Welcome to the first day of The Daily Dose from VML Health at Cannes Lions. Discover the latest marketing insights and trends shaping the pharma and healthcare industries.
Checking in on panels, talks, awards, and people at Cannes Lions for insights and trends in pharma and healthcare
Pharma and Health & Wellness Awards
The first day of Cannes is important for the health folks with the announcement of the Pharma and Health & Wellness Lions winners. This year’s top prize, the Grand Prix, went to Siemens Healthcare for its campaign around its MRI machines that turns its scary sounds into imaginative storybook sounds for children. Judges pointed to the campaign’s innovative customer experience created from insights gleaned from actual young patients.
The Lions Health pharma awards overall were quieter-than-usual with only 7 winners out of 224 entries. (VML Health’s Biogen work for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) was one of those).
VML Health’s Head of Craft Naxto Diaz was one of the pharma judges and despite the fewer entries, he found plenty of creative inspiration in the trends around better customer experience, innovative product uses, more inclusivity and the increased use of humor.
Takeaway: Pharma needs to step up. There is plenty of evidence in the Cannes Lions awards that innovative marketing — both campaigns and solutions – can change patients’ lives and broader healthcare and even society. Ask us how we can help.
It’s not about the process, it’s not about the product, but about what else can we do as brands for patients? We’ve seen that changing for the past few years, but this is now confirmation pharma brands are embracing that.
Naxto Diaz
Head of Craft, VML Health
Social media influencers take center stage(s)
Social media influencers were everywhere on Monday, from celebrities like singer John Legend and model Chrissy Teigen to homegrown social media superstars like TikTok star Alix Earle; Summer Fridays’ beauty founder Marianna Hewitt; and MuslimGirl founder Amani Al-Khatahtbeh.
While only one has done pharma marketing – John Legend starred in VML’s Covid vaccine booster ads for Pfizer last year – healthcare brands are increasingly turning to social media marketing to reach consumers scrolling Instagram and TikTok for advice and insights about health.
One repeated key theme among the social creator crew was “authenticity.” As Teigen said, “We have very wise consumers now that really see through people who are just doing things for the money.”
But more than just an insincere pay-for-play are the lost opportunities. Authentic brand spokespeople can create social communities, build trust and inspire product confidence. That’s especially true for younger people for whom authenticity is a no-compromise necessity for the brands they support.
Al-Khatahtbeh said 48% of Gen Z is “willing to defy inflation to support authentic brands. These are kids that are willing to go broke to spend their money on brands that align with the values they believe in.”
Takeaway: Let’s think about patient social media ambassadors more broadly as cultural influencers. We can do the same kinds of things these celebrities and consumer social media stars do to build engaged audiences around health conditions. You don’t need 7 million followers like Alix Earle, but you can work with authentic values-driven patient advocates who speak the right language to connect with the target audience.
Doing pharma differently
Genentech’s Chief Marketing Officer Erica Taylor shared the stage with Mel Routhier, VML chief creative officer of health and wellness, talking about their pharma-agency relationship dynamic.
The two women come from opposite vantage points. Routhier is a traditional ad agency creative chief who didn’t have a healthcare background when she joined VML, while Taylor is a classically trained scientist who didn’t have creative background when she took over as Genentech CMO. Together, they’re thinking about “doing pharma differently.”
What does that mean? Strategies like “blending” new kinds of science and creative teams, hyper focusing on empathy by and taking extra-mile efforts to put themselves in patients’ shoes and celebrating shared company cultural values.
The worst thing you can do is get to mile 450 of 500 miles with your precious, perfect idea and then the attorneys say you can’t use it. You might not think a scientist can be creative but we can, and by extension, a lawyer can as well.
Erica Taylor
Chief Marketing Officer, Genentech
Doing pharma differently also means taking atypical approaches. One example? Inviting regulators on the teams to join the creative process early on. While that’s something Routhier didn’t imagine as a creative, in the end, the regulators and lawyers become more invested and engaged in the work and offer creative solutions.
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