Phar­ma ad­ver­tis­ing has long been con­sid­ered sec­ond-tier when com­pared to the rest of the ad­ver­tis­ing in­dus­try. And there are some le­git­i­mate rea­sons why. Nike sneak­ers and Co­ca-Co­la so­da ads will like­ly al­ways be more en­ter­tain­ing or ex­cit­ing than reg­u­lat­ed cam­paigns for di­a­betes and heart dis­ease.

Still, the Cannes Li­ons ad­ver­tis­ing fes­ti­val of cre­ativ­i­ty was phar­ma and health­care ad­ver­tis­ing’s an­nu­al chance to shine. For the past eight years, phar­ma agen­cies and clients stood side by side with con­sumer com­pa­nies and agency hot­shots on the biggest ad­ver­tis­ing award stage in the world at the Palais in Cannes, France.

How­ev­er, some­thing changed this year. While the awards for phar­ma and health and well­ness were hand­ed out to wide­spread ap­plause on the first night of the show, for much of the rest of the time, health­care mar­ket­ing was rel­e­gat­ed to the back of the room and most­ly off the main stages.

The phar­ma and health and well­ness cat­e­go­ry award fi­nal­ists, for in­stance, were tucked in the back cor­ner of the base­ment of the main build­ing. Even peo­ple who want­ed to see the work com­plained that they had to search for them. On­ly three Cannes Li­ons of­fi­cial ses­sions this year cov­ered health or phar­ma ad­ver­tis­ing top­ics and were most­ly gen­er­al top­ics about cre­ativ­i­ty, di­ver­si­ty or em­pa­thy.

There were no phar­ma and health case study dis­sec­tions or deep dives in­to the unique chal­lenges in health and phar­ma ad­ver­tis­ing — and, maybe more im­por­tant­ly for the in­dus­try, there were no phar­ma ex­ec­u­tives on the Cannes stages as they have been in the past. Pa­tri­cia Cor­si was the lone phar­ma-con­nect­ed ex­ec­u­tive; she is the chief mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer of Bay­er Con­sumer Health and served as both a speak­er and health and well­ness ju­ry pres­i­dent.

Even among this year’s health and well­ness award win­ners, no gold prizes went to phar­ma com­pa­nies. Un­ex­pect­ed win­ners like Heineken and Harley David­son did, how­ev­er, take home the gold for their re­spec­tive vac­ci­na­tion and “Tough Tur­ban” cam­paigns.

There are two schools of thought about the dis­ap­pear­ance of Cannes Li­ons Health as an of­fi­cial pro­grammed track. On one hand, it sig­ni­fies the par­i­ty of the in­dus­try with big con­sumer brands, but on the oth­er hand, it al­so meant few­er con­ver­sa­tions, less net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties and an over­all dim­ming of the in­dus­tries’ pres­ences at Cannes Li­ons.

Rich Levy

“I would be ly­ing if I didn’t say that I was dis­ap­point­ed so far,” said Rich Levy, chief cre­ative of­fi­cer of Klick Health on the first day of the show. “When you’re talk­ing about a multi­bil­lion dol­lar in­dus­try in the US, I thought that 31 short list for phar­ma was re­mark­ably small … I don’t think it’s an ac­cu­rate view of the work that the in­dus­try is do­ing.”

Phar­ma and health and well­ness en­tries both were way down this year. To­tal phar­ma en­tries dropped to 298, down from 509 last year with 11 to­tal Li­on awards giv­en out. In health and well­ness, there were 1,213 en­tries, down from 1,300 last year. There were Grand Prix awards giv­en in both cat­e­gories, but this was the first year it was re­quired — in the past, judges could pass over a cat­e­go­ry for the top award if they thought it didn’t rise to the lev­el of Grand Prix.

For the sec­ond year in a row, the Grand Prix in the phar­ma cat­e­go­ry went to a non-phar­ma com­pa­ny. Dell Tech­nolo­gies and In­tel snagged the top prize for their voice app for peo­ple with mo­tor neu­ron dis­ease. The en­try — cre­at­ed by VM­LY&R New York and called “I Will Al­ways Be Me” — helps peo­ple with MND bank a dig­i­tal copy of their voice by read­ing a sto­ry book.

In the health and well­ness cat­e­go­ry, Maxx Flash’s mos­qui­to re­pel­lent cam­paign “The Killer Pack” took the top prize. The re­pel­lent is de­signed to ad­dress In­dia’s mos­qui­to prob­lem, with a biodegrad­able pack­ag­ing that kills mos­qui­toes out­side while a non­tox­ic coil fights them in­side.

Oth­er health cre­atives and ex­ec­u­tives agreed with Levy’s award as­sess­ment, but al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the lim­it­ed health con­tent. The health and phar­ma pan­els and award deep dives that were pre­sent­ed got sol­id re­views, but there were scant few in the of­fi­cial pro­gram, along with a hand­ful of un­of­fi­cial ones out­side the main venues.

Sev­er­al health agency net­works set up off-site slates of health­care and phar­ma pro­gram­ming — WPP Health and IPG Health both of­fered mul­ti­ple pan­els and dis­cus­sions at their own sites. CMI Me­dia Group host­ed a pan­el at the Pan­do­ra Beach pavil­ion on au­dio brand­ing, while oth­er agency cre­atives like Levy and Bernar­do Romero, along with Ogilvy Health’s Adam Hes­sel and both pan­els of judges for phar­ma and health and well­ness, at­tend­ed ses­sions and net­worked with oth­ers in the health com­mu­ni­ty.

