AH Would you mind telling us a little about your background?

VT: I’m basically a creative toymaker who searched for meaning in advertising and marketing for a long time, and one day found it in health. I’ve always felt that as creatives we are the writers of new bibles…giving people belief structures and must bear the great responsibility that comes with that.

I started my journey in the late eighties with J. Walter Thompson’s Delhi office working on FMCG and luxury brands. Working there very quickly expunged me of any notions of self-gratification regarding my creative output. I had to contend with delivering meaning in a bewildering array of languages to a hugely culturally diverse audience, all within the first two years after college. That exposure hones one’s skills very differently than when one has to only seduce unilingually.

From there I moved to the U.S. and received a masters degree in Visual Information Design in the nineties, which got me into digital wayyyy before there was an internet. Post graduation I joined a small private southern outfit where we grew an enviable list of digital pioneer clients…first movers such as FedEx, Maybelline, International Paper, Thomas & Betts, etc. Our work got published in books on ‘interactive’ and we won a few awards. NNg reports commended our work for effectiveness when UX was still a nascent concept.

Then I moved to Razorfish in Boston working on brands like Western Union, Fortis, and Estee Lauder, where I worked alongside some very talented and cool people. I ran my own practice after that doing work for the U.S. Airforce, the state of Massachusetts and New York, and Deloitte, through the early part of the millennium.

I joined Digitas Health LifeBrands’ Philadelphia office in 2007, where I was fortunate enough to meet electrifying people like Alexandra von Plato our global CCO, Michael du Toit, Scott Reese and Leslie Taylor, my then marketing partner, who offered belief systems I could align with.

I still remember sitting opposite Alex Von Plato in great turmoil…would I be pushing drugs? Would I be kissing my career goodbye? Did creativity exist in healthcare? Then she said something that has stayed with me to this day…“Embarrassment kills more people than illness…getting people to talk is half the battle”. That to me was an epiphany.

In college I had considered advertising the perfect platform to mobilize people towards solving real problems. Shortly after that I had run into reality. Peddling malt, motels and mascara, nothing I crafted affected the human condition in the least bit. Somewhere, the idealist in me had withered away.

But that day, sitting accross from her, moments flashed through my mind where open conversations could have led to better health outcomes in my own and my family’s life. I signed on and have focused on getting people to talk ever since. About important things like breast cancer, depression, addiction, and bipolar disorder…which was only made possible via insights into people’s motivations and their contemporary health behaviour both off and online.

Over the next three years we did some amazing work, racked up some serious billings, and picked up some serious awards along the way– WMAs, Festival of Media, Rxclub, Globals, Webby, etc. By 2009 I had started engaging with the London office, and moved here in 2010 full time to help get it off the ground.

AH: Tell us a bit about your company and what you are doing now

VT: I am part of a fantastic team who are passionate about making things that matter. Creatively we are led by a global vision of health where brands focus on being helpful to the patient’s healthcare experience rather than screaming to gain customer attention in order to sell a product. We call this ‘Helping, not selling.’ Brands are helpful when they fit into people’s lives and this can only be done through the mining of deep insights about people, their motivation, behaviors, and journeys. We are digital at the core because we live in an exponentially evolving media landscape with multiple touch points for people to consume health information and experiences.

Our London office is still young. I moved here six months after it was first established. But while we may be younger than our competitors, we have the motherships of Publicis and Digitas Health U.S. backing us with their considerable intellectual and physical heft. In the past few year we’ve found our footing and learnt well to kick the big guys in the shins. As a result now we are winning global AOR business with top brands, which shows that the EU market is responding well to our core offer.

In terms of recognition we’ve begun to strongly make our mark. Last year we tied for the most awarded agency at PMDigital awards, and were a nominee for judges’ innovation award. We were also the second most awarded office within the PHCG network, second only to Saatchi&Saatchi Sydney, at the Globals. The categories we were finalists in were the most coveted, highly competitive categories, so even being a finalist was thrilling for us. Overall our win ratio was amazing. This year we hope to top that, work permitting. And you guys just included us in the Advertising Health World Top 10, which is really an honour. My team and I thank you.

