AUSTIN & CHICAGO (January 10, 2018) – HCB Health, one of the country’s leading healthcare communications agencies, recently hired veteran healthcare digital expert, Colin Foster, to lead its flourishing digital practice. As HCB Health‘s first chief digital officer, Foster is responsible for all things digital, production, project management and information technology. He is expanding HCB’s digital offerings across the entire agency, providing new products to elevate its clients’ businesses and influencer engagement, and boosting its staff’s digital competency.
“I’m very excited to join and be part of HCB’s vibrant, dynamic and client-service culture,” Foster commented. “This is a terrific opportunity to help lead and build all things digital for the agency and its client programs. Digital is business so business has to be digital. We’re going to deepen our capabilities around research analytics, social media, influencer engagement, multi-channel programing, mobile strategy, agile production and delivery, and much more,” Foster stated.
“We are extremely fortunate to have Colin and his impressive experience and expertise on our team,” explained HCB Health CEO Kerry Hilton. “He’s boosting digital integration for our clients’ marketing programs and providing mentorship and learning for our digital-eager staff. Colin’s intelligence, experience ramping and scaling growth, positive and team-oriented attitude, and deep client and agency digital & social healthcare experience made him the perfect fit for HCB and this crucial role,” Hilton added.
“Our ability to develop nimble but powerful digital analytics to serve as essentially a giant listening tool for HCB and our clients really supports the agency’s focus on listening and responsiveness,” Foster added.
The primary offerings Foster will build out for HCB and its clients include:
- Research analytics: Influencer identification, online landscape analysis (search, social, online behaviors and affinities, competitive analysis, etc.), HCP KOL/KOI mapping, segmentation, customer journeys and much more.
- Org-wide digital strategy: Beyond the tactics, helping build the infrastructure to enable scale while mitigating risk – CoE, policies/SOPs/guidelines/playbooks, capability development, training/adoption, digital registries, functional design, measurement strategy, etc.
- Expanded social capability: Channel development, paid social, influencer activation, community mgmt., social congress strategy and support.
- Smart digital-delivery platforms: Content capsules, agile content studio, and much more.
- Innovation sessions (internally and for/with clients) to help accelerate digital change.
- Agile production model to help us integrate and accelerate delivery to clients
With more than 20 years’ experience in the digital space, Foster has become a respected, trusted innovator who consistently and successfully enlists top executives to fully embrace the power of digital.
He has played key roles helping global companies strategize, plan, and execute brand-specific, integrated global marketing & communications programs for customers across the U.S., Europe and several emerging global markets. Foster also has extensive experience driving integrated marketing tactics, such as social media, patient compliance programs, multi-channel disease awareness campaigns, search marketing campaigns and more.
Prior to joining HCB, Foster was managing director and leader of W2O Group’s social media and influencer engagement practice, based in Austin. Before that, he was with Novartis for eight years – most recently serving as the global head of social media at the global headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. Foster has also held leadership roles with agencies in Montreal and Buenos Aires, and speaks French and Spanish with relative fluency.
About HCB Health
HCB Health is an independent, full-service healthcare communications agency with offices in Austin and Chicago. The firm is strategically structured to serve its clients through three specialized divisions: BioPharma, MedTech, and Health & Wellness. Each division is designed to serve the specific nuances of the client need. The firm’s independence enables it to be more nimble and responsive to clients’ needs, take more risks, and be less constrained than larger agency networks. HCB has built a team of extraordinarily talented, deeply authentic people who share a common vision of bringing brands into the conversation of healthcare.
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