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Envisage - How to Create Unbranded Awareness

Quintiles Transnational provides professional services in drug development, financial partnering and commercialization for the biotechnology and healthcare industries. With 21,000 employees and offices in more than 50 countries, it is focused on providing customer-centric solutions that are the gold standard of the industry.

The Objective

Quintiles wanted to provide customers and industry representatives with a thoughtful vision of the future of biopharmaceutical research. The ultimate objective was to create awareness among an international audience of Quintiles’ work and demonstrate the company’s unsurpassed knowledge of its industry.

To reach an international audience in clinical development, operations, regulatory affairs, safety, marketing, sales and C-level executives in both pharma and biotech, Imagination proposed a customer-focused print magazine that covered all phases—drug development through commercialization.

Additionally, an online version of the magazine would provide enhanced content with Web-exclusive articles and mediacasts from industry experts.

The Challenges

Quintiles wanted to create an unbranded magazine and website to build and maintain the credibility of the Envisage program and demonstrate industry thought leadership. Other than a house advertisement, there are no Quintiles logos, addresses, phone numbers or email addresses included in the magazine or website.

An additional hurdle was launching the publication in a crowded—and tight-lipped—market. Imagination editors had to provide balanced, unbiased reporting. But our calls to potential industry sources—uninvited—were received with (shall we say) varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Imagination had to (1) earn the trust of industry representatives, (2) work within the parameters of an unbranded program, while (3) meeting our clients’ objectives.

Custom Media Solution

Launched in January 2007, Envisage is a quarterly magazine that delivers thought-leadership and insight to the global medicines market. Its sophisticated graphics, top-notch photography and information-rich content are complemented by heavy-stock A4 paper and a wrap-around cover. So far, every cover-story (and cover) has required an on-location photo shoot in a different country.

Each article in the magazine and on the website includes the voices of industry insiders as well as perspectives from peripheral areas such as academia, government and not-for-profit organizations. Supplemental issues of the magazine are produced when appropriate, and reader and advertiser surveys are conducted to continually improve the program and build relationships.

Envisagemag.com contains exclusive monthly articles and mediacasts as well as social networking utilities to generate peer-to-peer discussion on today’s most relevant issues in the drug development arena. The print version pushes users to the Web for exclusive content, and the website offers print subscription sign-ups and opt-outs. A monthly e-blast alerts users to fresh content.

Audio Alert!

Adam Istas is the senior editor for Envisage and Envisagemag.com, and he interviews thought leaders in the bio/pharma space each month. Below are two of the interviews that appear on Envisagemag.com.

Listen as Stephen Lewis, a former United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa and current co-director of AIDS-Free World, offers impassioned advice on HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Listen as Karen Brown, director of global marketing at Quintiles Transnational, talks about Quintiles’ work with Imagination.

The Success

The effective push-pull between Envisage on the Web and in print ensures that content reaches readers through multiple channels, raising awareness of Quintiles and its work. As a result, the publication opens the path for improved relationships with customers and industry representatives, and establishes Quintiles as a visionary thought-leader.

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