Publicis integrates Philly-based Digitas Health and Razorfish Health into New York-based Healthcare group

Tom Paine

Last week the huge French ad agency, Publicis, announced it was integrating its two Philly-based digital healthcare agencies, Digitas Health and Razorfish Health, into its New York-based Publicis Healthcare Communications Group (PHCG). This is another step in an evolving strategy as Publicis aligns its many healthcare marketing assets. Publicis' announcement says the two agencies will "operate as stand-alone brands within PHCG". Though reporting to New York, both units will remain headquartered in Philadelphia. With Digitas Health CEO and co-founder David Kramer having just announced his retirement the week before, Michael du Toit and Alexandra von Plato, who serve as co-Presidents of both agencies, will report to PHCG President and Chief Executive Officer Nick Colucci. PHCG has other units based in Yardley, including Saatchi & Saatchi Healthcare Innovations, Publicis Healthware International, and Publicis Touchpoint Solutions.

Not included in PHCG is any part of Hamilton, NJ-based Rosetta Marketing, which has a substantial digital healthcare marketing business, in both the OTC and ethical categories. Rosetta, which Publicis acquired last May for $575 million, is headed by CEO and founder Chris Kuenne, who reports directly to Jean-Yves Naouri, chief operating officer of Publicis Groupe.

Digitas Health grew out of Medical Broadcasting Corporation, founded by Kramer and Linda Holliday in Philadelphia in 1990. Originally concentrating on video production (thus the name) before turning to interactive media, it was acquired by Boston-based Digitas in 2006 for about $30 million; Publicis in turn announced it would acquire Digitas at the end of 2006 for $1.3 billion. Digitas Health has grown rapidly, with revenue reported as being well over $100 million, though in July it laid off 57 staff out of its total workforce of about 624 employees. Digitas Health and Razorfish Health took a first step towards integration in June, when du Toit and von Plato were appointed to their current positions, reporting to Kramer.

The much smaller Razorfish Health was split off last year from Razorfish, which Publicis acquired from Microsoft for $530 million in 2009.

While there are several other sizeable or important digital healthcare agencies either based or with offices in the area (see my post from earlier this year), none of the others have that kind of scale.



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Daily Links 11/1/2011: Checkpoint reports loss, Vishay cites "unexpected drop in demand"

Obama names FCC commissioners, both agency, Hill veterans (Washington Post: Post Tech)

Earnings Preview: Comcast to report 3Q earnings (AP via MSNBC)

Baseball eyes new $1 billion TV contract in off-season (Reuters via Fox News)
Will Comcast be a player?

Broadcast networks will rake in retransmission fees, report says (LA Times: Company Town)
NBC has most to gain, report says.

On the Media: Will computer tablets help save newspapers?
In the fragmenting media landscape, a Philadelphia publisher embarks on a bold experiment. (LA Times)

Matchbin Acquires NAVTEQ Broadcast Media Division to Form Radiate Media, Closes $22 Million Financing (Business Wire)

PANL: Gabelli, Piper Tussle Over Promise And Peril (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)
On OLED technology firm Universal Display of Ewing, NJ.

Checkpoint reports 3rd quarter loss (AP via MSNBC)

Vishay Reports Results for Third Quarter 2011 (Business Wire)
“In the third quarter, Vishay was confronted with an unexpected drop of demand", CEO Dr. Gerald Paul said.

Kenexa Announces Financial Results for Third Quarter 2011 (Business Wire)


Entercom the latest radio company to report essentially flat Q3 revenue (Radio-Info.com)

SAP in Arab Spring Push to Make Up for Southern Europe Slump
(Bloomberg)

Air Force mulls changes as major ERP system project stumbles (Computerworld)
While this story is about an Oracle implementation, an SAP project for the Army has also been reported to be in trouble.



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Highlights: Last week on Philly Tech News (10/24-10/30 2011)

I talked to PlaySay founder Ryan Meinzer about the venture's move to DC, its VC funding and product plans.

I look at some of the recent Venture news in the Philly area, including funding for DuckDuckGo, Philly-based Q&A startup Quewey, and Conshohocken-based SaaS insurance vendor Unirisx.

On the heels of Digitas Health co-founder & CEO David Kramer's retirement announcement, Publicis says it will integrate Digitas Health and Razorfish Health, both of which are Philly-based, into its New York-based Publicis Healthcare Communications Group.

NBC Sports officially announces it will move its headquarters to Connecticut (hope they have a good backup power supply), including Versus, which has been primarily Philly-based and will be renamed the NBC Sports Network in January. So much for the hope of having the next ESPN in the area.

And two of the hottest tech companies in the Philly area, Radnor-based QlikTech and Horsham-based NextGen Healthcare's parent Quality Systems both report strong quarterly results, and Quality Systems approves a stock split.



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Daily Links 10/31/2011: appMobi introduces MobiUs to accelerate Mobile HTML5 Development

Your Response to Occupy Wharton (Wharton Journal)
Continued debate over Occupy Philly's conflict with some in the Wharton community over U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's cancelled speech.

