GLOBAL – NOVEMBER 10, 2011: Havas today announced a strategic alliance with China’s MedMed Group, a leading integrated healthcare communications agency with market-leading expertise in the prescription space. MedMed provides marketing and brand promotion services for pharmaceutical enterprises in China.
The strategic alliance puts Havas in a leading position in the healthcare communications sector in China, with MedMed poised to collaborate with the existing healthcare agencies within the global Havas network. Havas is already a major player in the healthcare communications sector with a presence on all continents through Havas Worldwide Health, Euro RSCG Life and Health4Brands. The network handles around 30 global brands such as Sanofi, Pfizer and Novartis, and was named Network of the Year by Adweek, MM&M and MedAdNews in the last 12 months.
David Jones, Global CEO Havas, commented “China is home to one of the world’s largest ageing populations and is an enormous market for the healthcare industry. MedMed trumps its competitors in sheer size, scale and expertise and creating this deal with them puts Havas into a leadership position in a priority growth market and sector. The strategic alliance with MedMed further improves our operations in Asia Pacific following the acquisitions of Australia’s top independent creative agency Host and Hong-Kong based financial PR agency Porda, and most recently, the opening of Arnold Shanghai. ”
With almost 14 years history in mainland China, MedMed has grown to include over 260 healthcare marketers with offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu. Founder and CEO, Eddie Wang, will also serve as Chairman of the strategic alliance.
China represents an important growth market for Havas, with the company’s largest unit, Euro RSCG, experiencing significant momentum there over the past year – recently adding Cialis creative AOR, five brands from domestic dairy giant Yili and doubling their digital operations last year with wins such as Citroën and Peugeot. The company also boasts the largest field marketing team in mainland China, with over 30,000 part-time employees providing extensive reach into tier 2 cities and beyond.
