As the Cannes Lions festival winds down after a jam-packed week of creative inspiration, thought-provoking talks and successful strategies, we’ve got some final insights and takeaways for pharma and healthcare.
This is Day 4 of our series, "The Daily Dose." Read Day 3 here, Day 2 here, and Day 1 here.
How do you take an advanced material technology like transparent solar cells and get customers to care about it? Ask Hyundai. Its latest innovation, a transparent “Nano Cooling Film,” can cut temperatures inside a hot car by 20 degrees. That’s great news for cities’ raising temperatures due to global warming, but Hyundai’s problem was how to educate people. They first went the standard publicity route with informational materials and explanations, but Hyundai wanted people to have a deeper understanding.
They found an ideal case study city in Lahore, Pakistan, where it’s very hot, people don’t open their windows because of air pollution and running air conditioners is expensive. Oh, and the country also forbids window tinting.
But Hyundai only had a 3% market share in Pakistan so putting the film on only Hyundai cars wouldn’t have made a big splash. Instead, they offered to put it on any car brand. The creativity? Hyundai realized Pakistani drivers like to put stickers on their cars, so they created a “Made Cooler by Hyundai” sticker that went on every car that got the window film.
And suddenly, the term “Nano Cooling Film” was all over the news and social media with thousands more requests. Hyundai turned the effort into a short film (debuting on Sunday on YouTube) about the heat and pollution in Lahore and Hyundai’s car solution.
“As a researcher, this (campaign) was an amazing opportunity in context for our product,” said Min Jae Lee, a senior research engineer at Hyundai Motor Group.
Takeaway: Fly your science flag! Figure out creative ways to explain, show and make connections between the scientific medicine innovations that can sound complicated (just like Hyundais’ Nano Cooling Film) but that make people and patients’ lives bet
Moderna’s chief brand officer Kate Cronin joined CMO spotlight discussion with marketing chiefs from Pepsico and TikTok in a wide- ranging conversation around their jobs and creativity. But Cronin was the only one talking about mRNA and cancer vaccines.
“Every product, vaccine or drug we talk about is going to have mRNA in it. And so we talk about it, but we have to bring it down to a level where people want to learn about it and they care about it. So how do you unlock that in a creative way?” she said.
Moderna found that its scientists are “clever and creative” in the way they talk about their science, she said. So they created an in-house “Coffee Break” video series where scientists talk about things like viruses and why germs cause sniffles in one person and coughing in another.
Takeaway: The Covid pandemic made many people aware of mRNA, but Moderna keeps the spotlight on it in marketing campaigns. Consider how to market around your own groundbreaking drug or R&D innovations or scientists, especially on social media where it’s easier to test and experiment.
After writing about Google and Gemini AI yesterday, we promised to reveal Microsoft’s AI take today, and as expected, there were some similarities. Microsoft’s head of its AI at Work business, Jared Spataro, demonstrated its Copilot AI interface with a focus on how it can help people at work.
For example, when Spataro got an email from someone he couldn’t recall ever meeting, he prompted Copilot to find out how he knew the person. The AI engine quickly searched email and LinkedIn and gave him a list of specific interactions.
“Most people treat Copilot or ChatGPT or Gemini kind of like a search engine - they’re looking for those magical unicorns. But that’s not the way you work with this technology. You work back and forth in a very iterative fashion - that’s the pattern for the future,” he said.
At the e.l.f. beauty and social media talk, Viral Nation’s chief business development officer Emma Ferrara said influencer marketing agency uses AI to help vet influencers.
“We have a brand safety tool that leverages AI, which has become incredibly important in our space, as we’re partnering with creators that helps us understand if that partnership is a match. Does this creator align with our values? Are they authentic? And would this be a good partnership?”
Takeaway: AI use in marketing continues to be a hot topic, and maybe still gets a little too much hype. But practical real-world uses – surfacing insights from email or personal notes, and brand compatibility – are already happening. With 82% of people (Microsoft’s stat) saying AI helps them be more creative, look beyond time management and data crunching to think about the creative possibilities in physician or patient communications.
Alongside AI as one of the hot topic of Cannes was social media. Influencers, celebrities, athletes, heritage brands and up-and-coming disruptors all touted social strategies with lots of talk about marketing moving to a social-first mindset.
“Social is more than just influencers – that’s part of the puzzle. But it’s creators. It’s content. It’s community. It’s paid. It’s email. It’s experiential and partnerships. And it’s how all those pieces come together,” Ferrara said. “Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, social first is becoming a big part of the conversation.”
