Two Ogilvy CommonHealth mainstays were inducted into the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame's Future Famers Program at an awards dinner held at the Pierre Hotel in New York on tuesday night (February 3). Account executive Lisa Gelbman, and content strategist Martha Walz, were both afforded the honour thanks to the work they have done over the past decade for Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide (OCHWW); a WPP and Ogilvy & Mather company made up of health behaviour experts, that houses and maintains individual Ogilvy CommonHealth and Ogilvy Healthworld brand identities within the marketplace.
Lisa Gelbman and Martha Walz were both inducted into the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame's Future Famers Program
Martha Wals (left) and Lisa Gelbman (right)
The organisation has spent the past decade recognising individuals who have made a lasting impression on healthcare advertising by inducting them into the Hall of Fame, and the Future Famers Award, marks those who the organisation feels are destined to make a significant impression on the industry in years to come. In order to be eligible for the award, recipients need to have been in medical advertising for five year or less, but must have made a significant contribution to the industry in that short time. According to an MAHF press release, potential recipients must also “Show a solid commitment to community service, either at a local or national level.” The MAHF was founded in 1996 in order to preserve the history of the medical advertising profession, and honour its founders. It's members currently include around three dozen leading healthcare agencies and medical publishers and is led by executive director David Gideon.
MAHF has spent the past decade recognising individuals who have made a lasting impression on healthcare advertising
The MAHF awards dinner
Walz works with the Ogilvy CommonHealth group in New Jersey, and has been with the team for over two years, whereas Gelbman, who works across the Hudson river in New York, at the Ogilvy Healthworld agency, has been with the group since 2012. They were both nominated as examples of young healthcare marketing professionals, who had made (and were continuing to make) a positive impact with their work in advertising on not only medical communications, but on society as a whole.
The news arrives less than a month after OCHWW was awarded a Silver in the DTC/DTP category in the 2014 PM360 Pharma Choice Awards
News of Walz and Gelbman's honours arrives less than a month after OCHWW was awarded a Silver in the DTC/DTP category in the 2014 PM360 Pharma Choice Awards for their work created to support a medication used to treat multiple sclerosis. The Pharma Choice Awards recognize the best healthcare creative campaigns and initiatives in 12 categories: Professional Campaign, Consumer and Professional Websites, Unbranded, Sales Aid, App, Print and Digital Self-Promotion, Video, DTC/DTP, Multichannel and Other. The winners were featured in the January 2015 issue of PM360, the leading health-marketing industry trade magazine.
