Aufregende Zeiten für unsere Frankfurter Kollegin Johanna. Sie hat nach einer internen Wettbewerbsausschreibung einen Freifahrtschein nach Cannes gewonnen und wird von dort aus am 19./20. Juni live berichten. Ihre ganz persönlichen Eindrücke hat die Kolumbianerin im Folgenden niedergeschrieben.
“Win a chance to report live from Cannes Lions Health festival”. That was the subject line of the e-mail where Laura Schoen, president of Weber Shandwick Global Healthcare, announced a competition for all EMEA healthcare practices. The juicy price: Full access to the Lions Health festival in Cannes, from the 19th to the 20th of June.
Lions Health is the biggest global creative festival for the healthcare communications industry, an industry that generally is not considered creative mainly due to strict regulations that often constrain innovation. But those of us who work in healthcare communications know that nowhere is the power of creativity more important than in healthcare, where it can help to transform lives.
So when this opportunity was presented to me, I knew right away I wanted to take a shot at it. I also knew it wasn’t going to be easy – I was running against very talented people (my very own colleagues!) also eager to attend one of the biggest events of the industry.
The guidelines of the contest were quite simple: “All we are looking for is originality & creativity. Whether it’s a video, infographic or song – it needs to stand out!”
The way I approached the challenge was to think not only about the submission entry as such, but also about the means to report from Cannes which was the ultimate goal. That’s how the idea was born to create a Twitter account to promote my contest campaign #takeJB2Cannes.
Then it was all about having fun – taking pictures and videos with the Germany team showing their support, having friends helping to promote the campaign on Twitter and finally asking our CEO Christiane Schulz to agree to a filmed statement.
After creating enough buzz on Twitter, the campaign got the attention of Colin Byrne (CEO for UK & EMEA), Adam Mack (EMEA Chief Strategy Officer) and Andy Polansky (CEO of Weber Shandwick).
At the end I had great material to create the video submission that was chosen as the winner of this internal competition. I was thrilled when the announcement was made! Now I’m fully committed to do a good job in Cannes to motivate colleagues around the globe to challenge the industry’s norms and change the course of healthcare communications.
Stay tuned and follow my reports from Cannes on @JB_JohannaB and @WSGermany.
