New Marketing Move By Pfizer Shifts Creative Work To Publicis

(CTN News) – Pfizer is redistributing its marketing responsibilities among Publicis Groupe and Interpublic Group less than a year after splitting the work between the two firms.

Fierce Pharma Marketing has confirmed that Big Pharma has transferred its global creative business to Publicis.

Campaign reports that Pfizer has retained IPG as its lead creative partner; the company will continue to handle product PR and health briefings. Pfizer will assign Publicis creative responsibilities in addition to its existing marketing responsibilities, which include data management, media planning, and production.

“Pfizer is committed to its flexible, two-agency partnership that was put in place last year, as it evolves its marketing model,” the company said in a statement to Fierce Pharma Marketing.

Publicis and IPG, each with their respective areas of responsibility, will contribute to the advancement of cutting-edge and data-driven marketing communications focused on the value of our science and our breakthroughs.

Pfizer announced the shuffle approximately 10 months after Publicis and IPG first joined forces to handle its marketing matters, which followed the appointment of Andreas “Drew” Panayiotou, a Verily alum, as the company’s first ever global chief marketing officer.

Upon taking on the role, Panayiotou conducted an agency review, which ultimately resulted in the selection of Publicis and IPG to lead marketing efforts. When the company announced its agency model last spring, he told PR Week that consolidating it and centralizing it would enable it to be more innovative, agile, and data-driven in its marketing efforts.

Considering Pfizer’s $1.41 billion marketing business, that change represents the biggest account move last year based on Campaign’s records.

Pfizer conducted a star-studded COVID-19 booster campaign last fall, a television advertisement for the pneumonia vaccine this year at the Oscars, and its most prominent advertising campaign to date, a Super Bowl LVIII advertisement that emphasized scientific progress and, of course, the pharmaceutical industry’s contribution to it.

According to reports, Publicis produced the advertisement in collaboration with Pfizer.

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