Eli Lilly has published a video about how medicines affect lives to mark its 150th anniversary and the arrival of college basketball stars in its home city.
Indianapolis-based Lilly will celebrate 150 years in business next month. While the full anniversary celebration is still weeks away, Indianapolis’ hosting of the NCAA Final Four basketball games this weekend prompted the company to launch part of the campaign early. A Lilly spokesperson said the basketball games have created an early cultural moment in Lilly’s hometown.
Lilly’s video starts with the message that “it’s easy to think medicine is about sickness.” Across the rest of the film, Lilly makes the case that medicine is actually about health.
“When people talk about what medicine meant to someone they love, they never describe the treatment—they describe the life that followed. Birthdays, love, Tuesday nights with the people that matter most,” Lina Polimeni, chief marketing officer, consumer at Lilly, said via email.
Lilly’s film conveys that idea using footage of people in situations ranging from mundane activities, such as brushing their teeth, to milestone events, including wedding days. A voiceover says, “none of us are here long enough, but we all deserve a chance to be who we are supposed to be for as long as we're here together.”
The film anchors Lilly’s broader “150 Years of Everything Else” campaign. Lilly’s campaign will include messaging at high-impact, out-of-home activities, plus national print, digital and social communications. The company plans to embed the campaign in shared cultural moments throughout the year to connect its medicines to the everyday experiences they enable.
Lilly’s focus on that connection builds on years of corporate brand building. Since running its first-ever corporate campaign during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Lilly has continued to push the message that it is a medicine company that puts health above all.
A drugmaker’s brand could be increasingly important in an era of direct-to-patient (DTP) sales. Lilly is alert to that fact, with CEO Dave Ricks recently discussing the potential to build relationships with DTP customers that enable the company to retain market share as potentially cheaper off-patent rivals come to market.