Analysis: Too many start-ups chase too little cash (Reuters)

Interactive Ads: Cable’s Future May Already Have Passed (Bloomberg Business Week)

Cable Is Holding Web TV at Bay, Earnings Show (New York Times)

NBCUniversal to Invest Millions to Enhance Local News at 10 NBC TV Stations (Hollywood Reporter)
Including WCAU in Philadelphia.

McDermott addresses questions over SAP BusinessObjects 4.0, HANA (SearchSAP.com)

MobiUs Accelerates Mobile HTML5 Development, Aims to Kill Mobile Flash (ReadWriteWeb)
New browser released by Lancaster-based appMobi.

TicketLeap Ticket-scanning comes to iPhone with Launch of iOS App (PR Web)

Exclaim Mobility Acquires SmrtGuard Mobile Security Cloud-service Applications (BusinessWire)

Once Hot Startup SimpleGeo Sells For A Loss To Urban Airship (Silicon Alley Insider)
First Round Capital was an investor in SimpleGeo.

Newspaper Next, Five Years Later (Recovering Journalist)

Philly daily newspapers in search for new home (Philly.com: Philly Deals)



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Comcast cranks up its research labs to quickly create new video products (Denver Post)

Philly Tech People News 10/30/2011

SAP Appoints Mike Naimoli Head of Life Sciences Industry Business Unit (PR Newswire)

Yaccarino In, Cassaro Out At NBCU Ad Sales
Turner Exec Gets Big Job From Comcast (Multichannel News)

MarketSphere Continues to Expand Oracle Leadership
James Brethauer, recently named to leadership role at MarketSphere's Philadelphia office. (Business Wire)

Yell Appoints Scott Moore to the New Role of Chief Digital Officer (PR Newswire)
Yell is the UK-based parent of Yellowbook, which has corporate offices in King of Prussia.

Top Sales Executive Leaves Rodale in Shakeup; Maria Rodale reorganizes health, fitness publisher
(Ad Week)

Mary Tyrrell Promoted to Vice President, Director Strategic Communications at MayoSeitz Media (Philly Ad Club News)

Here's How Much VCs Actually Care About Their Investments Making Money (Business Insider)
Article features a look at David Nevas of Edison Ventures.

Motorola to cut 800 jobs (Marketwatch)
Including some in its Horsham-based Home business segment.

Philly Tech News VentureWatch: 10/28/2011: DuckDuckGo, Quewey, Quiq and more

Tom Paine

The amount of funding for Gabriel Weinberg's search engine DuckDuckGo was $3 million, according to an SEC filing. The main investor was prominent New York-based VC Union Square Ventures, joined by several individual investors. DuckDuckGo has only a miniscule sliver of the overall search market, but its different model-not algorithm driven, no user tracking-has gained some traction. Union Square Ventures' Brad Burnham wrote in a blog post: "We invested in DuckDuckGo because we became convinced that it was not only possible to change the basis of competition in search, it was time to do it". Weinberg, who said he held off on taking funding as long as possible, will use the funds to finally hire some other employees and expand infrastructure.

Unirisx, the Conshohocken-based provider of a SaaS platform for the Insurance industry, recently raised another $1 million in debt-based financing, in addition to $1.4 million in debt-based financing it raised earlier this year, according to an SEC filing. Investors raised $7 million in equity in 2009 to acquire the company. Past investors have included Jaguar Capital Partners, Permit Capital LLC and MIM Capital. The highly respected former Harleysville Group CIO Akhil Tripathi is CEO, and Zurich Financial Services is a major client. Unirisx started as a spinoff from Unisys' British subsidiary.

Quewey, a Philadelphia-based business oriented Q&A site, has apparently raised $250,000, according to a filing hot off the press. They haven't launched in Beta yet, but you can see their blog here.

Blue Bell-based Quiq, Inc., which provides a system enabling perscriptions to be dispensed directly to patients in a physician's office, has raised over $2 million, according to SEC filings shown by FormDs.com.

OpenDesks' (Conshohocken) recently released iPhone app for locating temporary work spaces in 133 cities around the country got a nice mention in the New York Times (at the bottom of the article) .

The New Jersey Technology Council has named mVisum a finalist for its Early-Stage Company of the Year Award, the Cherry Hill Courier-Post reports. mVisum, which is based in the Rutgers-Camden Technology Campus, allows medical professionals to securely receive, review, and respond to patient data recorded at the point of care.



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Daily Links 10/28/2011: Publicis to merge Digitas Health, Razorfish Health into larger group

Publicis merges digital agencies into larger group (InPharm)
Philly-based digital agencies Digitas Health and Razorfish Health are to be merged into the larger Publicis Healthcare Communications Group (PHCG).
Publicis Press Release. This comes shortly after the announcement of David Kramer's retirement.

SunGard Announces Third Quarter 2011 Results (Business Wire)

SAP hiring 'a few hundred' here, more in 2012 (Philly.com: Philly Deals)

Sprint Said Near Deal With Clearwire for New Multiyear Agreement (Bloomberg)

Comcast commits to bring more broadband to Innovation District (Mass High Tech)
Does Comcast have similar plans for parts of Philly?

