Health Marketing Spotlight.

Over the last two decades, medical device and health care companies have become fiercely competitive in response to increasingly constrictive regulatory and reimbursement environments. Perhaps more than in any other industry, health care companies must create effective marketing, branding and advertising strategies in order to survive.

Realizing this, Rick Andersen and Karen Jones created Andersen Jones Partners, a full-service advertising agency with a meld of expertise so specific, that it stands as a one-of-a-kind operation. From the beginning, the principals believed that Andersen's experience in both advertising and first hand medical device sales and marketing was ideally complimented by Jones' expertise in health care marketing and graphic design.

With its principals' unique combination of skills, Andersen Jones Partners has fast become a standard-setting leader in its industry, offering medical device and health care clients a deep understanding of their industries and markets while developing award-gamering programs strategically designed to deliver memorable messages, images, and company and product representation.

Andersen Jones Partners has created and implemented successful regional, national and international marketing campaigns for a diverse array of health related organizations ranging from new ventures to Fortune 500 companies.

One example of applying its skills to bring a client to the next level is Andersen Jones' work with Biopsys. When the agency began working with Biopsys in 1993, the company was an R&D start-up called Advanced Breast Biopsy, Inc. Andersen Jones created a fresh identity for the company, complete with a distinctive new name and logo that matched the leaps in technology the company had created in the breast biospy market. Over the next three years, Andersen Jones produced marketing programs which helped the company sell its devices to more than 800 hospitals. In 1997, Biopsys was acquired by Johnson and Johnson for 300 million dollars.

With current client Mentor, a Santa Barbara-based plastic surgery products manufacturer, Andersen Jones has raised the bar even further -- changing the way in which medical device companies market themselves. The agency has literally brought Mentor's products to the masses -- with unprecedented style and sensitivity. Andersen Jones' award-winning campaign for Mentor took products that were traditionally marketed strictly to the medical community and introduced them directly to consumers via print and television advertising. This caused a boom for Mentor in patient advocacy and patient-to-doctor product requests that is rarely seen in the medical device industry.

Andersen claims that one of the primary keys to Andersen Jones' success lies in its commitment to day-to-day involvement with its clients. From corporate identity building to new product launch marketing, Andersen Jones works closely with its clients, tapping on its practical medical industry experience to create synergistic relationships. Andersen Jones reports that client tenures average more than six years, which is much longer than the industry standard.