IPG Health, with agencies that repeatedly win Cannes Lions, once again tamed a pride at this year’s International Festival of Creativity.
Among the group’s winners were FCB Health, taking Healthcare Network of the Year—its McCann Health network came in second in the last year that FCB Health and McCann Health networks will be recognized separately—and AREA 23, which nabbed Healthcare Agency of the Year.
This was FCB Health’s third time at the podium and the second year in a row for AREA 23, which took the “Health Grand Prix for Good” Lion for “Lil Sugar, Master of Disguise,” a nutrition literacy campaign for kids focusing on the prevalence of sugar in packaged foods, a message told with rap, storytelling and gaming.
The awards put a capstone on Year One of IPG Health’s global health concern, which formed last July with the realignment of FCB Health and McCann Health under a global network with a unified senior management team, comprising over 45 agencies and 6,000-plus people across six continents.
Mike Guarino, chief commercial officer of IPG Health, said returning to Cannes in person after two years of COVID-enforced virtuality was a moving experience, and not just because of the trip across the pond. “It was just amazing. You forget how long it’s been until you see people you haven’t seen in almost three years,” he said.
“You’re happy, and also kind of sad at what has transpired and what you may have lost, but frankly I was also excited about where we all are now: I think the creative honestly got significantly better, because—I believe—people were inspired by the challenges the world has faced.”
By the penultimate day of the festival, IPG Health had won a total of 17 Lions including a Grand Prix, two Gold Lions, six Silver Lions and Six Bronze Lions.
Earlier this year, the company won “Network of the Year” at both the Clio Health Awards and Manny Awards; AREA 23 won “Agency of the Year” at the Clio Health Awards and “Most Admired Agency” and “Most Creative Agency” at the Manny Awards. Guarino said the strong showing validated the network’s global economies of scale, as clients have been looking for ways to cut costs; it also paid off during the pandemic.
“Even before COVID we had simplified and organized our infrastructure to work across all of our agencies. We are one organization that operates under one P&L with a unified set of processes and systems. “Before COVID clients were looking for a way to match costs. So, rather than make people fly in from all over the world to meetings in a central location, we identified new tools and technologies to run meetings and workshops remotely, applying those principles across regular work streams. This carried over into COVID.”
Also, just after the first wave of COVID in 2020, IPG Health rolled out YuzuYello, a patient-focused brand experience agency, which, per Guarino, opened its doors in short order to address the many medical conditions upstaged by COVID. “We launched right in the middle of COVID, in about four weeks, because we realized that everyone was focused on COVID, but diabetes, cholesterol, cancer and other critical conditions didn’t go away.
"Realizing that these chronic conditions would only be worse during the pandemic, we saw YuzuYello as an opportunity for patients to connect with physicians in new ways and be educated outside of the traditional channels. They are now one of our fastest growing companies,” he said.
Another cost of the pandemic—or a trend accelerated by it—the so-called “Great Resignation,” has not affected IPG Health, according to Guarino. He said the company actually grew and has added 900 people across its U.S. agencies so far this year. The challenge, he added, is retention, something the network is addressing with a program called Proactive Career Management, meant to keep peripatetic employees in-house, giving opportunities in network.
“Across our global network, this gives us a way for people who want to try something different to move to a different agency, client, or even discipline. We don’t want them to leave just because they feel they can’t move or try something different here.”