This year, we are focused on transforming our merry team of creative toymakers into nimble sharpshooters. To that end internally we’re kicking off a plan of activities to hone points of view, lead with even more innovative thought, and be visibly engaged with the health marketing community in London. An example of that is the group [ WARD : London Health Creatives ] which we started on LinkedIn, and is one of my passion projects. Since last november other agencies have joined in to help build focus and momentum, particularly Leslie Taylor from InventiveHealth and Selwyn Learner from Learner Adams Bones. Today we have sixty seven members from almost sixty three London agencies, and monthly meetings with discussion agendas. It’s still small, but we hope it will eventually provide a regular forum for London creatives to meet and discuss pertinent issues.

AH: Tell us about a piece of recent work that you are proud of?

VT: One I am exceptionally proud of is the Care Challenge project we helped Sanofi with. It’s a classic example of why many of us choose to work in health. A tight-budget launch strategy for Sanofi’s Connecting Nurses community, we helped make the Care Challenge into an enduring platform for innovation and mentorship for nurses globally. It has helped change the standard of care for people in many countries, and now UNESCO is partnering with them. Our clients were invited to present it at TEDx Brussels and the United Nations, which I was very excited by. It was our entry into Cannes where it was unfortunately overlooked in favour of shinier work. But it is meaningfully touching people’s lives which gives it enduring value, so next year we will give it a shinier exterior 🙂

AH: Are there any projects you are working on that we should keep an eye out for in the coming months?

VT: Who knows what may survive the summers and winters of our collective discontent, but for the Care Challenge this year the intent is to extend relevance to patient organisations. We’ve crafted a powerful, emotive new positioning for it,“Every raindrop deepens the ocean”. It is derived from a quote by the Dalai Lama and has been received exceptionally well by the key stakeholders and their audience. I’m really hoping they will choose to execute the strategy as written. Other than that we have some very exiting things happening on the social front, being led by our head of social and innovation, Ross Taylor, and his lovely team. They are sure to make a splash with some really innovative platform thinking.

AH: If you could win any award for your work this year what would it be and why? 

VT: Hmm…that’s always a difficult question for me to answer because baseline for ‘good’ is so confused when it comes to digitally powerful health work. While we have a responsibility to awe, in health that means different things to different people.

I feel, in many awards, digitally weak ideas just breeze by judges on the basis of nothing more than a good visual and a headline. They’re not required to prove anything other than their ‘wink-and-a-nudge’ ad creds. An intriguing concept with a clever enough headline passes for brand strategy which then doesn’t require digital to do anything more than ‘animate stuff’. That really sucks because matters of profound importance to customers get shoved aside and brands just get recognised for screaming louder. The cross I carry is to get brands to move from the slightly stultified legacy of the advertising-led, one ‘big idea’ thinking to a more contemporary and nuanced, brand-engagement-based ‘big value’ thinking. So when it comes to awards I tend to gravitate towards ones that take my kind of delivery of customer value into account.

I am also thrilled by efforts like The Creative Floor awards which strive to level the field among health and non-health brands. I read with keen interest Andrew Spurgeon’s missive from Cannes in Advertising Health, and it really lifted my spirits because that thinking bodes well for the future of health engagement. I hope we can really get this very important conversation going because currently health and non-health are in two different places. That difference is exacerbated even further when it comes to digitally-led thinking. One should offer no excuses for lack of ideas and creativity. But that’s only partly due to agencies. Clients hold us to a different standard. For instance, traditional, exposure-based quant metrics such as “reach and frequency” mean less in digital environments where content and engagement is key. But old thinking doggedly persists because marketers still need to be trained in newer models. Beyond a certain threshold, one needs client-side executive buy-in for risk tolerance, time, and money for great thinking to happen. It requires all of us to do things differently from how we’ve always done.

