Last week, Fishawack Health announced it was changing its name to Avalere Health and unifying all of its various companies under that single brand, which includes Hive and Pollen Health, Dudnyk, 2e, closerlook, StoneArch, Skysis, Fire and Rain, PAI, and PRMA Consulting. The notion of operating the company under a more integrated and unified brand was something PM360 first spoke about with CEO Jon Koch when he arrived in that role just over two years ago.
Now that this rebrand is complete, we followed up with Koch to learn more about the process of undergoing this change, what it will mean for the organization and its clients and employees moving forward, and what his next goals for the company are as he examines the biggest current trends impacting the industry.
PM360: Why did you decide to change the name to Avalere Health over just combining under the Fishawack name?
Jon Koch: From our view, the old name really didn’t reflect who we’ve become as an organization and what we feel is unique about the company, including the breadth of talent we have, the way we can help address challenges in a fragmented healthcare ecosystem, and simply the way we do business each day. When we purchased Avalere, a highly regarded healthcare advisory firm back in mid-2022, that brand and what it stood for among clients resonated so well with us as a leadership team. We knew it could be the impetus for this change. The name Avalere itself is derived from Latin and Old English meaning strength, vitality, and learning—those are the hallmarks of our team members around the globe. It just made sense to choose Avalere given it existed within the company in some sense and because it was so fitting for who we are and who we plan to become.
When we spoke two years ago when you took over as CEO, one of the goals you mentioned then was you wanted to better integrate all the companies under the organization. So, what was the actual process like to achieve that and why did that take these past two years?
We share the view of many in the industry that healthcare is just too disparate and silos of activity and stakeholders are making it far too challenging for patients to access life-saving therapies sooner. So our goal was to make it easier for clients to help their patients and consumers get access to needed products and care quickly and effectively. And with that as a backdrop, we knew it wouldn’t be an easy feat. It takes expertise and thinking that spans multiple disciplines across the industry, so we started with embedding an interdisciplinary strategy and mindset into our DNA and our daily ways of working.
Since we’ve last spoke, we meticulously integrated 19 companies under a single purpose and set of values and behaviors to help bring our vision to life. We united platforms and processes to facilitate collaboration across teams and did so with a timely and respectful manner to make sure that 1,500+ team members could become accustomed to a unified approach as we brought them together under one virtual roof. Considering we have agencies and consultancies located across North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific Region, we wanted to approach it slowly and thoughtfully, and in a way that fosters the collaboration and the culture we wanted.
Now that you’re united under one brand, how will this change the roles of people from the various companies across the organization? How will that change structure for how the company will operate moving forward?
As we thought about this journey, both to the brand and how we integrate our capabilities and team members, it was important to start off with what we didn’t want to change, because a lot of changes can have unintended consequences. First off, we centered around the fact we have always been a community of highly skilled professionals tapping into each other’s expertise to support client goals. Advancing health is at the very center of everything we do, so we wanted to make sure that was preserved, if not magnified in new and different ways.
Second, was retaining our progressive culture of inclusivity and collaboration, which wraps around a belief that we are far stronger together than separate. That ability to move together is reflected in the visual of a murmuration of starlings, which we talked about when we launched our new brand identity. We move in response to the environment and to each other with every decision cascading across the whole group and in a rapid manner. As a result, we believe we can provide clients with services that span the entire product lifecycle and seamlessly so from driving early asset investment strategies to launch planning, launch execution, and then the loss of exclusivity and beyond. Supporting these activities are strategic assessments on how specific global, federal, and state policies will impact not only coverage, but access to needed therapies.
Lastly, we’re bringing things to life in a streamlined, customer-centric approach that evolves around the needs of the brand or the portfolio of products and the diverse audiences and markets in which we support. How we’ve come together as an organization allows us to do each of those things in a far more effective manner today than even a couple of years ago.
Has anything changed from the client’s end in terms of how they engage or work with the company, especially if they are only used to working with one of your brands?
There hasn’t been a substantial shift in the way clients engage or work with us, but far more often today than two years ago, they’re more aware of the offering we provide and how we’re working with their company across a host of different functions or areas. That realization has allowed us to engage with them differently and consider how activities in one area are relevant to activities in another, and if we collaborated and brought those together, how it could generate efficiency or effectiveness for their organization and ours—all aimed at delivering a better outcome to patients and consumers.
When we last spoke, it was 2021 and we discussed how the hybrid workforce model was evolving. Now that we are further removed from the pandemic and you are uniting these different brands from around world, how is the organization approaching hybrid vs. virtual vs. in-person work and the most ideal strategy to get the most out of your employees?
It’s interesting, when we were talking at that time, we were still getting our arms around how we wanted to operate our business as we exited the peak of the pandemic. One of the points I mentioned earlier is the importance of our culture of inclusivity and collaboration, and a challenge to us is how we make sure those two things are preserved, if not enhanced, in a virtual environment. Even though the logistics of the pandemic impacted how we do that day in and out, it really didn’t affect our ability to support each other and our client’s needs. In some ways, I would say the pandemic and many of the iterations of our working model after that helped us develop muscles and an agility that have been far more beneficial to us as we tap into expertise regardless of location or time zone. We’re doing things today across teams and locations that we never would’ve been able to do prior to the pandemic.
