Science Based Targets initiative. They not only set out concrete figures for our reduction initiatives, but also span the bandwidth of ESG topics, which means practising social responsibility, upholding human rights and implementing anti-corruption measures. We also keep up close cooperation with partners who are committed to doing business in a climate-friendly way. One of our particularly important partners in this field remains the company Greenkeeper, which applies a comprehensive reduction approach by making use of wood.
Matthias, looking ahead to next year, which new projects in particular are you looking forward to? What challenges do you and Niklas expect for the healthcare market in 2025?
There will be a focus on multiple core topics in 2025, ones that influence our strategic alignment as well as our day-to-day activities. One central element is AI. At the same time, the integration of digital therapeutics, such as apps accompanying treatments and digital healthcare solutions, is growing in significance. These technologies will not only improve patient care, but also become more strongly embedded in our communications strategies. Another emphasis will be on content and social media. We are increasingly banking on social media, influencers, storytelling and targeted use of doctor and patient networks to add value and develop sustainable relationships.
This focus is accompanied by a growing demand for sustainability and compliance, a demand which will be addressed in our business by integrating ESG principles more strongly and adhering to tightened regulations such as the GDPR and German Healthcare Advertising Act. To be prepared for these developments, we are applying targeted initiatives. Training and further developing our team in its interaction with AI and new technologies is essential, just as strengthening our regulatory expertise is, too. Accordingly, we are promoting cooperation between PR, content, media and creation so that we develop integrated communications approaches that cater to all aspects. We are simultaneously broadening our sustainability strategy so that we positively influence not only our clients, but also the planet.