What the Willy Won at Cannes Lions?

Another year. Another Cannes Lions. Another male body part taking center stage.

For the second year running, Pharma advertising's biggest prize went to a campaign tackling men's health. This year, it was Novartis' brilliantly disarming Relax Your Tight End, a Grand Prix-winning masterclass in sports-anchored humour that successfully persuaded men to overcome their anxieties and get a simple prostate cancer blood test.

Last year, the Pharma Grand Prix went to Viagra’s Make Love Last – Bedroom by Ogilvy Shanghai. And this year, Viatris’s Viagra outperformed the category again with their ingenious Blue Brands campaign, turning China's strict direct-to-consumer advertising bans into a clinic on brand extension by using everyday consumer goods (including power tools) to destigmatise erectile dysfunction.

Let’s be absolutely clear: both campaigns richly deserved their applause. They are smart, culturally astute, and beautifully crafted examples of what happens when world-class creativity is given permission to solve a health challenge.

But if we look at the other side of the creative ledger, a frustrating paradox emerges. If we isolate work focused on women’s health (spanning women’s cancer, menstruation, menopause, fertility, and endometriosis) 2026 put forward an undeniably stronger, more diverse field than 2025. Yet despite this surge in quality, women’s health campaigns simply aren't breaking into the Gold or Grand Prix tiers within the Pharma category.

True, we saw a brilliant wave of award-winning work across the broader festival. Kotex's Art’s Missing Period deservedly took Gold in Health and Wellness. We celebrated incredibly powerful, boundary-pushing work like The Periodic Fable for The Ordinary (which captured the Health and Wellness Grand Prix), Red Dot Foundation’s Infinite Saree (Silver Lion in Health and Wellness), and Somos Martina’s The Period Uniform (Gold Lion – Sustainable Development Goals).

Bayer’s Anything But Normal, a campaign that challenged decades of normalisation and dismissal by exposing the reality of 1.5 billion women conditioned to "just get on with" pain, heavy bleeding, and menopause resonated deeply with women worldwide. It was a phenomenal piece of work. Yet, it failed to progress past the shortlist in the 2026 Pharma Lions.

As the rosé runs dry and the confetti is swept from the Croisette, we must ask ourselves: how do we further point the industry's creative compass in the right direction for women?

Clios Health was the first major global platform to recognize this systemic gap, launching a bespoke Women’s Health specialty medium award category. It is time for Cannes Lions to show the same leadership. Introducing a dedicated Women's Health category at Cannes would not only drive a surge in high-quality submissions, but it would also force juries to benchmark, showcase, and ultimately elevate this work to the global stage.

Because while the industry has proven exceptionally good at finding the creative audacity to make the world talk about penises and prostates, we urgently need that same boldness directed toward the conditions quietly killing or compromising the lives of women.

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in women. Ovarian cancer remains the most lethal of all gynecological cancers, still diagnosed far too late. Women make up roughly 80 per cent of autoimmune patients, and mental health disorders are currently one of the fastest-growing health burdens for women globally. These aren't niche medical anomalies; they are global crises waiting for a creative solution.

When the healthcare industry's creative pinnacle rolls around next June, let’s not settle for "awareness" or spotty representation on the shortlist. Let’s challenge our agencies, our clients, and our male allies-who hold the budgets and still most executive creative director chairs, to bring the same level of grit and genius to the female body.

It is time to get women's health front and center. And maybe, just maybe, the "wisemen" of the Cannes Festival will finally give it the platform it is calling out for.

Rachael Pay is president health EMEA & APAC integration lead at Weber Shandwick.