Business ProfileforPublicis Health, LLC

The following describes a government action that has been resolved by either a settlement or a decision by a court or administrative agency. If the matter is being appealed, it will be noted below.

On Feb. 1, 2024, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that a co-led a coalition of every attorney general in the nation has secured $350 million from Publicis Health, LLC (Publicis) for the company’s role in the opioid crisis in New York and throughout the United States. Publicis, part of the French media conglomerate Publicis Groupe, S.A., is one of the world’s largest healthcare advertising companies and developed predatory and deceptive marketing strategies for Purdue Pharma L.P. (Purdue Pharma) in order to increase prescriptions and sales of opioids such as OxyContin, ultimately fueling the opioid epidemic. This is the first settlement with an advertising agency for its role in the opioid crisis. New York will receive $19,176,750.60 as a result of the agreement, which will be used to fund opioid abatement, treatment, and prevention.

From 2010 through 2019, Publicis worked with Purdue Pharma to develop marketing campaigns and materials promoting opioids including OxyContin, Butrans, and Hysingla. Publicis was responsible for creating advertisements and materials, such as pamphlets and brochures, that promoted OxyContin as safe and unable to be abused, even though this claim was not true. In addition to the campaigns it created for Purdue Pharma, Publicis conspired with McKinsey & Company, Inc. (McKinsey) and Practice Fusion, Inc. (Practice Fusion) to push false and deceptive strategies to increase Purdue’s opioid sales.

Publicis implemented Purdue Pharma’s predatory “Evolve to Excellence” scheme, developed by McKinsey, which targeted the doctors who prescribed the most OxyContin and flooded them with sales calls and marketing. These doctors would receive an increasing barrage of messaging touting the “abuse-deterrent” aspects of OxyContin and the so-called benefits of increasing patients’ dosages, often unnecessarily. This and other Publicis strategies were designed to deceptively expand the usage of opioids at higher doses for longer periods of time by more patients, regardless of whether some of those patients were not medically appropriate candidates for long-term opioid therapy.

These aggressive marketing campaigns worked: they resulted in a dramatic rise in opioid prescriptions nationwide, which in turn caused a devastating rise in the prevalence of opioid abuse, addiction, and overdose deaths.

Today’s agreement secures $350 million to be paid within 60 days to address the opioid crisis and prohibits Publicis from accepting any future contracts or engagements related to the marketing or sale of opioids. Publicis is also required to release hundreds of thousands of internal documents detailing its work for Purdue and other opioid manufacturers, as well as communications with consultants like McKinsey and Practice Fusion, to be included in an online document repository for the purposes of public disclosure.