It was a fluke that brought Brenda Pratscher to the world of advertising, but it was not by chance that she became a fixture on the media planning scene for a quarter-century. Despite her suggestions that “I simply fell into the agency business,” the Vice President, Media Director of Ogilvy Montreal has been on track strategically since her humble beginnings as a junior media estimator at MacLaren Advertising in Montreal in the late ‘70s. From there she would build her credentials as a crackerjack media buyer/planner at Young & Rubicam, with an upwardly mobile move to media supervisor at the J. Walter Thompson (JWT) agency, where she would refine her grasp of media measurements and other tools of the trade.

She considers landing the job at Ogilvy her biggest breakthrough and challenge. Ogilvy, which was outsourcing their media at the time, turned to Pratscher to build a media department from the ground-up. It was a defining moment for the Montreal native, who remains grateful to the agency’s powers-that-be for “putting their confidence in me.”

Little wonder that over the next 18 years, others would also put their trust in Pratscher’s abilities to help them develop and execute media plans, including major national consumer accounts such as Standard Life, IBM, WonderBra, and Seagram on the consumer side, and Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, and Stiefel on the healthcare side.

Referring to the pharma industry as a “tight knit family,” Pratscher concedes she’s developed a soft spot for pharma, which she says is completely different from the consumer side of advertising. She suggests the rewards have outweighed the challenges, having been a catalyst for many firsts in media planning, including the launch of  the BMS antibiotic Tequin (gatifloxacin), which utilized small space advertising, a novel idea that caused a stir among journal publishers and advertisers. The format, common practice in journal advertising today, began as a small space ad on the front cover of L’actualité Médicale, followed by several small space teasers on the inside pages leading up to the main launch ad. 

With strict guidelines governing healthcare advertising, firsts are particularly important today, maintains Pratscher, citing the example of a launch for a new indication for BMS’ antihypertensive Avapro (irbesartan), where a unique drop-down inside front cover gatefold “was extremely impactful in terms of placement.” 

One of her biggest concerns in the current healthcare environment is that medical journal advertising has lost its importance for some pharma clients. Many new product managers tend not to see the value of medical journals. “It has been proven over and over again that within the promotional mix, medical journals are extremely efficient [with very positive ROIs], and are underused. We also have an industry-accepted readership study that indicates that doctors love their medical journals—they read them and have their favorites.”

In future, Pratscher expects that the Internet will continue to influence the healthcare arena and follow consumer trends in terms of being an integral part of any plan. She suggests the only negative aspect is “it’s going to eat into existing dollars, but it’s a positive evolving step that everyone is going to have to adapt to.”
For now, Pratscher’s major focus is on having “happy clients,” and having happy clients suggests, “you did a really good job and that’s the bottom line.” How does she manage to keep those clients happy? “I think I am perceived as being a very tough business person, but fair. It’s a reputation that I’m very proud to have,” she says.

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