Langland steals the pharma show at first Lions Health

Langland's advertisement for Bayer's Sativex - a winner at the Lions Health awards

Windsor, UK-based advertising agency Langland led the pharma field at the recent Lions Health awards in Cannes, taking home three gold and three silver trophies.  

But the top Grand Prix prize went unclaimed in pharma, where the judges decided not to award it this year. This was in contrast to the health and wellness category, which was won by Dentsu from Nagoya, in Japan for its Mother Book (see video of project below or on YouTube).

A further Grand Prix was awarded to Leo Burnett, Bogota, Colombia for its Twitter disease awareness project CancerTweets (see video of project below or on YouTube).

The inaugural Lions Health awards are a new addition to the prestigious Cannes Lions festival, which celebrates the best in creativity. The Lions Health awards specifically reward creativity in pharma, health and wellness communications.  

Stealing the show in this year's pharma category was Langland, which picked up a trio of gold awards for its work on Bayer's multiple sclerosis spasticity brand Sativex and four silver prizes for its work for Idis.  

Also placed highly were McCann Health, Sydney, for work on Janssen's Simponi and Boston-based agency Hill Holliday on behalf of Partnership at Drugfree.org, with both companies taking home a single gold award.  

There was a larger spread of agencies judged worthy of a silver award for their work, including McCann Health, London; Real Science Communications, London; Boomtown Strategic Brand Agency, Port Elizabeth, South Africa; GSW, Westerville, US; JWT, Sao Paulo; and DDB Canada, Toronto.  

Overall the pharma category received 517 entries from 35 countries, which were then judged by a jury that was presided by Jeremy Perrott, global chief creative officer, McCann Health and included Laura Schoen, president global healthcare and chair Latin America at Weber Shandwick; Andrew Spurgeon, executive creative director at Langland; and Alexandra von Plato, president and global chief creative officer at Publicis Healthcare Communications Group.

The awards formed part of a two-day 'festival of content, learning and debate' that explored the world of healthcare communications, and exhibited and screened the work being judged.