Sports + Health

Lürzer’s Archive Special Report

SPORTS +HEALTH We can connect

SPORTS + HEALTH SPECIAL

Mixing memory and desire

We have done an odd thing here and we’re not sure it really works. You can be the judge.

Image: Wunderman, Dubai, L[A] 2/2020, full ad on page 170.

For this special report, we mixed two of the fast-growth areas of advertising creativity together, Sports and Health. Or rather, it turned out that we had to juxtapose them. What we thought in planning would go well together, that were two connected areas, turned out to be disconnected and altogether rather different and as a result, more intriguing in that way than expected.

Let’s backup and explain the (wrong) thinking. On the face of it, doing sport is strongly connected with physical and mental health and strays increasingly into the whole “wellness” area.

Meanwhile, health may be strongly associated with big pharmaceutical companies selling medicine but it is also – and increasingly – a more extensive and holistic field, and yes “wellness” is the word that once again crops up. Indeed, big pharma wants a big piece of that space too. Put another way, both sports and health markets are increasingly concerned with messaging and actions that heed the “prevention is better than cure” logic. They are not simply about kicking a ball or popping a pill – they are about creating and supporting better, longer, more satisfying lives.

But while they clearly shade into each other at certain points, for the most part, these are two areas of creativity that are strongly differentiated specialisms in who does it and how it is done. In some ways, as those specialisms grow, fences between the two fields are also developing.

And so over the coming pages, we have a range of commentators who tend to come from one or other of these areas and do not generally ever work across both. And the work we have researched from our archive is then grouped as either one or other, sport or health. And, for the most part, they don’t have a lot in common. Or do they? Again, you be the judge.

Turn the pages, read the analyses and gain, we hope, a little enlightenment and inspiration. Perhaps you can then join the dots, raise some investors, and create the first truly holistic specialist health and sports agency. No, let’s think bigger: make it a global network. It’s there to be done.

Vol 2/2024

146–147

TIM TADDER

STILLS AND MOTION

t im t ad der. c om 858.205.2455

INTERVIEW

Breaking out of the box Being a leader in radically changing health advertising is not enough for the team at Area 23.

What comes next may help redefine how we see health brands, explains the restless Chief Creative Officer Tim Hawkey.

L[A] Did you want to be a creative from a young age?

Tim Hawkey Growing up, I avoided the idea of creativity because my mother [Penny Hawkey] was a creative rock star. She broke new ground for women in advertising in the ‘80s. We had reporters from Forbes, Good Housekeeping and the Wall Street Journal coming to the house to interview the creator of the Coca Cola Mean Joe Greene spot. I don’t know how she did it all. For me, why would I enter into a space where that’s always going to be the comparison?

Later on, I was working as a cancer laboratory researcher, and I stumbled across a field of advertising called medical advertising – and that you needed to understand science to do it. Now this is something I would be highly specialized in and good at, and that was attractive. I put some portfolio sketches together and I went into Grey Healthcare Advertising. I pretty much got a job on my mother’s good name! Please can we give some credit to privilege? It’s absolutely a real thing. While my story is an extreme example of it, others are more subtle. There are entire sections of the population that not only don’t have a parent in advertising, but don’t even know that this is a field you can go into, or how to go about it. And that needs to be remembered when evaluating junior candidates or deciding where to spend your very limited mentorship time L[A] Healthcare advertising wasn’t a sexy area at the time, though, was it?

TH It was an obscure field. In fact, DTC [direct-to-consumer] advertising for drugs did not exist then in the United States. It was only allowed, I think, around 1999. It’s still only the US and New Zealand that fully allow it.

The first 10 years of my career in health advertising, I wouldn’t call a creative time. I would call it foundation building. There was a formulaic and templated approach to brand advertising to doctors or to patients. As a result, my focus was on becoming just the best expert in the sector and the category. I still consider myself to be an expert but I have now transitioned into the creative half of my career, which started around 2011.

L[A] What happened to change it?

TH I was given the opportunity to take the leadership role at Area 23, along with my business partner, Renee [Mellas, Group President of Area 23 and IPG Health Canada] and that’s where the real creative part of my career began. Creativity did not get me the job, but the job got me creativity.

L[A] Why were you and Renee chosen?

TH I was always, I would say, the ambitious upstart. I sort of learned by just spending tons of time with clients and with account leaders and with strategists, learning the business and learning the strategy. I had a facility for talking about the business and driving it.

And I had an ambition towards creativity. When I look back at it now, I would say that my actual creative abilities were not great, and I had not had enough real practice at it. But maybe for the time and for the sector at the time, it was a standout.

Why were we paired together? I don’t know, but we were a match made by my boss, Dana Maiman, the CEO of IPG Health. It was brilliant matchmaking. Renee is so important in this. I do not attribute Area 23’s success to myself, I attribute it to our partnership.

