美女免费一级视频在线观看

Cien+ CEO and cofounder Lili Gil Valletta recently experienced the kind of epic, full-circle moment that ad agency founders live for.

Thirteen years ago, when she was a young, up-and-coming executive at Johnson & Johnson, she found herself working on a project designed to impress upon the company’s leaders the importance of tapping into shifting demographics. It was her last major presentation of the kind before she left J&J to found Cien+.

Late last summer, J&J approached Valletta and “asked for pretty much the same thing, but for the entire portfolio,” she recalls. “We had worked for J&J before, but becoming a thought partner of record at this level is so rewarding. It was a beautiful moment to reconnect to the mother ship and the company that inspired us to start this agency.”

It’s the kind of C-suite advisory assignment that Valletta believes sets Cien+ apart from its competitors. And the assignment isn’t the only one of its kind: The agency enjoys a similar relationship with Novartis.

Revenue dipped slightly during 2023, to $13.5 million from $13.7 million in 2022, primarily because several projects slid into the current year. In addition to the work from J&J and Novartis, Cien+ added assignments from Bristol Myers Squibb and Novo Nordisk. 

“Our bottom line last year showed the best net income we have ever had,” Valletta reports, noting that it fueled a personnel growth spurt. Cien+ expanded from 67 full-timers at the end of 2022 to 101 at the end of 2023. Newcomers included SVP and head of multicultural strategy Raj Iyer.

Even as some agencies have abandoned or downsized their DE&I efforts, Cien+ plans to keep honing its approach to diversity, a word that is more or less banned at Cien+. In fact, Valletta has been known to edit it out of client presentations. It’s long been her conviction that positioning diversity as part of a company’s CSR efforts is a losing game, a belief borne out by last year’s intensifying DE&I fatigue.

“Inclusion isn’t charity. It’s essential to growth,” she explains. “Our secret sauce is that we focus on cultural intelligence in the diverse market growth in healthcare and pharma. That was our approach before the death of George Floyd, and it’s our approach now.”

The focus on growth removes “the bias of feeling that you’re doing somebody a favor,” Valletta adds. “Companies can’t begin taking action on this inclusive growth until they build commercial plans that capture the full size of the market.”

Of course, changing pharma’s perceptions is no easy task. 

“In 2020 and 2021, I did at least 30 speaking engagements about the impact of COVID-19 on diverse communities, and my stump speech was never, ‘Oh, look at us. We are four times more likely to be hospitalized and five times more likely to die.’ The focus was: ‘What does this mean for the healthcare ecosystem and what have we learned?’” she says. “We all need to shift inclusion from the social-justice side of the ledger to where it belongs, which is driving growth and impact.”

. . .

Work we wish we did

When I saw Pfizer’s beautiful Here’s to Science spot during the Super Bowl, I was so jealous — in a good way. I sent it to some of my CMO clients. I loved the beauty of it and the amount of money the company invested in it. It reimagines art and science to meet a big pop culture moment, and encourages everyone else in pharma to color outside the lines. — Valletta

Click to see Cien+’s Agency 100 2023 Profile.

Click here to return to the MM+M Agency 100.