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PMGroup Communiqué Communications Consultancy of the Year

Agency of the Year, by David Hunt

The judges said, “Havas Lynx are not just preparing for the future, they are creating it.”

I agree, but not in isolation. Alongside our team, it takes great clients too. We’re incredibly blessed to work alongside some brilliant industry leaders, from all across the globe. Some have been with us since the beginning and the advent of the tablet-pc & closed-loop marketing. Others are new to the industry, but they share our vision & passion for pharma to make a meaningful & sustained impact on society. New, old, familiar, returning, former; we’re grateful to all of our clients and the role they’ve played in making us great.

We’re also very grateful to Havas Health and in particular Donna Murphy & Ed Stapor. A Global CMO of Top 10 Fortune 500 Company commented, “Your industry spends a fortune buying big digital companies, makes them worse, loses the talent, leaves them in a silo and fails to integrate them and deliver their expertise to us.” This could not be further from the reality of our transition from Creative Lynx to Havas Lynx. We’re faster, stronger, better, and significantly so. We’ve matured from a local digital shop to a global communications agency. Havas have been a catalyst for our development, ensuring that we can now boast scientific, strategic and creative excellence, alongside our unparalleled digital expertise.

From a young age, I came to understand the importance of a great team. Expertise, passion, diversity and a collective commitment are the cornerstones of our success. We mix recognised industry leaders with remarkable graduates, decorated creatives with proven engineers, and scientists with strategists. 95% of our staff are proud or very proud of the work they produce, and I am equally proud of them.

The final ingredient is the Havas Lynx Senior Team; myself, Neil Martin, Steve Nicholas, David Whittingham, and Tom Richards. With the exception of Tom, who is a recent addition, we have been together for a decade, enjoying almost all of it. It’s a great team, and one that I’m incredibly honoured to be part of. It’s reassuring to know that when times are hard, you are surrounded by experts & leaders that stand shoulder-to-shoulder. And equally, when times are good that you can celebrate with friends.Communique

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Sustained Success, The Mark of a Great Team?

Awards; Behind the scenes of 23 wins in 5 years, by David Hunt

It was September 2009 and we were travelling to the inaugural PM Digital Awards. As is customary, we were debating the merits of our finalists, I’m our toughest critic and had predicted 1 or maybe 2 – we won 6, including both best in show!! Travelling home today, with 23 wins in 5 years I could not be more proud of the whole team & more grateful to our client partners.

I’ve grown up playing football and people talk about the difference between a great year and a great team. To win a title is a great year, to win the title year-after-year is the mark of a great team. In football this sustained success often includes the need to re-invent & evolve the team. As an agency we have done the same. We invest heavily in research & development, we embrace new technologies, and we recruit the brightest digital talent. We don’t stand still, and as a result neither do our clients.

How have we maintained our position as leading innovators in healthcare communications? We have great clients, who share our ambition to innovate. We have great expertise, within a culture of innovation. We have a great philosophy, focused on improving health outcomes.

Our clients don’t have to be digital experts, they do have to be courageous. Based on robust insight, a solid understanding of the regulations and digital technologies, we will make recommendations. But we can only be successful through a strong partnership with our clients. We are at our best, our strongest and our most innovative when working as a team.

We have almost 200 people in Europe, over 250 including LYNX NY, all focused on healthcare. Can you have scale & innovation? Yes, we are talking thousands & not hundreds when this could become an issue. Can you be small & innovative today? Not sure, the number of technologies & platforms is increasing at an unbelievable rate. As an individual you simply cannot be a master of them all, as a result, how can a small agency develop a campaign defined by the brief rather than by their in-house expertise, if it is limited in it’s very nature?

I often talk about a vibrant Manchester digital community, and it’s importance to our success. It also comes with challenges. The most significant of which is talent recruitment. On the surface we are competing with agencies offering websites for Nike, Audi & Virgin, and pharma is just not that cool. However, pharma makes a difference. We work on amazing treatments from HIV to Oncology & Diabetes that transform lives. As an agency, we are united by a common philosophy – Helpful Change. Inspiring us to be better & attract the talent necessary to fulfil that vision.

On the eve of the inaugural PM Digital Awards in 2009, if we would have debated the number of wins over the first 5 years… it certainly would not have been 23, and a period of such sustained success. And for that I am extremely grateful to both our bold clients and exceptional team.

You can watch a short video montage of the HAVAS LYNX 2013 PM Digital Media award finalist entries here: http://www.havaslynx.com/work/video-archive/