Pharma agency Healthy Thinking Group sells creative and digital operations to Blackdot consultants
Marketing and business transformation consultancy Blackdot has acquired parts of the Healthy Thinking Group, joining the push of consulting firms offering integrated marketing services.
The pharmaceutical, agriculture and health science focused Healthy Thinking Group was the parent company of healthcare media agency Hammond and Thackeray which collapsed in January, leaving creditors over $4 million out of pocket.
The deal will see nine of HTG’s employees moving across to the consulting firm, with Blackdot taking over part of the agency’s creative and digital operations.
Blackdot said the partnership was motivated by the two companies’ complementary capabilities and their common passion for pharma and health sciences.
Blackdot claims deep functional expertise in marketing, sales and service in those industries, while Healthy Thinking Group operates in a similar market across digital, creative, advertising, communications, and education.
Healthy Thinking Group CEO, Stephen Robson, commented: “This is a great development for the Healthy Thinking Group team – one that enables us to continue to deliver our specialty expertise to our clients, while strengthening and broadening our offering with Blackdot’s backing.
“We look forward to working with the Blackdot team to leverage our mutual strengths and provide deeper insights and support to our client base.”
Blackdot managing director, Marty Nicholas, added: “We’re delighted to be working with the Healthy Thinking Group – they will significantly strengthen our pharma and health sciences solution offering.
“We’re particularly excited about what we can do together to help our customers transform their multi-channel capabilities to achieve enhanced health care professional and patient outcomes.
“This development means both the Healthy Thinking Group team and our existing customers will benefit from unique and complementary expertise as we continue to grow our pharma and health sciences practice.”
Great journalism here Mumbrella
You ring BlackDot and publish every bit of drivel they tell you and you publish the drivel of Steve Robson
Comment edited under Mumbrella’s moderation policy
That the acquisition by BlackDot of assets and employment of ex H&T people is much more likely a disaster for BlackDot, not something to be celebrated and puffed up like you just got your first job as a journo and you listen to every piece of bullshit someone tells you.
This is a really bad peice of journalism on a very important story for medical marketing and media. I wonder immediately if the sale of Mumbrella is already starting to show.
BlackDot is supposed to be a management consultancy with smart people.
Comment moderated under Mumbrella’s moderation policy
What you have written is drivel
User ID not verified.
Paul
As one of the dozens of absolutely livid creditors sorely stiffed by Hammond and Thackeray, in our case for $108,000, a sum of money that is a huge amount for a small independent publisher to lose, I am absolutely staggered that you have chosen to run this piece.
Comment edited under Mumbrella’s moderation policy
So it is happy little families for Robson and Black Dot is it? Well, well, let’s see how that pans out.
User ID not verified.
This story reads like a press release issued by Blackdot on their acquisition of “parts of the Healthy Thinking Group” – clearly those “parts” do not include the more than $4 million of debt owed to publishers and others in the pharmaceutical, agriculture and health science sector, claimed to be the focus of HTG.
Blackdot’s Marty Nicholas is either very naïve or has no idea how seriously the circumstances surrounding the collapse of HTG’s related entity H&T has affected the media and others within pharma and health sciences, the very areas in which he hopes to expand his company’s practice. I don’t like their chances.
As CEO of just one the medical and pharmacy publishers whose business has been badly impacted by the liquidation of H&T, and a longtime reader, I expect more from Mumbrella.
User ID not verified.
I was a longtime client of H&T who had started to allocate work to different agencies, based on poor performance and delivery and the loss of key staff.
I found out about them closing by reading Mumbrella – it wasnt until Frebruary that someone reached out to tell me what was going on. Even then, they tried to deny anything was happening, blaming a media beat up. At this point I advised that there would be no further work as we couldn’t trust them.
This didn’t seem to get through as at least 5 people in our company received a poorly constructed EDM promoting this new partnership. It went straight into the trash.
This agency has no integrity and a rapidly diminishing client base
User ID not verified.