AH: Do we really need award shows? What value do you see them offering?

VT: Ha. I will be very non-cool and say that actually award shows mean a lot to me, particularly when they are judged well. I relish constant improvement, competition and winning. To see great, inspiring thinking that soars above the rest is humbling, and great for mind, body and soul. It’s something intrinsic in human nature to want heroes that serve as reference points. We need our myths and legends, and—other than work– peer recognition is how they are created in our industry. Beyond satisfying that baseline, I do feel there’s immense value in highlighting good thinking and setting a bar. Otherwise we would just stagnate and die. Don’t believe anyone for a second when they tell you they do not care about awards because we really are insecure, ego-driven people at our core, in need of periodic reaffirmation of our own brilliance. I am a big champion of the (well-managed) ego because it is a great driver of brilliance. It leads to innovation and revolutions. Spotlights make great things happen because they hold you accountable. You can’t hide when they are shining on you. Awards help do that.

AH: How would you see the work other agencies are making if award shows didn’t exist?

VT: I think it would be very difficult to see good work without awards, where I go to get a concentrated dose of brilliance and come home energised. For sure over time I’d come across good work just by sheer chance, but awards are great way to see in one place so much good stuff that would completely be hidden otherwise, particularly from other parts of the world. How tragic would that be! At Cannes some of the best work I saw this year came from the most unlikely creative global hotspots like Sao Paolo and Singapore. What are the chances I would get a chance to learn from those communities, but for the platform afforded by Cannes and other awards?

AH: Should healthcare advertising still be regarded as separate from the wider Advertising community?

VT: I WANT to get to a place where there is no separation between consumer and health advertising, but I don’t want to get there towing the usual line. Within the health community we need to change the conversation.

No, healthcare advertising shouldn’t be regarded as separate. But to me, being judged by the same standard also means being held to the same scrutiny. Usually this creative equivalence is sought to exhort health to ‘rise’ to ‘higher creativity’ that exists within the wider consumer ad community, which is mostly true (so far as general storytelling is concerned) if somewhat ephemeral. But I think that is only half the story. While there is some truly awesome cause-marketing work from non-health agencies that I’ve seen this year, I feel there are two things we must do before they can be judged by the same standard:

First we must broaden the conversation within the health creative community about what marketing means in this day and age. I joined health to use the power of creativity and commerce to create enduring platforms that positively impact the human condition. I believe our work should be judged for the enduring value it delivers to customers and brands, not mere aesthetics or clever storytelling; how it fits and changes peoples’ lives for the better? To me that’s what makes health great and different from the wider ad community; that we have to live up to higher ideals and change behaviour. We have real issues to address, real problems to solve, connecting people to information and tools of profound importance to them. I’m very proud of that remit and approach that responsibility with great reverence. And of course, have fun while doing so.
Second, we should be challenging non-health brands to also deliver greater value instead of just producing ads. Consumer advertising has seldom had to do that traditionally, while for me that is tablestakes in health. When that happens…like when an American Express creates a Small Business Saturday movement…that is to me the most electrifying space that we all should be challenging ourselves to rise to. I get frustrated by consumer or health brand conversations that start out promisingly but rapidly devolve into more-of-the-same drivel about interruptive advertising, identity design, and dressage. We need to get consumer brands to look beyond mere storytelling and add greater value. But instead of talking about the enduring content of their brand character, consumer brands often end up just talking more about the transient colours of their latest skins.
For me, to be judged fairly on a unified set of factors, brands in both spaces should constantly be adding value and providing relevance. Its *that creativity* that should be judged the same, not merely ad creative. We need to change the very nature of the game in both spaces. But I feel the consumer advertising world right now is at a disadvantage to live up to such a demand, neither would it consider it fair. Their model today is too focused on interrupting. Sir John Haggerty explains it best “…Our solution to the problem is to constantly think how we can interrupt consumers more, how we can trip them up, how we can shove a message in their face that they don’t want to see. We’re becoming more aggravating, when surely we should engage consumers and give them something they want to watch and respond to…”