Vol 2/2024 1/2023

150–151 10-11

INTERVIEW

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TIM’S CHOICE OF AREA 23 KEY WORKS: 1: Unbreakable – Insmed 2: Eyedar – Horizon 3: Free Killer Tan – Mollie’s Fund 4: Sick Beats – Woojer 5: Magnetic Stories – Siemens Healthineers

She’s from the South Bronx. She’s very street. She’s an incredible negotiator and a salesperson, but she’s also an incredible pessimist and a great counter to the way that I’m an incredible optimist. The relationship allows me to be so focused on opportunity and possibility because she is so focused on the impending doom of everything!

L[A] Would she see it that way?

TH Absolutely. She’s the one that is basically jumping on every crisis every day with clients. I’m there with her in the same way that she’s there with me, but her focus on threats allows me to focus on opportunities. It’s very freeing.

L[A] You are at opposite extremes.

TH It’s not just in our opposite temperament, but in our similarity, that it works. We have the same point of view on almost everything.

We’re able to divide and conquer and to share one vision in most situations. But then we are good polar opposites in other complementary ways.

L[A] So, what happened when you initially got paired, how did you set course with Area 23?

TH It was a mission-strategy-tactic-cascade. We said: ‘What kind of agency do we want?’ The agency already existed but it was still early in its lifecycle and it had yet to be truly defined. We decided that it would be really differentiating in the pharma agency space to be all about creativity.

It was a little bit of a ‘if you build it, they will come’ approach.

We decided that we were going to be about creativity without one really creative campaign to our name. We then put all of our effort in all of the decisions that we made into making that a reality.

L[A] Why was that not seen as a pretty wild risk?

Lürzer’s Archive

TH I don’t think that it was a risk for this reason: nobody in the sector was then or now denouncing creativity. In fact, people always liked to talk about creativity. But it’s a matter of how you define creativity. Clients were fairly happy with the work that they were getting back then, and they considered it very creative. So, differentiating on creativity was actually a safe positioning to take.

But I knew we wanted to do things that no client wanted to do, and I knew that it would take probably 10-plus years to get them to do the things that we wanted them to do. So, it was a long-term plan of differentiating on creativity. We started with creating a couple of case studies that allowed us to attract the clients that we wanted to work with, then hoping that success would beget other success over time.

A really important tactic in that strategy is something that we call What If, which we introduced a few years into our stint at Area 23. It came out of realizing that our attempts to get clients to buy the work that we wanted them to buy were unsuccessful 90 out of 100 times, even 99 out of 100 times.

L[A] So, there was a lot of hitting your head against the wall.

TH Yes, a lot of effort with very little return. We theorized that when the clients come asking for something, like an ad for example, they already knew what it was supposed to look like. So, we thought that if we brought clients things that they didn’t ask for, proactively, then we would get them into a better buying mode. And if we brought them things that didn’t have any precedent, that may get them out of the habit of comparing the work to some standard.

A key reason why this model is enticing to our clients is that it allows us to respond to real-time market challenges for our brands.

In this industry, we work in the FTE where our clients buy out each team member for the year based on a scope of work that is created, you guessed it, the year prior.

At most agencies, you’re just following this potentially out-ofdate roadmap for an entire year. It does not allow you to respond

More work and films can be seen at luerzersarchive.com

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to new threats, new situations, and new opportunities, or even to propose a new idea. We recognized that that was a huge deficiency for our clients. So, What If was our answer to that market need. What If gives back a percentage of time to all of the employees in our agency as non-billable time. Essentially, it’s an agency-wide creative R&D budget. We expect people to use that time to come up with proactive strategies and creative ideas for our clients and to bring these to them on a regular basis.

L[A] So, the client’s not being charged for that.

TH That’s right. The client didn’t ask for it and the client didn’t pay for it. It gives us the permission to be extremely bold because we’re not going to piss a client off by showing them something that they didn’t ask or pay for, even if it’s over the top. It creates an important perception for the client that the agency has been investing their own time, so they may be a little more likely to engage. Honestly, over time that has worked. We initiated this in 2014.

L[A] And this was everybody, all departments?

TH This is all departments. I think the majority of the participation does come from the creative department and it’s kind of voluntary/ mandatory. It’s volumandatory!

An amazing proof point in this model is that, right from our first What If Throwdown, two teams presented two ideas that helped put us on the map as an agency.

One was Free Killer Tan, which is a campaign to take on the tanning booth industry because of the risks of melanoma. We set up a fake tanning salon in Times Square; when people went into the back, they found it was their own funeral, and the tanning bed was a coffin. Their picture was on the memorial, there was an organist, pews, everything. This was our first shot out of the gate, and that was proof to us that, OK, we’re doing something right.

L[A] Who would buy that?

