AthenaHealth Launches First Campaign From Colossus
AthenaHealth's first campaign from its new agency, Colossus, comes amid reports that the health-tech company may soon be undergoing an initial public offering or a sale.
The Boston-based shop won agency-of-record duties, previously held by MullenLowe, in September 2020 following a competitive pitch.
For the campaign, Colossus created an ambitious 157 individual pieces of work with the aim of refreshing the brand’s identity and simplifying the messaging around the technical aspects of AthenaHealth’s capabilities. The agency said its challenge was avoiding the conventions and tropes common in the health care industry.
“The health care space can be cold and off-putting with ineffectual stock photography and design better suited for PowerPoint,” Travis Robertson, partner and executive creative director at Colossus, said in a statement. “We built a deep graphic language as multi-faceted and innovative as the company itself, combining CG, photography, and illustration in a vibrant world of color.”
In total, the campaign includes long and short-form videos running on outlets like Hulu and Roku that range from 60 seconds to 15 seconds; digital; out-of-home; paid and organic social; print (including a partnership with Wired Magazine); podcast collaborations and streaming audio placements; 3-D static illustrations; CG; live-action and stop motion. The campaign is targeted to health care insitutions, physicians and health care tech companies, the agency said. The videos will run on connected TV through the beginning of next year.
One video, titled “Lonely Data,” emphasizes how having individual pieces of health care data siloed from each other can be a missed opportunity. The ad shows a doctor inputting information into a computer, then the camera zooms through the computer and shows a cube, that represents a singular piece of data, in a vast and empty space. A narrator begins to describe the situation by saying, “Would you look at this. A piece of health care data all alone, sitting there, unused.” Eventually, the ad explains the strength of being able to connect all types of data throughout AthenaHealth’s system.
A second video titled “Olivia” showcases an example of how a doctor was able to alert her patient, Olivia, to schedule a visit for which she was overdue. Ultimately the doctor diagnosed Olivia with cervical cancer that was found early enough to treat.
The campaign was launched last month around the same time it was reported that Veritas Capital and Elliott Investment Management, which had initially bought the health-tech company for about $5.7 billion in 2018, are exploring options to either file an initial public offering for AthenaHealth or sell it at a valuation of $20 billion.
Colossus also created an internal-facing campaign for the company’s employees and potential employee recruits, which includes video, installations, wall art and banners for AthenaHealth’s major campuses in the U.S. (Watertown, Massachusets; Atlanta, Georgia; Belfast, Maine; Burlington, Vermont; Seattle, Washington; and Austin, Texas) along with India (Pune, Chennai, and Bangalore).
This latest campaign follows what has been a busy year for the agency. In June, Colossus launched the biggest and first national marketing campaign for wine brand Archer Roose starring actor and co-owner of the company, Elizabeth Banks. Also this year, the agency won work for brands like SimpliSafe, Epocrates, Toast, Zipcar, and Gillette.