Cheil London has launched Cheil Health, a joint venture with the specialist healthcare agency wethepeople London. It will be dedicated to servicing global and local healthcare and pharmaceutical clients.
Cheil Health will be headed up by Cat Davis, Cheil’s Chief Growth Officer for the UK and Europe, and John Perkins, wethepeople London’s Managing Partner. They will run the operation alongside their current roles at their respective agencies.
The venture launches with the start-up Map My Gut as its first client. It will also service pharmaceutical giant Abbott, a Cheil Worldwide client.
Cheil Health will be fully integrated into the main operation at Cheil and will offer clients bespoke teams of varying disciplines from Cheil and wethepeople.
The wethepeople London management team comprises partners Michel Dubery, Patrick Norrie and Joe Hoyle, alongside Perkins.
Dubery, a former managing director of Grey Healthcare Europe, and Norrie, its former executive creative director, previously worked with Davis during her time at Grey in her former role as CMO for the agency.
Wethepeople London will continue to operate as a standalone independent business, servicing its client base alongside Cheil Health clients.
Health professionals
Map My Gut provides a tool that allows health professionals to understand the microbial population of a person’s gut in order to provide nutritional and health advice, and help diagnose and treat a range of conditions including irritable bowel syndrome, allergies, diabetes, obesity, colitis and autoimmune diseases. Map My Gut also intends to expand it’s offering into the consumer space.
The company, which is run by the professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College, Tim Spector, will expand rapidly this year, with plans to launch an app and a product range. Cheil Health will now create the marketing strategy to launch Map My Gut to market. Spector is the author of bestseller ‘The Diet Myth’.
Paul Hammersley, the UK group chief executive of Cheil, said: “Cheil Health will provide transformational experiences by combining technology and creativity in this exciting and growing sector”.
