The Best Work at Cannes Was By Brands Who Weren’t Afraid

In healthcare, the thing that keeps a person from acting is rarely a shortage of information. It’s discomfort. We know that better than most, because it’s the problem we spend our days on (and sometimes our nights, too). As soon as someone hears a complex word or receives an unanticipated diagnosis, they stop hearing everything that comes after it. Turning something that’s frightening into something simple enough to act on is why XCH exists. When our Group Creative Director, Elizabeth Delaney, came back from a week at Cannes, the work that stayed with her was the work doing exactly that. 

She spent that week at the Effie Accelerator at Cannes Lions, a program built around effectiveness. A Cannes Lion is judged on the idea itself. An Effie asks what that idea actually did once it was out in the world, whether it moved awareness, changed a behavior, or got someone to decide differently. The idea of effectiveness sat underneath everything she brought home. 

The clearest example won the Pharma Grand Prix. Novartis and Fallon Minneapolis built a prostate cancer ad around something deeply human. Most men put off screening because they assume it starts with an invasive exam, when for the majority, it starts with a simple blood test. So the ad cast a lineup of NFL tight ends and a Super Bowl-winning coach who had survived the disease, set them floating in pools, practicing yoga, and painting portraits, and let humor carry the message. “Relax, it’s a blood test.” Putting that into a Super Bowl slot that ran about $8 million for 30 seconds was a big swing, and it worked because the idea underneath was strong enough to carry a subject men flinch from onto the biggest screen of the year. Novartis reported a 367% jump in PSA testing because of it. 

That number is the whole point, and it’s also where most work falls apart. Effie-caliber campaigns start with a baseline. You measure awareness or behavior before launch, measure it again after, and the gap between them is your proof. Elizabeth was candid that this is where strong work usually dies. The creative is fine. The follow-through gets cut, because the money to measure the result disappears the moment the campaign ships. A 367% only exists because someone thought to ask where we are starting from before the idea took off. If you want to prove a campaign worked, protect the research budget on both ends, before anyone in the building falls in love with the creative. 

Getting to an idea that brave takes a certain permission, and one of the sessions gave the team a way to ask for it. The team at Mischief at No Fixed Address described a question they put to themselves in the room, what would you do if you weren’t afraid. The honest answer rarely ships as written, and it isn’t meant to. It stretches what everyone believes is on the table, and the idea you finally choose is usually stronger for having started somewhere less safe. 

Elizabeth also brought home a distinction about surprise that’s worth holding onto. There’s the short o, the “oh, I didn’t see that coming” that buys a second of attention. And there’s the long o, the surprise that makes someone stop, rethink how they feel about a brand, and act on it. In a category where regulation limits what you’re allowed to say, how the message arrives is one of the few levers left fully in your hands, and surprise is the sharpest one. A French conservation group proved it by faxing government offices that had ignored their emails for months and watched their response rate climb from 2.3% to 26%, because a fax printed in a mayor’s office was so unanticipated. 

The last takeaway is the one healthcare is built to use, when it has the nerve. Make the cost of inaction visible. The prostate ad wasn’t there to sell a test. It made the price of avoidance impossible to ignore, and it did that with some humor. 

What’s reassuring is how little any of this actually requires. You don’t need a Super Bowl budget, a looser legal team, or a bigger headcount. It comes down to the willingness to bring the brave version into the room, and the discipline to prove it worked once it’s out there. 

That’s the work we care about doing with the brands we partner with. We spend our days on the same problem these Cannes winners solved. Someone hears a diagnosis, a risk, a number they weren’t ready for, and barely takes in a word after it. The work that reaches that person has to be brave enough to make a frightening thing feel approachable, and grounded enough to prove it moved them. That’s what we mean when we say we make the complex simple, and it’s the standard Elizabeth came home talking about, because we know what it costs when no one does.