TH We pitched it to a very conservative pharmaceutical client of ours, who had a drug for melanoma. The pitch was a sincere one. We noted they made a drug for melanoma, and that they were going to make millions of dollars off of this drug for people who are already sick. Well, we said, what about the people who aren’t sick yet? They had the opportunity to prevent melanoma. They didn’t buy it.

So then we called Jack and Maggie Biggane, who had lost their 20-year-old daughter to melanoma, and they’d started Mollie’s Fund.

To this day, 10 years later, they are a flagship NGO pro-bono client and we do creative for them every year. The work brought them into the spotlight and started a long legacy of them doing crazy creative things every year. What it said to the industry was that, ‘Hey, pharma agencies can do this fun stuff.’ It gave the other agencies permission to ask, ‘Why can’t we do it too?’

L[A] You didn’t really win any awards with it, though?

TH Entering awards is an art form in and of itself. If I knew then what I know today, it would have won a ton of stuff. But it definitely put us on the map. To our clients, we used that case study in new business pitches to kind of say, ‘This is the work that we like to do. If you like this kind of work, where bold creativity gets you a disproportionate share of voice, then work with us. If you don’t like this work, don’t work with us.’ We didn’t say that literally, but we said it without saying it.

That was the beginning of the creative portion of our career, where we actually had something and we could build on that success year after year. Since then, it’s really just been about beating our own record and getting better every year.

L[A] Was there a key client or key piece of work that switched the What If creativity from being for an NGO to being with a major commercial project?

Vol 2/2024

152–153

INTERVIEW

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2 TIM’S PICK OF INSPIRATION FROM OTHER AGENCIES: 1: Womb Stories – SCA / Libresse, Bodyform, L[A] 5-2020 2: Animal Alerts 3: Spread Beats, Spotify, 2024 4: Aizome Wastecare, L[A] 1-2024, interview with Alex Schill, Serviceplan 5: Solo: There’s Magic in All of Us – Montefiore-Einstein Hospital , L[A] 4-2023

TH That’s a good probe that touches on the evolution of our strategy. The thing that hasn’t changed has been our commitment to creativity and our commitment to and investment in What If. What has changed is the direction of the output for creativity. We had to partner with NGOs early on because none of our clients were willing to buy that kind of work. As we softened the industry up to it, they became more receptive. So, we were able to partner with a couple of flagship clients to bring that work into the pharmaceutical industry.

The first one that we had a lot of success with was Lilly, back around 2017 … And I see them recommitting to creativity these days.

So, we’re excited to sort of rekindle that part of our relationship.

Another was a startup pharmaceutical company with no commercialized product who we partnered with on a number of creative campaigns. We helped build their brand and they helped build our brand. A Thousand Words About NTM [Nontuberculous mycobacteria] was probably the first thing that we did with them that was different, that was not just an ad campaign. What we gave them was more of an activation and something that challenged their creative sensibilities. Instead of telling everybody that a missed diagnosed of this respiratory disease is a bad thing, we would show it to them by listening to patients and collecting a thousand words from each one. A picture tells a thousand words, so we gave those thousand words to different artists around the world and had those artists create pieces that brought that to life.

It’s a formula now in pharma, but at the time, this was something that had never been done. And I think it actually created a kind of category of work that all agencies do now. It stood out for us at the time, and it was the start of a long creative relationship.

More recently, I would pick out our work with another rare disease company that went through an acquisition. They were 100% committed to creativity and enabled us to do a lot of amazing creative things.

In the evolution of What If, we have evolved to a strict adherence to looking for paid client work. We don’t need to practice anymore with NGOs. The practice years are over. Our goal as an agency is to transform the pharmaceutical industry, not to transform the pharma advertising sector. We really are trying to change the way that pharma clients operate.

Lürzer’s Archive

L[A] Why do you think it needs changing?

TH I think it needs changing for personal reasons and for strategic reasons. For personal reasons, I don’t want to be a part of an industry that just thinks you should do things the way that they’ve always been done. I’d like to be able to have pride in the industry. I’m very excited about science and medicine and I would like the industry to be supported by great creativity as well. Those are my personal reasons.

My professional and strategic reasons are that creativity makes sense, period. Creativity is an economic multiplier. Creativity gets people to pay attention to what you want to say and that just makes plain business sense. It’s been demonstrated time and time again. The reason that I think the pharma industry has not adopted a basic principle of marketing is because the products are so differentiated and they’re amazing in and of themselves.

L[A] ‘We’ve got the best, or only, drug for this’ so that’s all they really need to say?

TH Yes, they may have a new drug that is going to save lives in a way that no one has ever been able to do in the past. There’s almost a preconceived notion that being creative on top of that is a disservice to the molecule itself. The message has really been the king in pharma. The product has really been the king in pharma because the products are so good. That’s why I don’t think any pharmaceutical brand can really be called a brand. If we’re really thinking about what brands are, brands are sort of the constellation of feelings, emotions, and associations that you have with a product. But if all of those things are purely transactional, then what you have are only product messages. There’s not a lot of brand affinity whatsoever because we’re selling products.

