written by Ben Adams, Fierce Pharma

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.

In recent years, pharma companies, and specifically pure-play pharma product campaigns, have seen a dearth of wins at the world’s premier creativity event, Cannes Lions. This year, however, pharma came roaring back.

In the Pharma Lions category, Novartis won the biggest prize, the Grand Prix, for its prostate cancer screening project “Relax Your Tight End,” created with Minneapolis-based advertising agency Fallon.

The campaign grew out of Novartis’ 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.

In the commercial, Enya’s classic song “Only Time” 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.

“Have you ever in your life seen tight ends this relaxed?” Arians asks. “You know what these tight ends are so relaxed about? Prostate cancer screenings. They’ve learned there’s a simple, finger-free blood test.”

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: “Relax your tight end.”

Pharma Lions jury President Tracey Brader, chief strategy and innovation officer at Omnicom Health, said of the winning campaign: “What 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.”

In total, the Pharma Lions category received 236 entries and awarded seven Lions: one Grand Prix, one Gold, two Silver and three Bronze.

The Gold this year went to Ogilvy Health’s campaign for Viatris’ Viagra and its Blue Brands: “Make Love Last.” 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’s messaging while steering clear of regulatory barriers.

Novartis also received a Silver award for its “Relax Your Tight End” campaign in the Cinema, TV and Digital Content — Unbranded Product subcategory. “The Safe Pack,” created by VML Madrid for TuPharma 365, also received a Silver Lion.

The campaign “revolutionizes” 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.

Gilead Sciences Canada, Tata 1mg and Jazz Pharmaceuticals rounded out the Pharma Lions winners with Bronze awards. Gilead and The Local Collective won for “Animal Attraction,” Tata 1mg and Humour Me won for “Sawaal Uthao,” and Jazz and 21GRAMS won for “See a Seizure.”

Klick Health also swept the healthcare company awards, taking top honors for both Healthcare Network of the Year and Healthcare Agency of the Year.

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.

Featuring Work by Production Designer Melanie Mandl

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