I would add that we’re one of the few healthcare agencies today—at least by our understanding of our competitors—that are genuinely encouraging employees to work where they can be most productive for themselves, their clients, and the company. We have very flexible work policies with respect to location and mobile working practices. Even with that in mind, as much as we’ve virtualized and offered options to our team members, it’s interesting how many of our locations are buzzing with activity. So, we haven’t had to force anything, people are just gravitating toward one another several days a week in our own physical spaces.
Getting back to the name change, obviously a lot of companies in this industry have changed their names or rebranded following a merger or a holding company uniting their various brands, so as you approach something like this what kind of impact do you anticipate a name change to have on the outside perception of your company? How do you try to evaluate what that impact may be before making this change?
I was really thankful for the internal team that helped shepherd the rebranding process. They took great care in thinking through the impact of rebranding to our clients, other partners, and, of course, our internal team members. As part of that process, we engaged in a tremendous amount of research, focus groups, and other forms of external work that helped shape our plans considerably and validate our thinking.
At each one of those gates, we had clients involved. Surprisingly, one of the things that stood out as we started to talk to clients about the rebrand was that a number of them didn’t realize the breadth of our services, solutions, and capabilities. Several of our most meaningful and longstanding clients stressed the need to take full advantage of the rebrand as a path to helping more of our clients understand the organization that we’ve become, because clients may have only known us in two or three areas versus all of the spaces in which we now provide capabilities.
If I were to summarize the process we used, it entailed a lot of testing of the new brand with select clients from across geographies and roles. We listened to feedback from clients and team members, married the perspectives together, and that led into the branding, messaging, design, and eventual launch. I’m pleased to share that the feedback from our clients has been phenomenal. As we’ve taken the final product to them, they validated our thinking, but a lot of it was actually their thinking in helping us shape the brand. They’re pleased because they feel it represents the type of engagement we’re offering today, which has been very satisfying to us—and in a relatively short period of time.
When you took over as CEO, you mentioned you wanted to listen and learn to those in the organization as you set up your vision for the next three to five years. Now that we have advanced further and you enacted part of your vision with this new branding, what is your next goal for the organization?
We certainly want to continue on an upward growth trajectory. We’ve made good strides in that regard over the last year, and that’s on the back of thoughtfully evaluating and evolving our portfolio of capabilities and delivering impactful solutions for our clients every day. But the second leg, apart from just being thoughtful about how quickly we grow, is making sure we’re recruiting, retaining, and supporting the talent that’s come to the organization. We’ve added a considerable number of new team members and we feel we’re getting a differentiated body of expertise as a company. Last, but not least, is the importance of building through culture, and protecting and preserving our culture is critically important.
Beyond growth and culture, the next foray for us is emphasizing where we’ve seen success in helping clients challenge the norms of today, reinvent themselves or introduce dramatic change for the better in a particular area of healthcare. We’ve been fortunate to be selected as a partner to help them do those things on a number of occasions. Our next frontier is to drive that thinking forward and continue to challenge ourselves and our partners to operate in a boundaryless manner because we believe the real breakthroughs happen in the industry when you can more optimally connect science and creativity, technology and data, and ability and agility to solve healthcare’s challenges. That is what it takes to be a valued partner and leader.
Even though as you mentioned, you have a whole breadth of services already, is there any one area you think you need to add to as you see the industry continue to evolve? For instance, obviously artificial intelligence has been a hot topic.
From a footprint perspective, we’ve become far more balanced across geographies and across our service offerings from consulting to medical, marketing, and policy access, value, and evidence. We’ve greatly enhanced our service offering over the past two years, so I don’t know if there’s any substantial service needs. You mentioned, generative AI. We are doing a variety of projects with clients to help them advance their capabilities in that regard. So that’s certainly an area of considerable investment for us, both by resource and funds.
We are also a leader in data and analytics for our clients, and we have several new steps planned to continue to expand the breadth of our capabilities in both areas. We also pride ourselves on diverse specialist expertise, and would like to continue to build on a strong bench of specialists in areas like policy experts who are helping clients navigate the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) or issues around real-world data or pricing.
Taking a larger view of the industry, are there any trends overall that either really excite or scare you? And how can your brand fit into those areas?
I just touched on a couple that are certainly on top of our client’s minds. The IRA and other similar legislative or regulatory actions are having very meaningful implications on our clients, both today and on their future investment plans. And generative AI, both the many opportunities that it holds and the guardrails that need to be put in place for us as an organization and as an industry. We believe all of those things fall within our sweet spots. We’re creating the right collection of expertise to support all critical junctures of the commercialization process. We’ll continue to add expertise and continue our journey to build an organization fit for the future. We’re well equipped for current trends, but also ones that we see on the horizon.
