As a sweltering heat wave hit Europe, a swath of pharma companies and healthcare marketing agencies from around the world descended on southern France chasing a hot streak of their own.<\/p>\n
In recent years, pharma companies, and specifically pure-play pharma product campaigns, have seen a dearth of wins at the world\u2019s premier creativity event, Cannes Lions. This year, however, pharma came roaring back.<\/p>\n
In the Pharma Lions category, Novartis won the biggest prize, the Grand Prix, for its prostate cancer screening project \u201cRelax Your Tight End,\u201d created with Minneapolis-based advertising agency Fallon.<\/p>\n
The campaign grew out of Novartis\u2019 minute-long commercial that made its broadcast debut during Super Bowl LX on Feb. 8 and brought together a handful of familiar faces from the NFL to promote prostate-specific antigen blood tests for prostate cancer detection.<\/p>\n
In the commercial, Enya\u2019s classic song \u201cOnly Time\u201d plays over a montage of current and former professional football players, all tight ends and all in full uniform, chilling out in various ways: floating in a pool, practicing yoga, having their hair brushed and painting a portrait of former Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians, to name just a few.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you ever in your life seen tight ends this relaxed?\u201d Arians asks. \u201cYou know what these tight ends are so relaxed about? Prostate cancer screenings. They\u2019ve learned there\u2019s a simple, finger-free blood test.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arians, a prostate cancer survivor himself, goes on to note that about 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with the disease in their lifetimes. From there, Arians asks one of his former players, Rob Gronkowski, to pause his own soothing activity of brushing a horse to share an all-important lesson: \u201cRelax your tight end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pharma Lions jury President Tracey Brader, chief strategy and innovation officer at Omnicom Health, said of the winning campaign: \u201cWhat makes work Grand Prix? When the whole is more than the sum of great individual parts. And this work ticked all the boxes. Based on a relatable human truth. Appropriate to the audience. Deploying celebrity authentically. Integrated from the Super Bowl to Social to PR. Bold. Humorous. All while addressing a genuine issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
In total, the Pharma Lions category received 236 entries and awarded seven Lions: one Grand Prix, one Gold, two Silver and three Bronze.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Gold this year went to Ogilvy Health\u2019s campaign for Viatris\u2019 Viagra and its Blue Brands: \u201cMake Love Last.\u201d The campaign was a specific erectile dysfunction project based in China, where DTC advertising is prohibited and talking about sex is also something of a cultural taboo. The idea was to use color and language to evoke the campaign\u2019s messaging while steering clear of regulatory barriers.<\/p>\n
Novartis also received a Silver award for its \u201cRelax Your Tight End\u201d campaign in the Cinema, TV and Digital Content \u2014 Unbranded Product subcategory. \u201cThe Safe Pack,\u201d created by VML Madrid for TuPharma 365, also received a Silver Lion.<\/p>\n
The campaign \u201crevolutionizes\u201d pharmaceutical packaging, VML said, making medication safer for older patients by using color-coordinated and bold designs to help them avoid mixing up their meds.<\/p>\n
Gilead Sciences Canada, Tata 1mg and Jazz Pharmaceuticals rounded out the Pharma Lions winners with Bronze awards. Gilead and The Local Collective won for \u201cAnimal Attraction,\u201d Tata 1mg and Humour Me won for \u201cSawaal Uthao,\u201d and Jazz and 21GRAMS won for \u201cSee a Seizure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Klick Health also swept the healthcare company awards, taking top honors for both Healthcare Network of the Year and Healthcare Agency of the Year.<\/p>\n
Ogilvy Health placed second in both categories. Real Chemistry took third for Healthcare Network of the Year, while 21GRAMS placed third for Healthcare Agency of the Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a sweltering heat wave hit Europe, a swath of pharma companies and healthcare marketing agencies from around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[127],"tags":[57210,1001,27038,16015,146,206,2536,57211,4117],"class_list":["post-117464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-novartis","tag-cannes-lions-health","tag-france","tag-gilead-sciences","tag-jazz-pharmaceuticals","tag-marketing","tag-novartis","tag-pharma","tag-pharma-week-content-hub","tag-prostate-cancer"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117122673066517543","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}