Cannes Lions Health names heads of judging panels for pharma, health and wellness creativity

Cannes Lions has named two industry leaders to helm the pharma and health and wellness juries. Anne de Schweinitz, FleishmanHillard global managing director for healthcare, will lead the pharma panel of judges, while Tom Richards, chief creative officer and chairman of Havas Health, will marshal the health and wellness judges.

They will oversee judging for the seventh annual Lions Health awards during the two-day festival dedicated to seminars and discussions around recognizing and inspiring creativity in pharma and healthcare marketing. The 2020 festival will be held June 22-26, with the health track running the first two days.

While entries are still open through April, expectations may already be high for the pharma awards this year, as the 2019 festival finally saw a Grand Prix given in the category after a three-year dry spell.

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GlaxoSmithKline and its ad agency McCann Health’s Breath of Life campaign picked up the top award last year. The mobile application creatively adapted the Chinese art of blow painting to help detect underdiagnosed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in older adults in China.

Still, the bar is always high at Cannes, where marketers are only as good as their last win. As McCann Health Global CEO John Cahill told FiercePharma last year after the agency won both Lions Health Grand Prix awards as well as network and agency of the year, "You’ve won, great. Now there’s another match coming up, and you’ve got to win that one, too."

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De Schweinitz has run Fleishman’s global healthcare practice since 2012 and served on the Lions Health jury in 2016 before it split into the two different pharma and health and wellness designations. Richards also has Cannes experience as a member of the health and wellness jury in 2018.