• Bell Pottinger's two specialist health agencies join forces • 25-strong team now spans life science, healthcare, pharmaceutical and consumer health
Ten months after its acquisition of De Facto Communications, the Bell Pottinger Group has now consolidated its health sector interests by merging its consumer health agency, Ozone into De Facto. The Ozone team will become the consumer health arm of De Facto with immediate effect.
Since 1st January this year De Facto has been co-located with Ozone at Bell-Pottinger's head office in Holborn with a view to developing a single offer to the market spanning corporate and consumer PR, medical education and clinical trials marketing.
Bell Pottinger's health sector interests now span over 30 private and public sector clients including The Department of Health, GlaxoSmithKline and the NHS. De Facto's clients include Roche, Kimberly Clarke, Pfizer, Smiths Medical, Nikon and Agfa. These will now be joined by Ozone's consumer health brands from the likes of McNeil, SCA and Vichy.
De Facto has seen significant growth this year across all sectors of its business driven largely by major pharmaceutical companies including GSK, Roche, Merck and Pfizer. Towards the end of 2005 De Facto started a medical education business that has had a very successful first year including a programme with Merck KGaA on an international physician education programme for Glucovance, a leading diabetes treatment.
Ozone recently completed a major license switch project when GSK's leading migraine treatment, Imigran, became available over-the-counter for the first time. This follows Ozone's successful switch of McNeil's statin, Zocor HeartPro from prescription to OTC in 2004. This summer Ozone has also run a national sun awareness education campaign for skin care brand Vichy.
Commenting on the merger, chairman of Bell Pottinger Group, Kevin Murray stated: "We regard the health sector as a major growth opportunity for the group and in De Facto we now have a single brand with scale and depth of experience to address the needs of this dynamic sector in which reputation is increasingly a function of the concurrent influences of academics, investors, health professionals and consumers."
De Facto will be led by CEO Richard Anderson with former Ozone managing director Paul Jarman, heading up its consumer division. Gareth Zundel, former Ozone chairman is retained in a consultancy role to further develop Bell Pottinger's health sector interests.
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Note to editors
De Facto Communications, which is part of the Bell Pottinger Group, is one of Europe's most successful public relations consultancies in life science, healthcare and clinical trials marketing. In partnership with our clients, we approach our work with a passion and commitment that delivers award-winning, integrated communications programmes based on effective strategy, original thinking and creativity. De Facto is headquartered in London and operates internationally with clients across Europe and the US. Further information on De Facto Communications can be found at www.defacto.com
