Wave Healthcare Communications rebrands and announces new Board

Wave, the award-winning global med comms agency announces a new Board and a significant rebrand to supports its ambitious five-year plan.

The last eighteen months has seen the company double in size to almost 50 people and see an unprecedented period of growth driven by a broader service offering to both medical and marketing clients and more rapid expansion into European and global markets.

Managing Director James Seed: ‘’Our 20 year birthday earlier this year gave us cause to fundamentally re-evaluate everything we do, from our long-term ambition to team structure and service offering. We began to ask ourselves just one question. What could Wave really achieve?’

The first step was to enlarge the Board. Wave Founders James Seed and Rod Ball added Emma Wheale, formerly of Inspired Science, as Business Unit Director and recruited some well-known veterans of the industry as Board Advisers to support the company’s growth plans. Rachel Farrow brings over 20 years’ experience in building and transforming agencies in this space and Alison Springham brings financial and commercial expertise. Early signs of the changes are incredibly encouraging and the company is on track to exceed its year on year growth target.

The Directors have also refocused the agency’s mission. For over 20 years Wave has excelled at developing programmes for healthcare professionals but it was time to define the essence of the Wave approach. The rebrand places ‘Clinically Relevant Thinking’ at the heart. James Seed explains; “‘Clinically relevant thinking’ means everything we do is driven by understanding the questions clinicians might ask of each other, in relation to our clients’ medicines. This makes our programmes more relevant, compelling and ultimately more likely to change clinical practice and improve patient outcomes. We began to design this process around three years ago, and its impact on programme strategy and design is more profound than it might first appear.”

In recent years the agency has embraced multichannel medical education. But here again, Wave has led the field, developing a unique ‘broadcast medical education’ offering that takes its learnings from television and utilises the methods of the most successful broadcasters. The difference is profound and far from simply stylistic. This is multichannel med ed taken to the next level.

Perhaps the biggest change is within the Wave Team itself. Wave can now boast the biggest editorial team in the industry, relative to their overall size, reflecting a solid commitment to producing the highest quality and compliant content possible. Investment in the best people means the client services team is also weighted towards more senior roles, meaning a more experienced team overall, a better client experience and more successful programme outcomes.

Reflecting on Wave’s approach to the team, Director Rod Ball adds: ‘Each of the Wave team has a five-year development plan with committed investment to help them achieve it. Wave is its people and increased investment here is at the absolute heart of our ambition to ensure we retain and develop our talent.”

James Seed; “The last 18 months has been extraordinary, the team has doubled and the company has embraced flexible working like never before, expanding our footprint across the globe. Importantly Wave now has the strategic and operational leadership teams in place to make our ambitions a reality and couldn’t be better set for the five years that lie ahead”.