Accenture announced it has agreed to acquire ConcentricLife, a leading healthcare marketing agency that was a subsidiary of Stagwell. ConcentricLife will become a part of Accenture Song, a tech-powered creative group within the consultancy, which has made a series of acquisitions in recent years including Fiftyfive5, The Stable, and Romp.
“We have been building up and looking at any services to help us provide better experiences across all industries,” Jeannine Falcone, Marketing Services and Strategic Integration lead at Accenture Song told PM360. “In the life sciences space, particularly in pharma, we were looking for an agency and ConcentricLife is a great fit for the things we’re trying to do here, such as connecting everything for the patient and healthcare provider experience.”
Founded in 2002 as Concentric Health Experience, the agency combined with fellow Stagwell company Scout Health in February 2023 to form ConcentricLife. CEO Ken Begasse Jr. told PM360 that they had been exploring different avenues for growth within the past year, including seeking investment from private equity (PE) partners before deciding on this deal with Accenture.
“Our intent with merging Scout into Concentric was to build the agency and as we looked outside of our relationship with Stagwell regarding where else that could happen, we looked down the PE route quite considerably,” Begasse Jr. explains. “While PE offers some exciting options, one of the main drivers of looking at a consultancy was we feel we offer an additive capability that fits perfectly within the current infrastructure of Accenture Song, and this path will allows us to implement, build, and grow instantaneously because of that fit in way I don’t think we could have done as quickly or as completely with other options.”
ConcentricLife offers full-service digital healthcare marketing and communications expertise and capabilities that help brands answer rising consumer demands in rare diseases, health, and wellness. Each of ConcentricLife’s practices revolves around a core of award-winning experts in marketing practices, including experience design, engagement, commercial strategy, production, medical communications, and social. Headquartered in New York, ConcentricLife’s 270+ employees will join Accenture Song in other markets including Atlanta, Chicago, Ft. Lauderdale, San Diego, and London.
“Priority number one is to keep ConcentricLife doing what they’re doing,” Falcone explains. “But we will also look for growth opportunities—and we know we have them. For example, how can we drive growth in terms of better connecting upstream services and how can we get more scale out of different technology and services. We’ll evolve that over time and what that’s going look like, but clearly ConcentricLife will be a huge part of what we do in the healthcare space.”
Begasse Jr. says one of the things he valued most during this process was hearing how Accenture is “a culture of cultures” and will allow ConcentricLife to maintain its culture and leadership as they work hand-in-hand with Accenture’s leadership on ways to bolster that culture to meaningful differentiation and find avenues for exponential growth for clients and business. He cites Droga5, a creative agency Accenture acquired in 2019 and whose CEO David Droga now leads Accenture Song, as a prime example of what a deal like this can mean for the future of the agency.
“If you can take a company with a fierce independent mindset like Droga5 and plug it into a consultancy and have everyone literally flourish because of that, then we knew that this was the right place for us,” Begasse Jr. explains. “Because that’s ultimately what we are seeking to do here. We’re seeking to create a new model where our clients flourish, where our people flourish, and where we step closer to achieving the ambition we’ve had since 2002, which is to be the greatest agency in the health and wellness space.”
In a statement, Droga said: “We recognize and value the position ConcentricLife has established as a leading healthcare marketing agency and our mutual commitment to healthcare providers, patients, and consumers with a focus on health outcomes. We believe that together with ConcentricLife we will create a powerful capability to shape the future of health experiences and provide a truly compelling proposition for our clients.”
