Climbing the Mountain
As the dust settles on this years Cannes Lions, we caught up with Rich Levy, Global CCO of Klick Health to get his reaction to being the first independent agency to win Healthcare Agency of the Year, as well as the direction the industry is heading.
CR: Winning Healthcare Agency of the Year, Network of the Year at Cannes Lions and Independent Health Agency of the Year is an extraordinary treble. When the results came in, what was your immediate reaction?
RL: After hearing the news that we had won both Healthcare Agency and Healthcare Network of the Year at Cannes Lions – my first reaction was tears, then joy, then more tears. We had come in second place several times but never could seem to get to the top spot. Once it sunk in that we actually were going to take home the top honor, then I started thinking about the historic nature of the accomplishment. Never before had an independent agency received these honors. Something can only happen for the first time in history once and we were thrilled to finally burst open these doors for all independent agencies. And honestly, it wasn’t about the trophies, it was about the momentum they represent to the entire agency.
I had also made the decision not to share the news with the team in advance of the ceremony – as I wanted them to feel the same joy I felt when I heard the news. I wanted them to hear the announcement and scream. It was quite the celebration on stage because nobody knew or either accolades. I heard from several people after the show that our team looked so happy on stage – I think part of it was that nobody knew in advance.
CR: Healthcare advertising has a reputation for playing it safe. How has Klick challenged that convention while still serving the very real needs of patients and HCPs?
RL: I think many companies use governmental regulation or client legal and regulatory restrictions as an excuse not to do provocative work. We never make those excuses. I think our work is different because our briefing process is different. And our briefs allow us to get to a different level of work.
There’s also one other thing – once you’ve established a creative reputation, clients come to you because of the type of work that you do. Our clients expect us to take risks. They want us to do work that has a certain edge. I think they would be disappointed if we did typical pharma work.
CR: What does “brave work” look like specifically in a healthcare context, where the stakes for patients are genuinely high?
RL: We don’t try to do brave work – we aim for effective work. Work that breaks through. That provokes an emotional reaction. Work that gets people to do something. To take control of their health. To do all those things – it has to stand out, have incredible craft and be unique in the marketplace. Some people may call that ‘brave’ – we just call it the way we work.
Infinite Saree - Red Dot Foundation - Klick Health
CR: How do you maintain creative culture and standards as the agency continues to scale Globally?
We don’t have a ‘creative culture,’ we have an agency-wide culture of doing things differently. We don’t want to be like other agencies. We won’t aspire to be a big holding company. Being a global giant was never our aspiration.
The reason people like to work at Klick is no secret. We do great work. We treat people well. And we have a hell of a lot of fun. We hire really smart, talented, nice people whose only goal is to do effective work that makes a difference. The fact that it wins awards is secondary.
And that’s true at every Klick office everywhere in the world.
CR: What does Klick’s success say about where healthcare communications is heading as a discipline within the broader creative industry?
RL: We are fortunate – we were founded as a digital agency. So now that the world finds itself changing to keep up with the demands of AI, we find ourselves focused more than ever on telling stories, elevating craft, and streamlining our processes to help patients get to therapy faster. We didn’t have to learn AI as we’ve been working with LLM’s for a very long time.
Our success isn’t only based on the tools that we all have but the taste, judgment, and storytelling ability that we encourage all our teams to bring to all our work.
CR: Do you think the Cannes Lions healthcare categories are now properly reflecting the sophistication and ambition of the work being done in this space?
RL: I think the categories are fine. The jury needs to catch up. As a healthcare advertising industry, we are very hard on ourselves. We are too competitive with ourselves. And we’re not doing enough to promote our own industry. The healthcare industry’s best work is among the best work in advertising. But you’d never know it by how we’re judging our work. We have to take off our agency, holding company and industry labels and just judge the best work, period.
CR: What’s the one thing you wish the wider advertising industry better understood about healthcare creativity?
RL: That we don’t do great work “for healthcare,” We do great work, period.
Peak Exposure - Melanoma Fund - Klick Health
CR: Where do you see the biggest creative opportunities in healthcare communications over the next 12–18 months?
RL: By harnessing the power of AI to do all the easy blocking and tackling that we have to do in healthcare advertising, we can allow our teams to tackle bigger assignments and do better work. I hope in 12-18 months nobody is ever referencing or annotating anything ever again.
CR: What’s the best quote you heard at Cannes this year?
“At the end of your career, what did you make besides money?”
– Susan Credle, the Lion of St. Mark’s acceptance speech.
