Holly Sutton, Journalista CEO (pictured left) and Zoe Bedford, CEO of ZPB Associates (pictured right)
ZPB Associates, a healthcare strategy and communications firm, has acquired Journalista to expand its PR offering.
Both agencies have been established for over ten years and have previously worked together to deliver a number of award winning campaigns.
The acquisition will combine Journalista’s offerings, which includes Healthcare UK, Big White Wall and Enterprise Research Centre, alongside ZPB’s clients. This includes Novartis, Amazon Web Services and Push Doctor.
“ZPB and Journalista operate in similar spaces, with shared values, mutually supportive services and a vision for making complex issues clearer for people across health and social care, research and digital,” said Holly Sutton, Journalista CEO and founder.
“Becoming part of ZPB means we can offer a stronger proposition to compete for the opportunities arising in the fusion of health and social care, research and digital,” she added.
The aim of the acquisition is to extend the combined reach of each company into research, digital health and pharma. When combined, the teams have previously worked for NHS England, health regulators, pharma companies, key sector media, hospital trusts and data firms.
The acquisition of Journalista provides ZPB with further expansion as part of an ongoing strategic growth programme, which was launched earlier this year.
“We know that clients prefer independent, highly-specialised consultancies like ZPB and Journalista, so this allows the two businesses to remain independent while having a bigger team with more resource to compete with some of the larger players,” said Zoe Bedford, ZPB Associates founder and CEO.