Our world has changed rapidly over the last decade and that pace is only increasing. The traditional marketing funnel is dead and the line between a brand and a campaign, ‘above-the-line’ and ‘below-the-line’ etc. is increasingly blurred. That’s created a terrific opportunity—even responsibility— for brands to make a real difference in the lives of their consumers by crafting platforms of significance and enduring value for them. This is the zeitgeist of our age. We need to exhort everyone to rise to a new bar in terms of delivering added value because there’s advertising fatigue in people. After that, all ideas that deliver that most creatively should be judged the same. Till then, to me it’s apples and oranges, even though it’s all fruit.
That line needs to be urgently erased for the greater good, for greater participation by the larger creative community in the health cause. It’s too important to be left to anyone else.

AH: Do you consider yourself as someone who works more in advertising of more in pharma?

VT: To answer your question, yes 😉

I see myself as someone who works in the ‘delivery of customer value’ industry. Both advertising agencies and Pharma companies have a role to play in that because I’m a firm believer in brands doing well by doing good. BBDO had a great session at Cannes this year called “Nice is the new black” that showcased some of this thinking. Commerce and human endeavour are good things to harness in order to improve life for us all. Out of the five core drivers of the human condition—Food, Shelter, Health, Hope, and Sex—as health marketers we touch every single one. That is an honour and a privilege that keeps one very humble. And it is a responsibility that we must always carry forward into boardrooms. It is too important not to. When brands focus on delivering value they endure way past the point when their ads cease to have shelf life or meaning.

AH: Do you think we sometimes use regulation an excuse to make work that doesn’t live up to standard consumer advertising?

VT: I think that sometime we give up in frustration, which is tragic. I don’t think any of us make excuses and not want to do good work. But there is more to it than that. There’s no excuse for mediocrity but we all have had to do mediocre work occasionally. While the challenge is no different than what my friends in the consumer ad industry also live through—even there, greater ideas end up on boardroom floors than see the light of day–they are not required to do certain things to mitigate risk. So I don’t want to be too harsh on us. I’m all for being passionate, offering differentiating ideas, and championing our teams’ brilliance in face of regulatory pushback. But first and foremost we need to inspire clients to take more risks. Even the best laid plans can be frustrated by a readiness deficit or risk aversion at the client’s end. Instead of risk management clients can sometimes over-index on risk avoidance. Now there are valid legal reason for Pharma to be skittish in the regulatory context. But that skittishness is a very slippery slope that deters brands from great work, keeping them in safe, stagnant waters. That ultimately harms the brands themselves and frustrates creatives. Seeing what Jim Stengel managed to do at P&G, his legacy in the form of stellar creative he got his agencies to produce as P&G’s CMO, we need more clients like that.

As health marketers It is incumbent upon us to keep pushing clients, and to do so responsibly. Just as it is incumbent on them to protect their stakeholders. If we minimise client regulatory concerns we risk getting marginalised as petulant ‘ivory tower creative-types’, when all we want to do is do good work that adds value. We need to keep the dialog going, gaining their trust and showing them what’s possible. Real Science Communications just did this amazing film called “The Boy I Used to Know” which is a great example of that, and it just won them a silver lion! Langland cleaned house this year at Cannes on the basis of that thinking. I personally have had success with that many times and some of that work even won a Webby for us. But then last year when we proposed a film for a client that explored telling the fertility story as ‘the magic of life’ and they freaked because that’s not how Pharma usually tells stories.

Greatness only happens when brands are ready for it, and agencies offer ideas to take them there. Most CDs I know are brilliant souls constantly challenging the status quo. But amazing things can happen only when clients and agencies decide to lean forward together.

AH: Do you think healthcare agencies should start planning their own media to get the creative control they need?

