McKinney Health Built a Practice on Listening

People increasingly turn to Reddit, social platforms and AI with health questions. In peer communities, they trade frustrations, workarounds and victories. McKinney thinks healthcare brands should be listening.

This week, McKinney Health — the agency’s health, pharma and wellness practice — launched L.E.A.P. (Living Experience Ambassador Programs) with McKinney. Laura Catalusci, formerly of IPG Health, joins to lead it as Executive Director of Advocacy.

An ambassador is a whole person

Catalusci brings more than two decades across CPG, health and pharma, and a clear starting point.

“People don’t become ambassadors and stop being patients, caregivers, parents or partners,” Catalusci says. “They’re living all of those experiences at once.”

L.E.A.P. is built for that fuller picture. The practice helps brands find ambassadors quickly, then keeps the relationship going to surface the human stories, needs and cultural context around them.

Every interaction counts as intelligence

The model treats every interaction with its Ambassador Community as intelligence. That covers individual conversations, surveys, culture and pulse checks, Q&As, co-creation and “follow along” experiences.

What comes back informs strategy, creative, education, communications, advocacy and brand experiences. McKinney describes it as a continuous loop between the people living the experience and the brands working to support them.

Behind the loop sits the agency’s experience navigation team, which sweats the details so patients don’t have to.

A founder twice over

At IPG Health, Catalusci co-founded YuzuYello, a patient support and services capability, and YuzuZest, a dedicated ambassador agency. She’s also a Master Certified Health Education Specialist and a PM360 Elite 100 Master Educator.

Michael McNamara, Managing Director at McKinney, sees room to rework a familiar model. “Traditional ambassador programs often reduce people to talking points,” McNamara says.

Pairing Catalusci’s advocacy expertise with what McNamara calls the agency’s “consumer creative pedigree” helps brands “look past clinical data, listen more deeply and build authentic experiences.”

Biogen and Galderma got the first look

McKinney has introduced the practice to two clients on its roster so far: Biogen and Galderma.

Catalusci will work alongside the experience navigation, strategy and creative teams, bringing advocacy into the work from the start. It’s a natural extension for McKinney Health, which launched in 2022 and has made Medical Marketing + Media’s Agency 100 list three years running.

Worthy of their attention

The agency sums up the premise this way: “understand people deeply, identify what matters to them and create experiences worthy of their attention.”

Which is another way of saying: listen first.

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McKinney
McKinney Health
Contact: 919-313-0802