CommonHealth and Enterprise IG Join Forces to Create Healthcare-Identity Group.

PARSIPPANY, N.J.--(BW HealthWire)--May 4, 1999--

Joint Venture Pools Intellectual Capital of WPP Group's

Two Largest Specialist-Communications Companies

CommonHealth today announced the launch of Enterprise IG Health, a joint venture of CommonHealth and Enterprise IG, formerly known as Anspach Grossman Enterprise. CommonHealth and Enterprise IG are the two largest specialist-communications companies in the WPP Group (LSE:WPPL.L) (NASDAQ/ADR:WPPGY), one of the world's largest communications companies. Both companies report to John Zweig, CEO, Specialist Communications, WPP Group.

Enterprise IG Health will be based in Parsippany, New Jersey, the global headquarters of CommonHealth, the world's largest healthcare-communications resource. It will leverage the combined equity of CommonHealth and Enterprise IG, a leading global image and identity consultancy, to offer strategic positioning, brand strategy, product and business naming and identity-design solutions to healthcare companies worldwide.

Neil A. Johnston, executive vice president for business development at Enterprise IG and a 15-year veteran of the corporate-identity and brand-consulting industry, has been named managing director of the new unit.

"Healthcare and pharmaceutical companies are now recognizing that strong corporate and product brands are critical to growing their businesses," noted Gil Bashe, group company CEO of CommonHealth.

"Some of the biggest pharmaceutical brands in the world are due to go off patent within the next few years," Mr. Bashe continued. "How do you extend the identity of the `pioneer' brand to the next generation to replicate that success? How do companies forge the kind of brand that translates, for the sales rep, into more face time with the doctor? The solutions to such challenges lie at the heart of the Enterprise IG Health offering."

Jim Johnson, president and CEO of Enterprise IG, took up the theme of corporate-brand creation, noting that healthcare-industry consolidation has created a real need for such a service, geared to the special and rapidly changing needs of pharmaceutical makers, providers and payers alike.

"The recent wave of mergers and acquisitions has created major challenges for executive management: the need to clarify potential marketplace confusion and, most important, to give employees, partners and investors a clear sense of corporate identity," Mr. Johnson said.

"Knowing who you are -- and communicating it clearly -- is simply fundamental to how well you meet your business objectives," he added.

Healthcare-related clients served by Enterprise IG include AETNA, American Home Products, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Burroughs Wellcome, the Hospital for Special Surgery, the Leukemia Society of America, the Mayo Clinic, Mt. Sinai-NYU Health, Pfizer, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer and Warner-Lambert.

Enterprise IG Health's Johnston stressed the depth and breadth of the joint venture partners, CommonHealth and Enterprise IG, with 25 and 30 years of experience, respectively, in the building of brand equity and identity. He noted, moreover, the close working relationship the two WPP Group units had developed during Enterprise IG's recently completed identity campaign for CommonHealth.

"You can't do an identity campaign with a company without getting to know it intimately. Indeed -- done right -- it's a two-way street, with the client company learning as much about you in the process as you do about them," Mr. Johnston said.

"As a result, Enterprise IG and CommonHealth go into this venture with eyes wide open, a track record of successful collaboration and, of course, the WPP Group connection. It doesn't get much better than that," he added in closing.

With 450 people worldwide, 23 nationalities spread across offices in Europe, North America and Asia, Enterprise IG is well-positioned to advise a growing global client base. Current clients include American Express, Bank of America, British Telecom, BP, Cargill, the Coca-Cola Company, Dun & Bradstreet, Hilton, IBM, Merck, Monsanto and Oppenheimer Funds.

CommonHealth comprises Enterprise IG Health, Adient, CommonHealth Australia, CommonHealth Consulting, CommonHealth Europe, CommonHealth Kyowa, Gowers Advertising, Health Learning Systems, the Hill and Knowlton Health and Pharmaceutical Practice, the OZM Group and a partnership in China with the Ogilvy Healthcare Network, ProCom International, The Quantum Group, The Xchange Group and Thomas Ferguson Associates.

For five consecutive years, CommonHealth was named by its peers the nation's "most admired" healthcare-communications resource, as reported in Med Ad News.