Bayer, GSK’s ViiV among health and wellness winners at Cannes creativity festival: #CannesLions2023

Brands are redefining what it means to be in the health and wellness category at this year’s Cannes Lions advertising creative festival.

The 37 winners featured a handful of pharma and consumer health brands, including Bayer and ViiV Healthcare, alongside others such as Adidas and Spanish mobile phone operator Movistar. The Grand Prix winner, “The Last Performance” by Partners Life, teamed up with a leading New Zealand murder mystery show to raise awareness for the country’s high rate of underinsurance.

Neill Brown

“Health and wellness is everywhere,” health and wellness jury member and IPG Health Canada president Neill Brown told Endpoints News. “Every company and every brand should think about what their potential role could be in driving a better world for health and wellness.”

In “The Last Performance,” characters from “The Brokenwood Mysteries” come back to life before the credits roll to stress the importance of life insurance.

“Well, I didn’t see this coming,” a woman says with a grin as she opens her eyes to a table in the morgue. “Anyone could end up here: no pulse, no clothes, no life insurance.”

Brown said the campaign highlights a key theme among this year’s winners: “purpose-driven work.” In this case, creators blended advertising and entertainment in a way that was unexpected and “very effective,” he added.

“Simplicity and authentic storytelling were really what helped to break through category norms,” Brown said. “So simple you could describe it on a napkin.”

A total of 1,297 entries in the health and wellness category — up 7% from last year’s 1,213 entries — were narrowed down to a short list of 128, from which 37 winners were selected.

Publicis also won this year’s separate category Grand Prix for Good for its Memorial Sloan Kettering-partnered “Working with Cancer” campaign, which has inspired more than 600 organizations to pledge job security for employees who are diagnosed with cancer. Big-name companies, including Pfizer, Walmart, Bank of America and more, have made the pledge. The campaign also took home Gold and Bronze Lions in the health and wellness category.

“Working with Cancer stopped us in our tracks,” health and wellness jury president and COO of VMLY&R Chicago Mel Routhier said in a news release. “We not only saw a brilliantly creative idea, but we also saw a globally impactful one—with scale, inclusivity and the real potential to change employee care forever.”

Another theme this year was sex education, Routhier said at the award ceremony on Monday.

That includes “Daniel’s Apartment” from GSK’s ViiV Healthcare, which claimed a Silver Lion for its efforts to reduce stigma around HIV. As part of the campaign, GSK and partner organizations (including Sra. Rushmore, Madrid) listed a want ad for a roommate. The ad gained interest, but after hearing that the current tenant has HIV, a majority of inquirers didn’t call back. With data from the experiment as well as a social listening session, GSK then began combating misinformation around HIV.

“For 40 years, GSK’s ViiV Healthcare has been taking care of people with HIV to make their lives better and as normal as anyone else,” the campaign states. “But there’s something you can’t treat, even with state-of-the-art pills: the stigma.”

Then there was sex and trees. Bayer’s “Diversitree Project” took home a Gold Lion for its efforts to plant more “female” trees in the hopes of alleviating allergies. Though it has been disputed, some experts have claimed that city planners’ preference for pollen-producing “male” trees contributes to seasonal allergy season. Bayer’s Claritin brand has partnered with Energy BBDO, Chicago and the Arbor Day Foundation to ship “female” trees to 46 states and has committed to planting 1 million of them by 2040.

Bayer’s “Welcome to Acid Town” Talcid for heartburn with Berlin’s PEIX Healthcare Communication was shortlisted, as well as Doner and J&J consumer health spinoff Kenvue’s “Aveeno Baby Eczema Equality” campaign, and another by Publicis for Haleon’s Sensodyne toothpaste.

Technology featured heavily again this year, Brown said. One standout was Movistar’s “Safelist” campaign, submitted by VMLY&R in Santiago, Chile, which won a Silver Lion for its mission to help women who feel unsafe on a taxi or rideshare trip.

“It still came down to human creativity at the end of the day to make that emotional connection,” Brown said. “The power of human creativity has not been supplanted by technology, not this year and I don’t think for quite some time to come.”

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