How 21 Grams is Building Its Own House(s) of Style

Taking an agency within an agency approach

21 Grams wants clients to know that there’s deep meaning behind all of the style it has built in recent times to conduct business. As the agency celebrates six years in 2024, it wanted to bring back the entrepreneurial energy it was founded on. In March, it launched six “houses” with each one offering something different to clients, though all are built on the same premise: to make the companies it works with have a sense of, well, home. 

Part of this move is due to the high growth 21 Grams experienced, rising from 40 in 2018 to roughly 400 in 2021 after it was acquired by Real Chemistry in 2020. But there are other critical reasons to create these six separate houses. Frank Mazzola, founder, says the intentions for the overall agency is to make its mark on the industry by demonstrating how it’s operating differently such that others can follow suit. 

“We want to be the most influential healthcare agency,” he says. “In ten years, we want people to look back and see the legacy of what we did to change the industry.”

Kat Piscatelli, agency group president, emphasizes the support it created internally: “This structure moves to ensure that our next generation of leaders have that baton pass to them,” she says.

Mazzola and Piscatelli now serve as cross-functional co-leads.

Moreover, the new structure gives more ownership to its ad execs.

“It’s the idea that if you have smaller parts of the organization, you allow people to almost run it like an agency within an agency,” says Mazzola. “It provides the scope to be more creative, to have a better relationship with the client, and to do things in a more efficient way. And really drive the ability to build a sort of a subculture within 21 Grams. It’s been an exciting process for us.”

Mazzola acknowledges that health advertising is not where it should be—and this is a key driver in creating its six-house structure. He points to the lackluster given to the space “because it’s medicine” while brands like the big sneaker, fast food and snack brands can deliver those memorable experiences.

“Our point of view is that our clients deserve it more, because the information is vital, and if they miss those things, they’re missing something that can affect their lives,” says Mazzola.

The six houses are restaurant-themed: Our House, Mirebelle’s —with ‘rebel’ at its core, The Bar, Duck & Waffle, The Diner and Zero. 

“Each has its own identity and hospitality, based on the ‘restaurant’ a client wants to enter,” explains Piscatelli.

The six represent ideals within advertising like being unafraid to fail when it comes to the creative and working under the notion that anything is possible.

Mazzola notes that the inspiration for the restaurant style came from a discussion at Cannes Lions a year ago which boils down to this: foreigners dining at a New York hot spot were lamenting that the only thing they didn’t get to enjoy was a dirty water hot dog. The general manager ran out, got one and dressed it up to look like gourmet food. The point? Offering up something no one else was doing. And the differentiator was the hospitality–not the food.

“So we adopted that as something that we think about as an agency of ‘how do you make people feel like they’re cared for?’ ‘How do you surprise them?’ ‘How do you be more thoughtful than they would think you would be?’,” says Mazzola. “That became a big part of how we do things.”

Piscatelli highlights that the houses share account leadership, project management leadership, strategic leadership, medical strategy leadership, creative leadership, “so that when they’re making decisions, they’re thinking about them from a cross-functional perspective. It’s important that we are not account-led, creative-led or led by any particular department. We are all in this together,” she says.

It’s a point of pride that 21 Grams attracted Harold Einstein, known for directing Super Bowl commercials, to work with The Bar to create a humorous and informative spot on bunions. Mazzola points out that Einstein was vocal that he would never work in healthcare advertising, saw the script—and the rest lives in ad land.

This is the crux of 21 Grams’ structural motivation. 

“People love ideas, and they love to be entertained, and if they’re going to be interrupted, you better reward them with something that feels at least a little bit valuable,” Mazzola says.