Campaign Imminent: Bristol-Myers Squibb taps new media AOR (Score 52)
Sales Lead: Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) recently selected IPG MediaBrands as its new media AOR, concluding a review that kicked off earlier this year.
- The hire replaces incumbent media AOR Havas.
- The shift consolidates BMS's D2C planning and buying "at an enterprise level to bring marketplace leverage that drives greater value and delivers media efficiencies, strengthen resource allocation and strategic planning, and enable rapid reporting to drive plan optimization while campaigns are in flight,” per the RFI.
- The review was led internally by a team that included senior US commercial strategy and operations director Kathy Vincent.
- MediaBrands will support the upcoming nine new product launches that BMS currently has planned.
- The company will likely:
- Launch a new campaign soon
- Implement strategy shifts
- Continue increasing national TV spend
- Return to higher digital spend
- Seek additional other new agency partners
- Target demographic:
- B2C: Older millennials and Gen-X
- B2B: Healthcare professionals
Recent leadership shifts:
- BMS's recent hires include Muthu Senthil, who joined the company in January 2023 as its executive US marketing director.
Additional spending insights:
- Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
- YTD spend: So far this year, BMS has spent approximately $6.7m on national TV commercials, up 12% from the approximately $6m spent within the same 2022 timeframe.
- Last year: The company spent around $13.9m on this channel in 2022 after having spent more than double this, around $28.2m, in 2021.
- 2023 ad programming: BMS's 2023 commercials have targeted Gen-X watching shows such as ABC World News Tonight With Davie Muir, NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt, CBS Evening News With Norah O'Donnell, Jeopardy!, and American Idol.
- Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
- YTD spend: The company has allocated roughly $3.2m toward digital ads YTD, 20% less than the roughly $4m allocated by this point last year.
- YTD data: Since the beginning of 2022, BMS has earned ~435.6m digital impressions via Facebook (74%), YouTube (8%), Instagram (6%), desktop display (6%), mobile display (4%), and desktop video (2%) ads.
- Last year: The company's estimated full-year 2022 spend decreased by 17% to $11.9m from that of $14.4m in 2021.
- Additional channel insights
- The company utilizes Google Ads along with OOH, print (newspapers), digital, local broadcast, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and online video (via Youtube IOS and Youtube.com) ads.
- BMS sponsors podcasts such as Daily Tech News Show, Reasonable Doubt, The Pirate History Podcast, Carolla Classics, and AsianBossGirl.
- Finally, the company invests in short-form DRTV.
- It has rather highly concentrated network TV coverage and will not likely launch a new campaign soon.
- BMS's top TV networks include GSN, HIS, COZ, TNT, and HGTV.
Additional agency insights:
- Opportunity: Get in touch soon to see if any additional agency reviews follow this one.
- You'd benefit the most from offering creative, PR, digital analytics, social media management, experiential, influencer, and/or multicultural services.
- Current agency roster:
- IPG MediaBrands: Media AOR (May 2023)
- LiveWorld: Digital and social agency partner
- Publicis North America: Digital and creative agency partner
Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix; podcast insights by Podchaser; DRTV insights by Media Analytics.
