Pharma returns to Cannes Lions, with Pfizer and Eli Lilly execs expected to take the stage

Pharma and healthcare ads may no longer have a dedicated track at the Cannes Lions advertising festival, but expect plenty of industry insiders and health-driven themes on the French Riviera next week.

Angela Hwang

Pfizer’s chief commercial officer Angela Hwang and global chief marketing officer Drew Panayiotou are set to sit down on Monday with media magnate Arianna Huffington to lay out Pfizer’s creative vision and a “blueprint for creative transformation.”

Claire Gillis, CEO of VMLY&R Health, pointed to the significance of a commercial leader like Hwang landing on one of the main Cannes stages alongside Panayiotou.

Drew Panayiotou

“Hopefully, this is just the start of pharma becoming a prominent voice on the creative stage at Cannes Lions,” she said via email. “The more people from pharma that take part at festivals like Cannes, the better. Active participation can trigger a wonderful cross-fertilization of ideas from mainstream into pharma (and vice versa), and we can only benefit from it.”

Lina Polimeni, Eli Lilly’s chief corporate brand officer, is also expected to speak on Monday as part of a panel with other marketing chiefs including Pepsico’s chief consumer and marketing officer, while Patricia Corsi, Bayer’s chief marketing and information officer for consumer health, is scheduled to lead a session with actor, director and producer Halle Berry about modern marketing and women’s intimate health. Berry was recently named chief comms officer for a probiotic company.

No longer just ‘good enough for healthcare’

The big industry event happens Monday night when the winners of the Cannes Lions pharma and health and wellness awards are officially announced. The entries have not yet been revealed — the shortlists come out Sunday — but Cannes attendees are already looking forward to finalist and winner entries.

Klick Health’s chief creative officer Rich Levy said he’s seen a lot of great campaigns this year, and he expects pharma and health work to win awards in traditional Cannes categories like film or craft. “Part of the reason Cannes integrated health and wellness and pharma into the main show is that mainstream pharma companies and healthcare agencies raised their game, where it was no longer the work is ‘good enough for healthcare,” he said. “It was just plain good work.”

Mike Guarino, IPG Health’s chief commercial officer, agrees that health and pharma ad work isn’t really seen as separate from mainstream advertising anymore. In a post-pandemic world, health and wellness are integrated into every aspect of life, he said.

“A lot of the work that we’re seeing — and expect to see — is probably going to have a social-conscious bent, looking at the way that clients, brands and companies play a role in the everyday life of people and how that links not only to their health overall, but what it means from a societal point of view,” he said.

Trends to watch: AI, personalized medicine, and equity

Meanwhile, Alice Choi, IPG Health’s EVP of client solutions, is getting a close-up look at all the pharma entries as a judge. She along with others noted the likelihood of artificial intelligence applications in both creative entries and conference discussions.

“Even though it’s not going to replace creativity and ideation, it’s going to be interesting to see how it supports and enhances the creative process,” Choi said, adding that she’s also expecting to see more personalized content for people and patients that goes hand in hand with the trend toward personalized medicine.

Diversity, inclusion and equity were popular themes at Cannes Lions last year — there was no live show in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic — but industry insiders are expecting big numbers this year.

Claire Gillis

“Equity has been a common theme for health creative for years, highlighting disparities driven by racial, socioeconomic or gender biases,” VMLY&R Health’s Gillis said. “However, much of that work has focused on non-pharma brands. This year, I hope to see more pharma brands joining the conversation. Pharma is awash with powerful campaigns highlighting the inequities in health systems that prevent people accessing life-changing medicines and diagnostics – and promoting solutions that offer a route to more equitable outcomes.”

WPP Group is hosting an offsite event focusing on women’s health and equity, centered around new data from its ongoing research into women’s health. Grey Health & Wellness president Cassandra Sinclair will lead that discussion with Amy Litt, CMI Media Group’s VP of communications planning. The panel discussion that follows the research presentation includes Erica Taylor, Genentech’s chief marketing officer and one of WPP’s pharma clients.

They’ll dig into the data around inequalities in healthcare that women face and discuss what pharma marketers can, and are, doing about it, said Julie Hurvitz Aliaga, CMI’s EVP for innovation, content and partnerships.

“There needs to a unique and better way of looking at that dynamic nature of women,” Sinclair said. “Whether that’s presenting them in more everyday roles rather than stereotypical roles, it’s about highlighting women and their motivations and mindsets, versus their demographics and diagnostics.”

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