Last month, Republica Havas announced the creation of a new agency, Republica Havas Health, to help foster health equity for multicultural patients and consumers. The division will operate in partnership with Havas Health & You, and has rapid plans to expand beyond the U.S.
Dare! spoke to Republica Havas’s Co-founder, Chairman and CEO Jorge A. Plasencia to hear more about the new offering.
Can you give us some background on how Republica Havas came to be?
Luis Casamayor and I founded Republica in 2006 as a full-service agency to address the seismic multicultural shift in the U.S. It was the same year Twitter launched and when Facebook was starting to reach the masses. We have been a digital, social and mobile agency since day one. We have worked with numerous consumer brands in the U.S. and beyond, including Walmart, Toyota and Google.
In July 2018, Republica ranked as Ad Age’s No. 1 independent U.S. multicultural agency. In September of that year, we announced we were joining forces with Havas, becoming the group’s multicultural agency partner.
Why did you decide to form Republica Havas Health?
Over the last few years, but especially with the onset of COVID-19, we began to notice the same disparity in representation of cultures and minorities that inspired us to create Republica, but now specific to health and wellness. We have been working in the space for years and have deep experience with pharma brands such as Sanofi, Boehringer Ingelheim and Biogen. Partnering with Havas Health & You, Havas’ health equity and cross-cultural health and wellness marketing partner, deepens our important work in this area.
“Systemic inequities in how we reach, treat, and prioritise the health and wellness of diverse audiences remain staggeringly prevalent.”
What do you hope this new division will accomplish?
Republica Havas Health focuses on four key priorities: diversity in clinical research, culturally relevant health & wellness marketing, multicultural competence in healthcare, and concrete action to address health inequities.
Nearly half of the United States population identifies as multicultural and the world’s population of more than 7 billion is increasingly more diverse, yet systemic inequities in how we reach, treat, and prioritise the health and wellness of diverse audiences remain staggeringly prevalent. Republica Havas Health aims to address that to help promote deep cultural fluency in health and wellness communications for Hispanic, African American, and Asian American patients and consumers.
What has reception for this initiative been like across the business so far?
We’ve been off to the races. We’re so grateful to Donna Murphy and the leadership at Havas Health & You for their support of this new endeavour from day one.
If people want to work with Republica Havas Health, how should they get in touch?
To work with us, they should reach out to Christina Krablin at careers@republicahavas.com, and to do business with us, Natalie Pardo at newbiz@republicahavas.com.
