The pitch for Rx&O started with a polite no. When the founders of X&O called Jessica Ehrhardt to ask if she’d join their network as an expert, she turned them down on the spot — then offered something bigger.
“No, but I’ll build you a health vertical,” she told them. “And they were just like, who’s this person?”
A few conversations later, X&O had its newest practice and Ehrhardt had the title of Managing Partner, Rx&O. The vertical brings the agency’s sprint-based, anonymous-expert model into healthcare and pharma — a category most shops treat as a place where good creative goes to die in legal review.
Getting the scissors out
Co-founder Brett Banker is blunt about why pharma was next. “It was about getting the scissors out, no doubt, and cutting through a lot of that red tape.”
He’d done time on the OTC side at a previous agency and watched it get treated like a punishment posting. “It’s not always given the best talent strategically and creatively,” he says. The X&O thesis flips that — point the best brains at the hardest problems, where the impact runs deepest.
The narwhal who speaks both languages
Ehrhardt studied neuroscience at UPenn, authored clinical research and was Harvard Medical School-bound before a “quarter-life crisis” rerouted her. She loved learning the science. She didn’t love practicing it.
“I’m uniquely fluent in science, story and also chaos,” she says. Banker has a different word for it — where most agencies hunt unicorns, Ehrhardt calls herself a narwhal. “Anything with a horn will do,” he laughs.
Death by process, round 82
The problem Rx&O is built to solve isn’t regulation. It’s the machinery around it. Ehrhardt describes life-changing products trapped inside death-by-process marketing models — 72 rounds of digital sales aids, 40 people on a call, accountability diluted until no one’s steering.
“The model became optimized for process, not impact,” she says. “Think about when you start a project, how excited you are. By month seven and round 82, the light is gone.”
Co-founder Eric Segal has watched clients arrive already defeated. “Everyone else had almost given up. It just felt like you could get a sense from them that they felt trapped.”
Compliance is real. Mediocrity is optional.
The misconception, Ehrhardt argues, is that the rules sand the humanity off the work. They don’t. “Compliance is real, but mediocrity is totally optional.”
Her fix is a translation layer — pairing X&O’s 260-person network with medical and scientific minds who can defend a great idea against a roomful of intimidatingly intelligent doctors and regulatory lawyers. Too often, she says, nobody can. “You go towards what’s safe, and then you go through that battle enough, and you don’t have the fight in you again.”
She still has the fight. “If nobody remembers your message, that message has failed.”
The CMO’s secret weapon
Ask Ehrhardt where Rx&O wants to land and the answer is specific. Not a replacement for big agencies at scale — a button you press when the stakes are too high to wait.
“Put up the bat signal,” she says. “When we can’t get this wrong, when there’s no time, let’s just go get the expert team at Rx&O.” The CMO’s secret weapon, in other words. Segal puts the ambition plainly: this industry isn’t just ripe for disruption. “It deserves it.”
Learn more
X&O
Jessica Ehrhardt LinkedIn
Brett Banker LinkedIn
Eric Segal LinkedIn
X & O LinkedIn
Contact: br***@***xo.co | er**@***xo.co
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
