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It's not that the agency doesn't want to. It's that the clients have a lot of regulatory and legal people breathing down their necks, and truly creative executions can be subjective- you could accidentally imply a benefit. Also, things like emojis, puns, and jokes are typically in poor taste when dealing with life-threatening illnesses.
Fair. And I do want to clarify that this isn’t even exclusive to pharma. The “let’s just get something sold” mentality that does a disservice to the value we bring to clients is sadly seen industrywide. Hell sometimes it’s it’s within a brand team in an agency that otherwise does push creative.
Sit in testing and you’ll figure it out right quick. These doctors don’t understand metaphors or humor. They are the most literal minded people you will ever meet.
Truth. Also bear in mind that a lot of these practitioners spend all day dealing with situations and subject matter that make people miserable, cranky, afraid for their lives and welfare, and/or dead. I’ve seen many physicians manage those emotional strains by consciously switching off their own emotions. Medicine as also a hugely frustrating field right now (bring up reimbursement protocols at your next focus group). That’s a lot for any brain and heart to handle. Even a doc’s healthy ones.
TL:DR, they’re not dead inside. After a day of sickness and CPT codes, they probably just don’t have anything to spare to laugh at our ads.
Short answer: "Boundary-pushing" ads make more work for our clients — more work getting approval from their bosses, more work getting the ads through medical/legal/regulatory review, and more work avoiding an enforcement letter from FDA. Moreover, ads are only one item on a pharma brand manager's crowded agenda. They have to worry about forecasting manufacturing quantities (order too little and they won't be able to meet demand; order too much and they'll be dinged for excess inventory); they have to worry about managed care contracts, market research plans, product packaging, Phase IV clinical trials, the national sales meeting, etc., etc., etc. So taking the extra time to go to the wall for a boundary-pushing ad rather than a "safe" one, whose creative blandness they can overwhelm with sheer media spend, is not something most have an appetite for.
As a client this is the best answer I’ve seen
Kudos to you for understanding the pressures your client faces
Most people suffering from a disease/condition/illness don’t find it funny. So if a company used humor in advertising a solution to that problem they probably wouldn’t take that company/brand seriously since their illness is being minimized with humor.
OP I hear you on that. But we should definitely keep the dogs! 🐕
Mentor
Less of this
Sadly because many account teams are gun shy of client regulatory teams. I've seen to many times where even the hint of personality in creative is immediately red-lined out because it COULD be misperceived by the FDA. Eventually brand teams start to avoid showing anything with spirit to avoid antagonizing Med-Legal.
Then they move to another client or brand and carry that beaten down creative impulse. Happens to creatives, strategists and copywriters, too. That's why it's nice to give everyone a non-pharma client one in a while so they can recharge the creative juices.
Mentor
I speak in general. Although I work with a diabetes brand. Things like showing whimsical / metaphorical representations always scare the shit out of my team. They only want to do patient imagery / Pharma-obvious visuals.
Mentor
I’m talking about my agency. Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough.
Lots of answers could be given but to me, the best response is that we all forget that sick people are still people. FDA, clients, MLR, even agencies—we think of them as patients first and not human beings who can still respond to humor, possibly the most powerful human reaction/emotion, ESPECIALLY as a form of healing. So we get too solemn and serious waaaaaay too often and our craft suffers.
(Steps off soapbox)
Mentor
Beautiful answer. I couldn’t agree more 👌🏻
Comedy is not the opposite of boring. It takes a lot more to be creative in the pharma/health space. If you see a purpose to your work and try to bring meaningful content to the arena than you won’t have to rely on humor as a crutch. But then again, I am sure I just bored you half to death!
Mentor
Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers. If you read the thread maybe you can understand my POV a bit better.
Brand promise has gotten too ingrained. Everything has to have some huge lofty benefit. You can't just make someone's dick hard, you have to rekindle human intimacy. You can't make that stinky fungus go away you have to reaffirm the patients self worth. To be honest this is true in general advertising. No your breakfast cereal/toilet paper/smartphone/automobile isn't saving the world. Stop it.
OP, what category of product are you taking about specifically?
I work in oncology so humor is frown upon. Also, from my experience, even with more nuisance-type conditions the clients are often weary of offending someone.
Mentor
More of this (“Love Story”, VMLY&R for Viagra)
Because everyone today is sensitive and in an area where the sensitivities are someone’s health. To clients today the risks aren’t worthwhile.
Strategy and positioning + disease state. If you’re working on an OTC brand you have a better chance of working in a humorous approach, Mucinex for example. It’s not a detrimental disease state and you’re dealing with a temporary inconvenience. When you cross into chronic or high science disease states, you are recognizing the patient’s sentiments on their own journey. By the time it comes time to concept, a strategy has been developed. Is the brand archetype “the Everyman” (or person), the “savior”, etc. you build a personality around the product attributes. So that’s all worked out and approved by the client they have a particular emotion they are trying to evoke. Then yea, clients, regulatory BS, etc. HCP ads you’ll mostly lean towards a clinical or functional concept, occasionally get to play in a patient-centric emotional campaign. For patients you get more leeway, but within the context of what I mentioned earlier. All this doesn’t mean you can’t be bold or edgy, or do something pretty cool, where there are some cool campaigns out there.
I would love to do a humorous campaign, and have pitched them before, but I have always worked in categories like oncology, neurology, rare disease, etc. usually people are desperate or not in the right mental space for humor. I’ve worked on some really empowering ads that were well received. Most “playful” I’ve worked on has been in dermatology and some almost-made-it funny campaigns in women’s health that died in research.
Keep your ideas, save them for the right day and repurpose them. Figure out what you’re working on and see when it’s a good time to put them back out there. Good ideas don’t die, they get recycled and reborn.
Would love to know what disease state your working on OP that prompted the question though.
Community Builder
You need to work at a better agency that doesn’t only presents work they are proud of to their client (unless it’s round 4! 😜).
Community Builder
Well if it helps, since COVID is feels a lot more personal and less big. And I know I’m still producing great work. You have the recruiters name yeah?
Clients. That’s why.
They haven’t done the research to support it, and humor is very difficult to do well — doubly so when you’re talking to people who are suffering in a therapeutic area.
Yeah, I’ve had the same experience. They usually are just afraid to minimize the seriousness. And many prefer an “emotional connection” rather than something clever.
I’ve actually seen more metaphorical work get through on HCP than patient.
We’ve tried some humor in campaigns for market research with HCPs. It loses every. single. time. At least in our specific health tracks. Really just depends what your target is. Agree with PH1 humor is extremely hard to do well and it’s incredibly subjective and polarizing.
Great points all around. One other to consider: If your agency handles your clients’ media budgets, that’s also likely to increase the pressure to “just get something approved.” Burning lots of billable hours going to the mattresses to “fight for the work” puts a major dent in the margin of what’s probably a fixed creative budget (no one gets to send a change order because Creative went two extra rounds with MedReg to fight them for a great idea). Media spend is where the cash flow at. The sooner your agency can get to running those modest, un-breakthrough ads, the sooner they can recoup some of the cost of making them.
Mentor
I know :-/ It’s so frustrating. Everything my team / agency does is so flat. Not exciting at all. If I stay in Pharma I will never have a break to work in consumer again. Any tips?
Mentor
I appreciate the feedback. I’ve done a few side gigs and would try to do more. It’s just that my full time job is very time-consuming. But I’m with you. Thanks again!