CommonHealth, Ogilvy Healthworld merge

June 24, 2010 – 10:53 am by Chris

The big just keep getting bigger. If you haven’t seen the news by now, CommonHealth and Ogilvy Healthworld have been merged into one agency by parent WPP. The combined entity, to be called Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide, will be headed by CommonHealth President and CEO Matt Giegerich as chairman and CEO of the organization.

The full merger will officially be completed Jan. 1, when the organization will be under one P&L. Mr. Giegerich, who described the combined entity as a “powerhouse,” says the combination takes the agency “a huge and bold step ahead of our competition.”

“It’s just such a great fit,” he told Med Ad News. “CommonHealth has been very focused on the U.S., and Ogilvy Healthworld has a strong focus outside the U.S. In fact, we’ve had a sort of informal relationship with Healthworld for the past 15 years; when I started as an account executive at Ferguson, they were our go-to people for anything that we were working on outside the United States.”

Mr. Giegerich says talks on merging the two entities became in earnest a few months ago. We note that back in March, Ogilvy Healthworld was set to have its own profile in the Med Ad News April agency issue – but then we were told suddenly that they would not be participating in the issue. It was also at that time we were told anonymously that Donna Tuths had left the agency, a fact that Mr. Giegerich confirmed in his interview yesterday. Ms. Tuths departed to “pursue personal interests,” Mr. Giegerich says.

Ogilvy Healthworld was founded in 1986 and taken public in 1997 as Healthworld Corp. by former Chairman and CEO Steven Girgent. WPP acquired the agency in 2004 when the network took over Cordiant Communications, Healthworld’s holding company, and merged Healthworld with the consumer-oriented Ogilvy Healthcare Communications. Ms. Tuths joined the organization in 2008 as regional president, North America, and then became joint CEO with Gloria Gibbons. Mr. Girgenti is now president, CEO, director, and co-founder of DermWorx, a specialty pharmaceutical company specializing in prescription and OTC products for skin diseases.

Although the organization will be operating under the Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide umbrella, there will be individually branded Ogilvy Healthworld and Ogilvy CommonHealth agencies in some markets, operating in case of account conflicts, Mr. Giegerich says.

The organization will headed in New York and Parsippany. The executive team reporting to Mr. Giegerich comprises Ms. Gibbons, who will run all of the offices outside the United States for the Healthworld managing partnership, and CommonHealth managing partners David Chapman, Michael Parisi, and Marc Weiner, who will run the U.S. business.

Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide will have more than 1,100 employees in 64 offices across 33 countries, with offerings that include professional and consumer advertising and promotion, relationship marketing, digital/interactive services, media planning and buying, public affairs and relations, managed care marketing, medical education, clinical trial recruitment, market research and analytics, and strategic consulting.