Allergan’s UK comms department picked up the Pegasus Award for In-House Team of the Year at last week’s Communiqué Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.
The four-strong team were faced with a year of seismic change during 2016, foremost of which was the failed Allergan-Pfizer merger. The $160bn deal was set to create the industry’s biggest player, until it was called off in April last year.
In addition to that planned-for-merger, 2016 also saw Allergan sell its generics business to Teva and make 11 acquisitions, including a $2.9bn agreement for regenerative medicine firm LifeCell.
During this time it was up to Allergan’s International Communications and Public Relations team to manage both the change and Allergan’s reputation with internal and external audiences.
To do this, and also deliver ongoing product and disease awareness comms, Allergan’s team focused on the business, its customers and people.
Commenting on the award, the Communiqué judges said: “This was clearly a united team that is dynamic and passionate about their work. They had a very structured approach and obviously knew what they were doing.
“Faced with big challenges and changes in 2016 they displayed a great set of strengths between them – we could really feel that they’d lived the whole thing.”
The team oversaw several strategic communications programmes that delivered meaningful benefits to customers and patients, and bought employees with them on Allergan’s new corporate journey – efforts that saw them begin to gel around a new ‘BOLD’ culture.
Run by PMLiVE’s publisher the PMGroup, the Communiqué Awards recognise and reward outstanding work in healthcare communications across local, European and international markets.
* See all the 2017 Communiqué Awards results