L[A] But some people would say at this point, that’s a good thing.

You don’t have to add all the marketing sophistication … Why spend loads of time and money on that if you don’t need to?

TH In this day and age, just telling somebody that you have the ability to save their life is not enough to get the attention of some-

More work and films can be seen at luerzersarchive.com

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body whose life needs saving. You need creativity to get people’s attention and to keep their attention and for them to remember what you told them. I firmly believe that the DTC advertising that we all hate so much, the stuff that’s on TV, has saved millions of lives because it has created informed customers who know a lot about their conditions. In some cases, they know more about a product than their physicians know. Patients’ branded requests for a product, which can be annoying to physicians, have actually resulted in a betterment of the health of the nation. I’m not just towing the industry line. I believe these things, and I also believe in the pharmaceutical industry.

L[A] So you are saying the pharma brands generally don’t stand for something? And if they want a better reputation, to be trusted more, then they need to work on really attaching brand values and making an emotional connection – start to really stand for something as brands, not just the seller of very useful products?

TH Yes, I think it’s possible. I do think it’s one of the more ethical industries. For all that there is the occasional and inevitable bad story, this industry is 99% very positive. It has great potential in branding.

L[A] This means moving away from everything being so sales-focused?

TH The opportunity in the pharma industry is a potential shift from sales and product to brand and to affinity.

But a key issue is that the life cycle of a pharmaceutical product in the US is about nine years of marketing. So, you have to start making your return on a billion-dollar investment on day one and maximize that until year nine. There is no 10-year brand building, there is no 100-year Coca-Cola legacy to build on top of. It’s a lot of differentiating your product in the here and now against the competitors.

That said, over the next few years, when you look at the landscape of the big pharmaceutical sectors, there are clear opportunities. For example, the weight loss sector, which is very much in the news. All the GLP-1/GIP agonists, Ozempic, and Zepbound, and everything. In five years, we will have a lot of not very differentiated

products that are slicing a $150 billion pie. There is a huge opportunity to do brand building now. I can see a time when customers will stay on a product or choose a product because of how it makes them feel and because of how much they like it and not because it has a one-point difference on a scale.

That’s an approach that we are taking with some of our clients right now. We call it marketing beyond the molecule. The way I’ve explained it to clients is that it is less about brand building and more about doing the right thing. If we’re going to enter into this very intimate relationship with somebody about them putting the drug into their body, let’s do something beyond just selling them that molecule. Let’s make their life a little better. Let’s do something to improve their community.

An example of that is what we did with Eyedar for Horizon Therapeutics. We built an app for Horizon to help the blind see using echolocation. And for Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, which was launching a drug into the ALS space – the motor neurone disease space – we launched Mind’s Eye, a project to create an AI art generator for people who can’t move a muscle in their body except for their eyes.

It was really an accessibility tool. Very early on in AI, I would add.

Before the larger population were getting into Midjourney and so on, we had already created a user experience for people to express themselves through art, moving only their eyes.

I can see a future where the client is running a product ad and a brand ad simultaneously. The pharmaceutical ad isn’t going away.

We still have to communicate information. But I can see a greater need for brand building.

Want to find out what came next?

A longer version of this conversation is online at luerzersarchive.com Tim Hawkey is CCO at Area 23 and IPG Health Canada.

Vol 2/2024

154–155

ANDY MAHR // W:: mahrimages.com E:: andymahr@mac.com p:: 214.732.3243

Adam Hessel Head of Creative and Experience The Bloc, New York

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Lürzer’s Archive

Creating educational content that is comprehensive, accurate, and engaging is definitely challenging, particularly for branded and healthcare professional materials, who require scientific language and robust content.

In a highly regulated industry such as pharma, you are not talking to consumers; you are addressing patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals.

Every piece of content must be created through the lens of care, rather than purely for entertainment or sales purposes. Additionally, discussing health conditions that are often serious and life-threatening is hardly entertaining. However, these challenges also give us great opportunities. We need to double down on creativity to reconcile these needs, making the task, in my opinion, even more rewarding.

Emotional storytelling forges a deep, empathetic connection, allowing for more memorable and impactful communication. But pushing for too much emotion might make the message seem insincere, so it’s important for the creative team to be honest about how much sentiment they can actually try to convey.

Emotional narratives must also be crafted carefully to be inclusive and respectful of diverse audiences, experiences and perceptions regarding health issues.

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

SPORTS + HEALTH SPECIAL

AI has the ability to create a hyper-targeted approach and can also assist in the creative process. It’s remarkable how it can customize messages to meet the specific needs and preferences of various audience segments to amplify reach.