Google TV Software Update Ready, but New Hardware Will Have to Wait (All Things Digital)

Cablevision Shares Plunge
Nears 52-Week Low After Disappointing Quarter (Multichannel News)

Lockheed Reports Flat Space Revenue (Space News)



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PlaySay: Moved to DC, raised VC funds, launched Facebook platform at TechCrunch Disrupt

Tom Paine

PlaySay, the Philly-born startup that helps people learn languages on mobile devices and which went through the GoodCompany Ventures incubator program in 2010, has since migrated down I-95 to Washington, DC. It has received $550,000 in VC funding from Novak, Biddle Venture Partners (it had also raised some angel funds). Founder Ryan Meinzer tells me via phone there were several good reasons to locate in DC: to be closer to its financial backers (Novak Biddle is based in the Maryland suburbs), because the Federal government and the many international organizations there are important clients for the language learning market, and because of the international orientation of the area and the supply of linguistics talent located there.

PlaySay officially launched at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2011 in September.
PlaySay's platform is now on Facebook; if you search for a non-Facebook web presence for it right now you won't find it. (PlaySay may have one soon, though it will likely be of secondary importance.) PlaySay built its app, which it describes as a "language learning layer on Facebook", using HTML5 tailored for the iPad. An Android app will come later, but currently PlaySay is focused on optimizing its UI for the iPad. Available now only for Spanish, PlaySay allows users to match images to words and combine them together to learn phrases, and share them with others. A key product development goal is to enhance the social gaming aspect within the Facebook platform. PlaySay plans to monetize utlilizing Facebook credits to enable user access to premium features.

In addition to the Facebook app, PlaySay is working on smartphone apps which leverage relationships with other information providers. In September it announced a content licensing deal with McGraw-Hill Professional, one of the largest publishers of language learning books and materials. It looks like one iOS app from the McGraw relationship is already live. Some similar arrangements with other partners may be in the works.

Meinzer, who is from central Pennsylvania (Hershey, Lancaster) and attended Temple, saw the need for PlaySay when he went to work in Japan and needed to learn Japanese quickly. He started making digital flashcards for himself so he could start learning several new words every day. PlaySay currently has six employees, including an expert in linguistics. Meinzer says English as a Second Language may be the next market segment PlaySay enters in addition to Spanish. Some have questioned the choice of Facebook as a platform, though Meinzer believes it is best for creating the type of immersive experience he wants. Some early feedback has suggested that the UI is not yet as intuitive as some users would like.

Rosetta Stone is a big player in the market (though it has struggled lately), but Meinzer looks at newer startups such as Voxy, MindSnacks (which went through the DreamIt Ventures program), and Livemocha as being his most direct competitors.



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Daily Links 10/27/2011: QlikTech reports 50% growth, small profit

Safeguard Scientifics consolidates life science, tech portfolio management (Med City News)
Kevin Kemmerer resigns, Jim Datin has taken over management of the technology portfolio in addition to life sciences portfolio. Surprising, seems sudden; looking for more explanation.

QlikTech Announces Third Quarter 2011 Financial Results (Business Wire)
Revenue grows 50% to $75.5 million, small*(GAAP) net profit. Americas revenue up 71%.


Quality Systems, Inc. Reports Record Fiscal 2012 Second Quarter Results; Board-Approved 2:1 Stock Split Effective Today (Business Wire)
Continues to report strong top line and bottom line growth. Quality Systems' primary business is NextGen Healthcare of Horsham.

InterDigital Rises as Sales Top Estimates, Sale Talks Continue
(Bloomberg)

Comcast/NBCU Deal Lawyers: Online Video Competition Was Key Concern
Attorneys for Comcast, FCC, Verizon give personal takes on merger conditions and impact on over-the-top services. (Broadcasting & Cable)

Comcast Moves NBCU Local’s Shopping Guide To DailyCandy (paidContent)

Time Warner Cable Slumps as Profit Misses Estimates on Subscriber Losses (Bloomberg)

Time Warner Cable continues big bet on broadband (Gigaom)

Motorola Mobility's Home Sales Drop 10% In Q3
Set-Top Shipments Decline 3% Year Over Year (Multichannel News)

CardioNet, Inc. Board of Directors Announces the Resignation of Randy Thurman as Chairman of the Board (Business Wire)

Marketing continues for Philadelphia Media Network tablet despite exec's departure (NewsWorks)

SAP Updates Business One Application for Small Companies (PC World)

Instem Chosen for Global Deployment of Provantis SaaS; Roche Consolidates Preclinical Software Systems (Business Wire)

Kenexa to Transfer to the New York Stock Exchange (Business Wire)
Also indicates higher guidance for Q3 results.

Heartland Payment Systems Reports 55% Increase in Third Quarter Adjusted Earnings per Share
Board Authorizes $50 Million Share Repurchase Program (Business Wire)

CDI Corp. Reports 2011 Third Quarter Results (PR Newswire)



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