Still, there just weren’t as many health and phar­ma peo­ple on the ground as there typ­i­cal­ly have been in the past as agen­cies cut back ros­ters of at­ten­dees and didn’t in­vite as many clients. That’s like­ly in part due to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic re­cov­ery year of Cannes Li­ons this year as well as bud­get con­sid­er­a­tions in gen­er­al.

Dana Maiman

Dana Maiman, CEO of IPG Health and a long-time Cannes Li­ons at­tendee said, “I’m hop­ing the changes hon­est­ly are just tem­po­rary. Be­cause I re­mem­ber when I first start­ed com­ing here — I think this may be my 10th one or so — but back then it was con­sol­i­dat­ed. It was re­al­ly lib­er­at­ing when it was fo­cused and bro­ken out, even though clear­ly there’s a lot of crossovers and all of that. But I think there is some­thing very spe­cial about cel­e­brat­ing the cre­ativ­i­ty in our world be­cause we can all agree it is more chal­leng­ing.”

Hes­sel, chief cre­ative of­fi­cer at Ogilvy Health, said one rea­son for few­er en­tries was heav­ier cu­ra­tion down to just a few this year, but added that no mat­ter the num­bers, Cannes and oth­er mar­ket­ing award shows still are im­por­tant for the in­dus­try.

“Just cel­e­brat­ing great work in any cat­e­go­ry is what the in­dus­try re­al­ly needs and al­so maybe to pull back a bit — every­body’s look­ing for that one crown jew­el, but there’s so much great work out there that should be cel­e­brat­ed,” he said, adding, “When clients see great work, they want that too, so that’s the bar.”

Cor­si, mean­while, said she wants to see more cre­ativ­i­ty from phar­ma mar­keters. She finds that cre­atives in the phar­ma in­dus­try are of­ten trained to be more con­ser­v­a­tive, be­cause if you cross the line, you face reg­u­la­tors — but she would like that to change.

“We re­al­ly be­lieve that there is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to raise the bar in this cat­e­go­ry,” she said. “Work in health and well­ness con­sis­tent­ly across the years has not been the most in­spir­ing.”

That doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean the work should be more com­pli­cat­ed. Ac­cord­ing to Cor­si, some­times the sim­plest idea is the best. What she wants to see, though, is more out­side-the-box think­ing.

A hand­ful of ex­ecs, in­clud­ing Cor­si, not­ed that the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has served as a wake-up call for phar­ma com­pa­nies dis­cov­er­ing what their role should be with pa­tients. Phar­ma ad­ver­tis­ing is be­com­ing more of a con­ver­sa­tion as op­posed to a one-off en­counter, Cor­si said. Even com­pa­nies like Wal­greens — which fa­cil­i­tat­ed the vac­ci­na­tion of more than 30 mil­lion Amer­i­cans — are tak­ing a new ap­proach to ad­ver­tis­ing.

Mel Routhi­er

“The pan­dem­ic, there’s no go­ing back. You can’t un­hear the bell, right? The bell’s been rung,” said Mel Routhi­er, chief cre­ative of­fi­cer of the WPP Wal­greens team. “It’s a good thing for us to take stock and say we can have more pur­pose as a brand.”

One thing that hasn’t changed this year? The lev­el of pas­sion that phar­ma cre­atives are bring­ing to the con­fer­ence.

Gena Pem­ber­ton

“What I’m tak­ing away now, that I guess maybe I didn’t re­al­ly ex­pect, is how much pas­sion peo­ple have in the work that they’re do­ing,” said first-time at­tendee Gena Pem­ber­ton, Om­ni­com Health Group’s chief di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty and in­clu­sion of­fi­cer. “[It’s] re­al­ly im­pact­ful to be able to talk with peo­ple in dif­fer­ent ar­eas, un­der­stand a lit­tle bit more about the work they’ve done, and just see­ing how ex­cit­ed every­body is to be to­geth­er again.”

In the end, the ques­tions re­main. Does Cannes Li­ons need a sep­a­rate phar­ma and health track? Or vice ver­sa, does phar­ma and health­care ad­ver­tis­ing need that spot­light at Cannes? The de­bate won’t be eas­i­ly set­tled.

Franklin Williams, di­rec­tor of ex­pe­ri­ence de­sign at Area 23 and a phar­ma judge, said, “It doesn’t re­al­ly mat­ter who’s do­ing the work as long as the tar­gets are be­ing hit. So I think that’s what you’re start­ing to see al­most as a trend and a theme. It doesn’t have to be, we did phar­ma be­cause we’re phar­ma. We did phar­ma be­cause we want­ed to do good.”

The dan­ger, of course, is that with­out broad­er in­clu­sion, spe­cif­ic con­tent and more awards, phar­ma may lose in­ter­est in Cannes.

“It be­comes a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy. And what I mean by that is few­er win­ners every year mean few­er en­tries the fol­low­ing year. And few­er en­tries mean few­er win­ners,” Levy said.

The German life science group Sartorius will be picking up French contract manufacturer Polyplus for the price of €2.4 billion, or $2.6 billion.

On Friday, Sartorius announced the acquisition through its French subgroup, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, which will be acquiring Polyplus from private investors ARCHIMED and WP GG Holdings IV. Polyplus has 270 employees and produces materials and components that go into making viral vectors that are used in cell and gene therapies. This includes DNA/RNA reagents as well as plasmid DNA. Polyplus has locations in France, Belgium, China and the US.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”