And it doesn’t stop there — AI-driven tools can predict trends and refine targeting strategies, helping to engage people on a more personal level. Overall, it significantly improves the outreach and effectiveness of health-related communication efforts.

From a creative perspective, the direction of sports and health advertising is really fascinating right now. First off, there is a strong shift towards inclusivity and diversity when it comes to what our bodies can achieve. We’re seeing athletes and individuals of all ages, body types, and abilities showcased. It’s fantastic because this approach broadens the audience and inspires a wider demographic by reflecting a more inclusive community.

There’s the emphasis on mental health alongside physical health. We’re seeing more and more campaigns highlighting the importance of mindfulness, emotional well- being, and the psychological benefits of sports and physical activity. This holistic view of health really resonates with audiences, especially now, when mental health awareness is at its peak.

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1 L[A] 5/2020, LUP, Jakarta 2 L[A] 2/2022, Caldas Naya, Barcelona 3 L[A] 3/2022, Ogilvy Health, New York 4 L[A] 5/2020, Harrison & Star, New York 5 L[A] 1/2021, Harrison & Star, New York 6 L[A] 1/2018, Rubin Postaer And Associates (RPA), Santa Monica, California

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Vol 2/2024

160–161

represented by

marianne campbell associates

annabelle breakey shaun fenn randal ford sara forrest will graham margaret lampert rj muna matthew turley

mariannecampbell.com

marianne@mariannecampbell.com

+1 (415) 433 0353

Janet Barker-Evans

SPORTS + HEALTH SPECIAL

Executive Vice President, Chief Creative Officer AbelsonTaylor Group, Chicago 1

Emotional storytelling is about recognizing the unmet needs of an audience and giving them a vision or glimpse of how a product or service can help meet those needs. By inviting the audience in and helping them imagine their life improved, we have an opportunity to inspire the audience to achieve their goals. The challenge is to avoid overpromising that improvement, minimizing the risks of a product, or downplaying the very real and unique health issues that some people face.

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1 L[A] 2/2015, Wieden+Kennedy, New York 2 L[A] 5/2021, BETC, Paris 3 L[A] 3/2018, Mindshare, Copenhagen 4 L[A] 1/2015, Geometry Global, Kiev

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The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

Andrea Siqueira Executive Vice President, Executive Creative Director Energy BBDO, Chicago

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1 L[A] 5/2019, Syneos Health, in-house, London 2 L[A] 1/2017, Dentsu West Japan, Osaka 3 L[A] 1/2022, Serviceplan Middle East, Dubai 4 L[A] 2/2022, Neon, New York 5 L[A] 1/2022, adam&eveDDB, London 6 L[A] 1/2017, TBWA, Paris 2

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Lürzer’s Archive

The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

SPORTS + HEALTH SPECIAL

The fight for attention is the same as in every industry but we can truly bring some sort of relief with health and wellness work, even if it’s just by making people laugh and relax a bit. We can create things that truly matter to others.

Storytelling is more than just applying knowledge; it's how you leverage imagination. It helps to open the door, so you can inform, educate, and convince. There’s no previous data on how someone will react to your creative idea, whether it’s a poem or an ad. So, my advice would be: play with it.

The responsibility lies with all of us. I think the future will be what people want it to be, not what companies build, or gurus predict.

There’s an opportunity to bring more humor and levity into the world and handle even more serious issues with a lighter heart. There will be AI tools but ideas are still the most important assets we can have – if we can keep them alive. The hardest, most sophisticated part is making your peers, clients, audience, share the same vision.

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Vol 2/2024

166–167

Alec Vianu Owner/Creative Director Vianu Inc, New York 1

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1 L[A] 1/2023, Mother, London 2 L[A] 1/2023, Dentsu Redder, Ho Chi Minh City 3 L[A] 3/2022, Ogilvy Health, New York 4 L[A] 4/2019, Makani Creatives, Mumbai

Sports advertising seems to be one of the rare brand fields that focuses strictly on creating an attitude, a life manifesto (Just Do It), vs being product-centric.

Globalizations has a flattening effect on any idea, as it needs to be understood and be an acceptable cultural fit to vastly different audiences. The solution in these cases is to be fully product-centric, which sometimes is not enough.

The opinion seems to be that audiences are losing trust in AI-generated advertising. Photos are not trusted, locations are not real, extreme sports may not be real either.

Sports has been a wonderful area to raise awareness of the general benefits of the sport as a catalyst as well as providing social commentary.

Hiring top marketers from the CPG sector will modernize healthcare marketing. They will come with expectations for agencies to innovate and engage differently with healthcare professionals and patients.

A new class of agencies will take advantage of AI in creation. Legacy and traditional agencies will rapidly deploy AI tools to harness the collective intelligence resident in the agency’s thought leadership and work history.

