Ogilvy & Mather London’s ‘Breathless choir’ campaign for Philips was awarded the Grand Prix in Pharma prize at the Lions Health awards.
The agency scooped the prestigious pharma prize at the awards ceremony on Friday night, which took place as part of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Group president of Publicis Healthcare Communications Alexandra von Plato presided over the section, and praised Ogilvy & Mather’s work for shifting the emphasis from product to patient in the “dry” medical devices category.
Explaining the judges’ decision, she said: “We believe their storytelling and narrative on a profound scale connected not just with the human story, but also actually sold the product in the most subtle and effective way.
“It’s a stunning example of cinematic storytelling in the medical devices industry and clearly breaks the mould.”
The Philips Breathless Choir video – view it on Youtube
Also taking home a Grand Prix at the awards was FCB (London)’s work for Pearson, ‘Project literacy’.
The illiteracy awareness campaign scooped the top prize in the health and wellbeing section, beating 2023 submissions and 46 shortlisted entries – a record for the competition, which is in its third year.
Jury president for the section Joshua Prince, chief marketing officer of Omnicom Health Group, said that there was initially debate as to whether the campaign should be included in the category.
However, he explained: “with ‘healthification’ of everything, the more that we looked at this work, the more we were struck by the sheer, devastating power of the creativity.”
Prince added: “We realised the idea was one of the highest order health ideas out there, done exceptionally well.”
Argentinian agency DAVID (Buenos Aires)’s breast cancer awareness campaign ‘Manboobs’ for MACMA won the Grand Prix for Good award, which was open to gold Lion winning entries ineligible for the top prize in either of the two sections.
Commenting on this year’s Lions Health awards, festival director Louise Benson said: “We’re delighted to reward and celebrate the ground-breaking work providing a benchmark of excellence in the healthcare communications industry.”