VT: Honestly, being digital-native I personally don’t see a separation between media and creative. This is not arrogance or a boast, but once that threshold disappears it becomes very difficult to put things within boxes again. To me planning media independent of creative ideas reduces everything to cold calculations devoid of humanity, which we know that marketing is anything but. The best ideas take flight when media and creative work jointly, so I do think that they should sit together and eat from the same plate, becoming inseparable in the hearts and minds of participants.

AH: What is the single change you’d like to see in the industry this year?

VT: To move beyond the current parameters of advertising to adding enduring value on behalf of the brand, for sake of their customers. I cannot emphasise this enough.The current understanding of Advertising is an important but increasingly only a sub-topic within a larger conversation happening in health today. As health marketers we have an opportunity, a responsibility, to participate in and influence that larger conversation. That will ultimately redefine what value we add, which will radically alter our definitions and lenses for ‘good’ in advertising.

AH: Where do you look for inspiration?

VT: I look to my team and to my heroes. My team because they come to work committed and fresh every day, come what may. And to my heroes because every day they set the bar I want to beat. There are too many to mention, some older, some my age. But some others are younger and I don’t want their heads to explode by taking names 🙂

AH: Is it just us or does chasing the ‘pharma first’ make us sound second rate as an industry? Shouldn’t be just be chasing ‘first’

VT: I am a big believer in small wins. I know what it takes to get Pharma to do things differently. Without over-indexing on it I do think Pharma first is a good thing. It celebrates incremental change and evolution without lowering the bar. It’s important for people who have joined the health cause to have their moments, as we all move forward to the time where it will all be ‘First’.

AH: Do you look at other healthcare agencies around the world? Who do you think is making the best work at the moment?

VT: Clearly Langland when it comes to advertising and brand storytelling. In health, Ogilvy and McCann both have stellar teams that consistently produce good work. But to me work that has delivered the greatest and most enduring value this year has come from non-health agencies which is a good sign. From the non-health universe I respect Droga5 and Wieden&Kennedy because they take the right cultural and philosophical approach, one I look up to and want to emulate when I can. When eventually there is no separation between health and non-health universes, those two will be the ones most likely to be doing the best work because of how they think and what they value, other than us of course 😉

AH: What is the best piece of work you’ve seen this year?

VT: There’s a lot this year, and the thinking is getting better and sharper. Other offices of Digitas Health have done some brilliant work, and so have some of our sister agencies within PHCG, like PLBR and Saatchi&Saatchi Sydney. Outside the network Langland of course has produced awesome work. It’s difficult to pick one because some of the most rewarded work has no enduring value, so score low in my book. But if I had to select one campaign, per *my* criteria, it would be CancerTweets by Leo Burnett Bogota, Columbia. A brilliant, brilliant idea, it used technology and social triggers to drive awareness of Cancer symptoms in an emotionally powerful and relevant way, educating and engaging people to take timely action for themselves and others. By doing that, they went beyond a film, an advertisement, a website, a platform etc. and became what I called an “Amplified” idea…a bigger than big, genetically enhanced, loud, super-seed construct…designed to explode in a multiplicity of directions upon birth.

AH: What one thing would you want to say to someone new to the industry? That you wish someone has said to you when you started?

VT: “Gird your loins” Wish I’d said that before Stanley Tucci’s Nigel in The Devil Wears Prada. It’s become my personal rallying cry 😉

AH: Who do you look up to and why?

VT: It changes everyday. I’m surrounded by brilliant people at DHLB and PLBR, and there are exponential more I am exposed to in my day to day. Right now it’s David Droga and the team at Weiden & Kennedy who really impressed me at Cannes. For what they stand for and the values they espouse. An enduring one, of course, has been Clement Mok who I’ve looked up to and had the good fortune of having as an advisor in my professional life from time to time.

AH:  If you could read an interview on advertising health from anyone in healthcare advertising who would it be with? And what would you want to know?

VT: David Droga. How does he ensure value add?

AH: Thanks!