AI will disrupt how healthcare agencies create and brands will want agencies to ‘simplify the process’. They will be expecting faster turnaround time and in some cases may sacrifice the bespoke and $$$ for ‘kind of new’ and $.

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The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

Leon Greiner • www.lerot.de • +49 176 31388168 • hello@lerot.de

Töbe Pickford Creative General Health Army, Sydney

If a health message aims to prompt action, such as encouraging individuals to see a doctor or consult a healthcare professional, it is vital that these professionals are prepared for an influx of questions or concerned patients. This is akin to ensuring the head knows what the mouth is going to say – something that’s not always the case with a few of us. By ensuring healthcare professionals are ready, we maintain a smooth and effective communication flow.

Adding emotional storytelling to health-related brands is essential. Emotion plays a significant role in areas such as pain management, weight loss, cancer treatments, etc. Even a fungal toenail treatment needs to evoke emotion. While this approach is similar to mainstream marketing, the health sector has additional constraints on what can be communicated and a balance of negative vs positive needs to be considered.

Health-related campaigns do not always have to be overly serious either. During my time at Ogilvy, I led a campaign for the laxative brand Coloxyl where we introduced a character named Stefan the Stool Expert. This character helped to inform and empathize with people, demonstrating that even sensitive health topics can be approached with creativity and relatability.

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The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com

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AI and AI-driven technologies are enhancing efficiencies in health campaigns. Tasks ranging from reviewing clinical papers to writing iterations for Google ads or banner ads are increasingly becoming automated.

However, effective targeting still requires a deep understanding of your audience. Technology should not be a crutch; it is essential to get off your bum and engage directly with people.

Brands in the health sector can transcend traditional advertising by making a tangible difference to people's lives. For instance, the development of innovative technologies to assist people with disabilities and health issues or creating experiences that foster empathy and understanding of various conditions, is becoming increasingly common.

However, not all brands take this approach. I would like to see high-use treatments and everyday health brands move beyond their standard strategies.

By focusing on making a real difference and growing their purpose, these brands can unlock their full creative potential and have a more profound impact.

1 L[A] 2/2023, McCann Health, New York 2 L[A] 1/2021, Venables Bell & Partners, San Francisco 3 L[A] 2/2020, Wunderman, Dubai 4 L[A] 4/2023, Grey, New York 5 L[A] 4/2023, Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), London 6 L[A] 3/2022, VMLYR, New York Vol 2/2024

172–173

Nicholas Capanear

SPORTS + HEALTH SPECIAL

Executive Creative Director Eversana Intouch, New York

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Agencies want to engage first, then slip in the education part undetected. Brands often want to educate first and then erroneously forget the engagement part. As a consequence of government restrictions, there is also an understandable limit to the hyperbole that can be used – often an important part of engagement. We have a duty to communicate with responsibility but it often comes down to, ‘How can we dramatize a brand's benefit without being too dramatic’?

Many health brands come with plenty of emotion baked in already and it can be argued there isn’t much more important to us in life than our health. Marketers have to work hard to inject emotion into so many brands that are cold by nature, like the services of a bank or office equipment. When health brands fail to capture true emotional storytelling, it’s a bigger fumble.

I can only imagine that AI will multiply our ability to find the people who need to hear our message most (like it’s doing with most everything). An interesting application I’ve seen is creating AI research personas, who accurately reflect our audience’s responses. This allows us to quickly test or optimize the message much more efficiently. In this example, AI didn’t think of the idea but it helps us determine if it’s the right idea.

Because health is so native to the human experience, the sector can reach across many other categories. Health can be health and also retail at the same time. Health can also be entertainment or gaming or music. The benefit is that we keep things fresh creatively … and for me, that means constantly having new stimulation, new ways to think and look at things.

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1 L[A] 5/2021, Intouch Group, New York 2 L[A] 5/2021, Intouch Group, New York 3 L[A] 2/2020, GSW, New York

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PHOTOGRAPHER: AGENCY: RETOUCHING & CGI: CLIENT:

BRETT HEMMINGS CHISEL PRODUCTIONS KEN LIU ASICS AUSTRALIA

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TOP 3 photographer Ranking 21-23

Katrina Encanto Freelance Executive Creative Director Amsterdam

Brands have a unique opportunity to unlock the hearts of sports fans, and being a fan is all about irrational emotion. Sports have the power to inspire, bring people together, and as Mandela said, ‘speak to youth in a language they understand.’ As fans, we subject ourselves willingly to pain, suspense, and heartbreak, spending an illogical amount of time, effort, and money towards the teams and athletes we admire.

There are many opportunities to reflect the unique ways different cultures enjoy sports across the world. There are stories to be told that reflect how the Japanese’s love for football grew through manga comics, or how even the most remote places in the Philippines have a basketball court. With all the technology at our fingertips, we have richer data that gives us insights we’ve never had previously, enabling us to tell powerful stories.

