Eli Lilly & Company is celebrating its 150 year anniversary this year, a massive milestone for any brand.
Lina Polimeni, senior vice president and chief marketing officer says that the pharmaceutical company is still focused on its founding mission, “health above everything” but through the lens of today.
“One of the questions I always ask the team is, what would a medicine company do in this moment? That was the guiding light to the campaign and creative expression, which we call 150 years of everything else,” says Polimeni.
Health above everything even means focusing on preventative health. The company recently launched a campaign focused on health and starring WNBA star Caitlin Clark called “Start How You Can.” The effort, made with Wieden+Kennedy Portland, focuses on the idea that exercise is one of the most powerful medicines to drive better health.
“We are hearing feedback from people saying, ‘Wow, this is a medicine company, but they’re not selling medicine. They’re telling us to get healthy,’” says Polimeni. “The idea is there’s so much you can do before you ever need medicine.”
Polimeni is speaking at Brand Innovators Cannes Lions Marketing Leadership Summit @ Cannes on Monday morning at the Beach Stage. Brand Innovators caught up with Polimeni to discuss the company’s milestone anniversary, Cannes and how the brand is showing up in culture. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
A 150-year anniversary is a huge moment for any brand. How did you approach this milestone?
If you look back at Lilly’s history – it’s a history of before and afters – the polio vaccine, the mass production of insulin, Prozac. All those things change the face of diseases across many decades of the company’s activity. It would have been very realistic and justified for us to celebrate the 150 years of what we have done and how much we have impacted humanity. But our legacy is not just what we have done, but what we can still do.
What I have learned in 22 years at this company, is that when it comes to health and medicine, people very rarely talk about what the medicine does. They always mention what the medicine has given them back in the life that they were able to live. Whether it has been medicine that changed their metabolic health or gave their loved ones more time after a metastatic diagnosis, people often tell me, it’s never about the medicine. It’s about being able to see their daughter’s graduation or living in better overall health. Thanks to the metabolic changes, they can actually go for a walk with their kids. We call the campaign 150 years of everything else. The campaign really focuses on this insight. Health means having life and time for those moments that matter to you. The campaign is very much about everyday moments and what’s possible in the presence of health.
Cannes Lions is a festival that celebrates creativity. What are you thinking about creativity heading into Cannes?
I still think Cannes is the most important week that we have as marketers and brand builders, because it is the one week where we can actually stop and think about creativity only. What I’m excited about Cannes this year is finding the conversation about the brand beyond the platform. There’s a natural excitement about AI. I’m excited about AI. I hear a lot of conversations around how you can do less with AI? How can you use AI to use less people, less money, less time? But I’m excited about what we can do to do more creatively with AI. The conversations I tend to lean on in Cannes are the ones that are centered around leadership as the epicenter of creativity. How are we fostering this? How are we using creative effectiveness for business? How are we shepherding that forward? I will be interested in whether it’s AI or other things. How do we coalesce as leadership to evolve creative effectiveness in a landscape that continues to evolve.
Can you talk about the strategy behind your recent campaign with Caitlin Clark?
Our overall strategy for the brand is health above all. It’s not about convenience. It’s not about clinical trials. It’s anything that can make people healthy. That’s really what the company stands for. The campaign with Caitlin has been extremely powerful at delivering this message.
The campaign was inspired actually by a conversation Caitlin and I had when we first met and before even thought about doing a campaign together. She was mentioning how nutrition and movement is part of her overall belief in keeping healthy – doing small things, whatever that looks like for you. It’s important for health across the board, whether you’re an athlete or somebody that’s never even laced up a pair of running shoes. We really wanted people to see themselves and not only Caitlin.
You see her with other people that are just learning how to do their sport. The message is really that that’s what health looks like. Movement is the most important thing that we can do when it comes to active agency towards health. For a professional athlete like Caitlin, that may look like spending a ton of time in between games in the gym. For some other people, it may look like picking up swimming or just being able to go for a walk around the block. But whatever it is for you, the moment is now.
You’ve been leaning into culture in both sports and film moments. Can you talk about why it’s important as a brand to show up in these spaces?
I am still unconvinced that pharma has to be boring. There’s so much that this category can offer. Culture doesn’t accept brands, culture adopts them when those brands show up with something to contribute to the conversation. I’ve never had a brief that says, show up in culture. What I want to do is show up in places where life conversations are happening. I didn’t understand why health –which is fundamental to life – was always relegated to PSAs or to boring conversations in marketing. It was always showing up where people were sick. Health was always being discussed in terms of symptoms, cures, pharmacological intervention. But that’s not where you should discuss health. I don’t want health to be discussed only when things go wrong.
Sports are a moment to have the conversation. If we can talk about apparel during a sports event, we should be able to talk about the body that makes it possible for you to wear those clothes.
For culture, I look at the Grammys and the Oscars as big moments where families are coming together, where people are excited and I try to figure out, can I contribute to this? I believe that health is one of the biggest things that we should be discussing. I try to do that in a manner that’s respectful of health, but also respectful of the event.
Can you talk about breaking through the fragmented media landscape?
We can reach people everywhere right now. But what’s hard is to tell them something that makes them care about your brand. I see the fragmentation of media as something positive from a media perspective. There’s different ways to reach people wherever they are and more efficiently. It’s going back to the future in the sense that it’s more important than ever to have a grasp of your marketing fundamentals. It’s really important that you hold your team accountable to the fundamentals because fundamentals that are faulty or flawed only get amplified in a fragmented media environment. Do you have the fundamentals of your brand set up correctly? Secondly, when it is so easy to reach someone and everybody’s bombarded by messages, are you saying something that actually can make people care? Because reach and eyeballs, without a brand point of view just becomes a logo with a big budget.
You’ve been with Eli Lilly for most of your career. Can you talk about what you’ve learned and how that’s helped shape your perspective today?
I learned that loyalty is different than seniority. I stayed at Lilly this whole time because the work has kept getting interesting, because I really respect the ambition that this company has and it matches the ambition that I have in marketing. I see that level of conviction every day in people at Lilly. That’s what’s kept me at Lilly for 22 years, I’ve learned that the best campaigns are hardly ever the easy ones. For you to see a campaign in the world, there’s so many conversations and so many times someone had to hold a line of moments and discussion like the ones that I just had with you in terms of what’s important. It’s easy to look at them retroactively, but at the moment, having courage is important when you decide to have a career in brand building and marketing. I’ve also learned your ability to distill what is inside and what’s the right campaign is equally as hard as also being able to advocate for that internally, bringing people along with you. And then the right conversations are hardly the easiest one. Courage is important.
