A creative agency search built around the hardest audience.
A national pharmacy network needed an agency of record for strategy, creative, digital, and execution, starting with a national campaign to relaunch its patient health app.
Situation
The network's members are independent pharmacist-owners who choose whether to promote corporate programs. After technical problems the previous year, many had become skeptical of the app. Patients aged 30 to 70 with chronic conditions were the second audience, and to them the app was effectively new. Any agency would have to win over both, nationally and in local communities.
What we did
We built the RFP around that real problem rather than a generic credentials pitch. Shortlisted agencies received a strategic brief for the app campaign, with a $1M working budget split 25% to strategy and production and 75% to media, plus a fixed financial template based on the anticipated scope of work so costs could be compared like for like. Evaluation was weighted in advance: 50% on positioning the app for patients and members, 25% on budget allocation, and 25% on how success and return would be measured. We managed all questions as the single point of contact, shared answers with every agency, and ran two-hour working sessions at each agency's office with a panel spanning marketing, category, pharmacy services, banner communications, and procurement.
Outcome
A fixed timeline from written questions in April to financial submissions and working sessions in May. Unselected agencies received a $15,000 participation fee, which secured the client's ownership of every idea submitted in the process.
Facing something similar?
Fifteen minutes. We’ll tell you whether the pattern matches and what we’d do first.