The globalization of sport has also made it more democratic. Where football continues to grow in popularity, other sports have also gained major traction.

For brands, that allows us to move away from cliches and tell fresher, more relatable stories.

There are challenges with trying to work with one universal idea whilst reflecting all cultural nuances. What works in one place may not necessarily work for another in terms of insight, tech or ad regulations. It helps to have a diverse creative team and work closely with different markets, so ideas are feasible and culturally insightful.

The new technologies of today have completely changed both the way we get data, and how we use it to interact with fans. Through AI and new social listening tools, we can now know exactly where our fans spend the most amount of time and money, who they admire, and where and how they interact with our brands. This lets us tell richer stories, create new tools, update in real time, stage meaningful experiences driven by data and reach people at scale through social media.

The thing to remember is that everyone has access to these tools, and without creativity, the results often feel dry, bland and uninteresting. While tech may continue to develop, let’s not forget craft, nuance, and storytelling – all the magic that the human touch can bring.

There are currently a lot of opportunities for creativity within sports marketing because of challenges such as the lack of equity for professional or grassroots women athletes, despite the rise in popularity for women’s sports, Beyond the professional pay gap, many countries still lack safe spaces, have undeveloped training programs, or cultural stigmas that exclude girls from the world of sport. By tackling these issues, brands have the chance to bridge any gaps and bring meaningful experiences to a targeted audience.

The fan experience is also different for younger generations. As creatives, we cannot resort to the tools and tricks of the past, as a study by Fanalytics suggests, only 23% of Gen Z are passionate sports fans. We have to find new ways of bringing meaning to their lives, meeting them where they are rather than using the same old approaches that don’t appeal to them.

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SPORTS + HEALTH SPECIAL 4

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It’s always a delicate balance for a healthcare brand to be a trusted source of information for the mass public, as well as a reassuring voice for every patient. There are specific formats that work better for direct messaging, and others that support lengthier personal testimonials. Tonally, there can also be a slight range with the way we communicate, so that we’re able to fulfill the clarity certain moments require, while also providing compassion at more relevant touchpoints.

Stories help us make sense of the world, and the world of health is full of things that don’t make sense. The best healthcare brands acknowledge this and act as a source of clarity and hope. By reassuring patients with insightful stories, brands have the power of making them feel they have the information and support to overcome their situation.

The challenge with healthcare is that most patient data is private unless consent is given. This presents an opportunity for anyone mining for insights to connect through a real conversation. We’re not only able to comprehend the complexities of a disease better, we can also gain a better understanding of how patients feel and the kind of emotional support they could use.

The use of AI within healthcare is very sensitive, and healthcare leaders need to ensure they respect patient rights by keeping their data private. It has the power to decode and make sense of everything available – giving us up-to-date information on where sickness is spreading, where air quality is better, and which groups of people require more attention.

But, with AI still in development, there need to be tighter controls around the biases and broad assumptions that are still present with machines. After all, the last thing patients want and need is a lack of humanity.

With tech developing at such a rapid speed, and the quality of data available to us improving, the possibilities for sports and health advertising seem to unfold as we are unlocking each brief. Ideas previously considered crazy are all of a sudden possible. We have never had this many tools available to us, and I think we owe it to ourselves as creatives to try them out.

1 L[A] 4/2018, Y&R, New York 2 L[A] 3/2021, Ogilvy Brasil, São Paulo 3 L[A] 6/2015, Philipp und Keuntje, Hamburg 4 L[A] 1/2023, Mullenlowe Delta, Quito 5 L[A] 4/2018, Area 23, New York

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Vol 2/2024

178–179

JANICE MOSES

P. 303.249.4112 CHADCHISHOLMCREATIVE.COM

Anthony Atkinson Freelance Creative Director Toronto

When what’s relevant in sports and what’s relevant in culture come together, powerful storytelling emerges. The best in sports advertising drives momentum in both. Sports insights tend to be well-trodden but it’s how these insights are applied to what’s relevant today that drives loyalty.

We see some of the best sports campaigns during global events like the World Cup or Olympics.

These huge global moments give birth to some incredible human experience stories through the lens of sports. That said, brands also need to speak directly to diverse cultures through regional advertising, like how women’s professional sports has made huge strides in some parts of the world, compared to others.

Emotional advertising will always be the key driver for awareness in my opinion, but tech innovations like AI or the metaverse open opportunities for brands to drive a deeper connection with consumers through immersive experiences, adaptability, and responsiveness. That said, when brands express their values through technology, the result can be just as emotional and impactful as traditional advertising.

As advertisers, we look to big brands to drive us forward. Whenever a new big sports campaign comes out, we always seem to hear the same thing: ‘Looks like a Nike ad’. Maybe sports brands need to stop living in Nike’s shadow and find their own voice.

