Evofem, Inc.

CANNES — Small pharmas nabbed some big prizes at Cannes Lions on Monday night. Horizon Therapeutics picked up three awards, while Evofem Biosciences snagged two statues among a small group of just 11 pharma category winners. Abbott also took home two trophies for work for its Freestyle Libre diabetes continuous glucose monitoring device. Horizon Therapeutics won a gold, silver and bronze for its Eyedar app for the blind created by Area 23, a veteran pharma and health Cannes Lions winning agency. Evofem won a silver and a bronze for its bold “House Rules” campaign for Phexxi non-hormonal birth control created by McCann Health that starred the popular “Schitt’s Creek” actress Annie Murphy. The Abbott diabetes device work “Now You Know” campaign’s humorous take on the ups and downs of healthy eating won a silver and a bronze award. The campaign was created by Anomaly in partnership with Abbott Laboratories. However, the top prize called the Grand Prix for pharma went to non-pharma for the second year in a row. Tech company partners Dell Technologies and Intel nabbed the big win for its innovative voice app for people with motor neuron disease. Dell and Intel’s winning entry, created by VMLY&R, New York, helps people with motor neuron disease to save a digital copy of their voice by using a simple story book. “I Will Always Be Me” uses behind-the-scenes technology to create a copy of patients’ voices so that they can still use it even after they lose the ability to speak. It’s the second year in a row now for a non-pharma company winning the Grand Prix. Last year’s combined 2020 and 2021 top prize went to speaker tech company Woojer. Still a pharma company did win in 2019 – the last year the awards were held in person before the return this year – with GSK and McCann Health, Shanghai, winning for the “Breath of Life” COPD campaign and app. Still, it’s not a fail for pharma, several of the jury judges said. On the finalist shortlist of 31 contenders, 24 were from pharma companies including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Roche’s Genentech and Boehringer Ingelheim. Collette Douaihy, chief creative officer at Dentsu Health and a veteran Cannes health judge pointed to the two silver winners from Evofem and Abbott as exemplar creative storytelling and craft in the category – but it was a theme that shone through among the finalists as well. “We saw the shortlisted ‘Science Will Win’ from Pfizer coming from Big Pharma with a beautifully told story. Even though it wasn’t a medal piece of work, it’s a start in the right direction with storytelling that will break down those barriers for the consumer to understand why science is important and what we’re doing in this field,” she said. Franklin Williams, executive VP and director of experience design at Area 23, echoed the same thought. Pharma and health companies are winning across categories and that’s what matters. “You have non-pharma folks winning in pharma and pharma winning in consumer, and so it’s not just work that’s pharma good or consumer good, it’s just good work. And it doesn’t really matter who’s doing it as long as the targets are being hit,” he said. In the Grand Prix Dell and Intel announcement at the winners’ reveal, an emotional video features patients talking about being diagnosed with the terminal illness. They have been encouraged to bank their voices, however, only 12% of people do it, and according to the patients who tried the older technology, it took too much time – about three months – and in the end when they heard the replayed voice, “it wasn’t me.” So Dell and Intel created a book that patients can read in under 30 minutes with a storyline about the difficult MND experience they’re going through. However, it’s more than just a recorded story for their families. The story contains all of the syllables needed to create a digital copy of their voice for a personal voice bank. As one patient named Ursula says with a smile, “It’s nice, it’s me.” Pharma jury president Brett O’Connor and executive creative director at VCCP Health UK, said, “You’re asking these patients who are terminally ill to spend three months, the latter years of their life to bank their voice. … With this piece of technology, the real genius is where they condensed this three months of arduous work into 30 minutes. And not only that, they did it in a very emotional storytelling way. I think they enabled the patient to tell a story to look on to family members, telling them about their conditions, how they’re going to live with it.”