So is sports marketing rising or falling? I would never say it’s falling, but there are lulls. I’d love to see more sports brands take a page from an athlete’s playbook and take bigger risks. Why does it always have to be Red Bull? Do you have to be in extreme sports to take a big leap? With the rise of many new athletic brands, I’m hopeful this will happen sometime soon.

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SPORTS + HEALTH SPECIAL

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1 L[A] 5/2017, Animal, New-Delhi 2 L[A] 5/2018, Publicis Conseil, Paris 3 L[A] 3/2020, Creative VMLY&R, Nairobi 4 L[A] 2/2019, Michele Salati 5 L[A] 3/2017, Area 23, New York

Consumers and professionals want to know how the sector is changing and doing things differently with the rise of complex new technology and medical breakthroughs. It is incredibly exciting for society, but incredibly challenging for advertisers. However, no matter who your audience is, emotion reigns supreme.

As treatments become more complex, there will always be the temptation to explain how exciting the technology is. But the last thing a consumer wants is a medical lesson. The key is to focus on a human story first, and the technology, service or product is in service of that. We will learn from brands outside of the health sector to inspire our storytelling.

Like sports brands, healthcare brands need to live their values through technologies like AI and not the other way around. Healthcare is becoming incredibly tailored to the patient, as machine learning and AI has the power to learn detailed information about your genomic makeup and your geographic data. Inside all this AI data lies a powerful story that can take the shape of a big emotional brand film or a hyper-targeted and bespoke one-to-one conversation.

Vol 2/2024

182–183

Amy Fortunato

SPORTS + HEALTH SPECIAL

Vice President, Group Creative Director Klick Health, New York 1

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Unlike sports advertising – where brands can tap into the deep emotional connections fans have with their favorite teams – health advertising can be perceived as disruptions and needs to work harder to create brand loyalty. That’s where the power of great storytelling comes in, allowing us to build emotional connections with audiences and create work that doesn’t feel like an interruption.

Some of the most impactful campaigns have come from the intersection of sports and health, leveraging the emotional pull of sports to enhance health stories and inclusivity. Look at Michelob Ultra’s Dreamcaster, which harnessed the power of AI to enable a blind person to commentate an NBA game live on TV for the first time ever. This merging of sports and health advertising illustrates how powerful storytelling – supported by technology – can create content that’s consumed like entertainment, not just advertising.

1 L[A] 1/2024, Klick Health, Philadelphia 2 L[A] 3/2017, The Community, Miami 3 L[A] 2/2018, Extra Credit Projects, Grand Rapids, Michigan 4 L[A] 3/2018, Cactus, Denver

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KEITHBARRACLOUGH.COM

SPORTS + HEALTH SPECIAL

Your heart would have responded And how was it for you? Having read through the preceding pages, is a business plan developing nicely based on a daydream about how sports and health marketing can co-exist brilliantly, usefully, and lucratively? Can we see our way to a future in which we may perhaps one day expect to see, say, a Nike X Ozempic cross-brand collaboration?

Well, perhaps not that one. A bridge too far. At least for the foreseeable. But our expert commentators have given plenty of stimuli for possible future scenarios that radically develop both sports and health marketing and that, we would argue, could see them overlapping a lot more. Given the nature of modern networks, and the spirit of constant reinvention with start-ups, it’s only a matter of time, surely, before we bring these philosophically connected worlds much closer together in social and business strategies.

Perhaps creative output can be the catalyst that helps drive that.

The envisaging of things that do not seem possible at first, then become everyday through a series of steps that take in the incredible, the award-winning, and the mildly provocative, until we are dealing with the everyday reality.

Lürzer’s Archive Special Report

SPORTS +HEALTH We can connect

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LÜRZER’S ARCHIVE SPORTS + HEALTH Client Amgen Agency GSW, New York Creative Director Mike McKeever, Valerie Wagner, Nicholas Capanear Art Director Jon Parkinson, Christa Moeller, Sarah Brase Copywriter Ronald Larson, Taylor Kissinger, Stephanie Alexander Photographer Ale Burset Digital Artist Diego Speroni

With great advertising, it is the emotional truth that moves us and also moves us together. Sports and health, two sides of the same quest for physical and mental well-being, and an eternal quest towards an aspiration for a supremacy of personal and communal well-being. In some ways it begins and ends with what you can express in a great campaign that brings it to life and makes the heart beat faster.

If we can’t see it, perhaps some more creative AI will. Let’s end with a replay of a few words from Alec Vianu’s commentary a few pages back. It turns the light towards the creature in the corner, the elephant with a big brain that may make more of these connections for us: “A new class of agencies will take advantage of AI in creation.

Legacy and traditional agencies will rapidly deploy AI tools to harness the collective intelligence resident in the agency’s thought leadership and work history.”

Yes, we won’t actually have to think about all these possibilities.

We can nudge the machine to do it for us, while we work out.

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