Healthcare agencies remain at the forefront of pharmaceutical marketing, but new technologies and shifting political dynamics are putting more pressure on the industry.
In this new series, Fierce Pharma Marketing will drill down into the major issues affecting agencies and pharmaceutical marketing with leading executives from across the industry.
For the first installment of the series, Fierce sat down with Shannon Walsh, chief operating officer and president of PR, social and influence at Ogilvy Health.
When it comes to AI, “things are moving at light speed,” Walsh said. “From year-to-year, even within the past three months, there’s been major change in this space."
“I feel like the expectations for us to adopt AI—whether that be internal workflows or external applications—are happening all the time. I do think that our clients are on the same journey as us; they are looking to us as the experts to help guide them.”
She said clients are asking how and why agencies are using AI, but not pushing back on its adoption. “The way we look at AI is that it isn’t just one aspect. It’s deeply embedded in nearly every single step of our marketing mix, whether that’s a process or an ideation session that we’re soundboarding on.”
Walsh described AI as a “very powerful tool—when used correctly.” Validation is especially critical in healthcare marketing, she added. “That’s the question we get most from clients: How is this validated in our space.”
Still, Walsh said “human overlay” remains essential. “It would be irresponsible to send these out without cross-checking and validating everything.”
When it comes to creative work, however, she said the conversation shifts. “We recently had a client engage with us to do a full AI production of an online advertisement. Now, can we say there were efficiencies in this approach? Absolutely. But it did require us to be a very strong partner to guide it.”
Walsh said she does not see AI “taking over all of creative,” adding that there is “still room to have both.”
One way Ogilvy Health is using AI is through Ria, a proprietary tool designed to flag potential promotional risks before marketing materials are released. The system was developed as the FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion intensified scrutiny of direct-to-consumer ads, criticizing companies for issues such as “attention-grabbing visuals” and “frequent scene changes.” Several major pharma companies have received so-called untitled letters in recent years, including BeOne Medicines, which received three in 2026 alone.
“We created an AI agent called Ria that we fed every single OPDP claim into the database and now, before we push our materials out, we run them through this system we created to seek out any potential warning [that could lead to an FDA promotion violation] come through,” Walsh said. “This has now become one of our core processes.”
Celebrity power, influencers and the right use of data
Celebrity endorsements have long been a staple of pharma marketing, helping companies tap into the visibility and reach of actors, athletes and other public figures.
In recent years, however, campaigns have shifted away from straightforward celebrity endorsements toward more personal storytelling, often centered on the experiences of celebrities themselves or everyday patients.
“We’re still seeing a role for bigger celebrities in campaigns,” Walsh said. “But I see this now in more broader awareness campaigns, rather than for specific products.”
One recent example is Caitlin Clark teaming up with Eli Lilly this month for an ad focused broadly on health and wellness rather than a specific product.
The understated campaign shows Clark practicing alone in a gym, interspersed with scenes of people recovering from illness and injury and returning to physical activity.
Walsh also sees celebrity campaigns increasingly paired with influencer marketing. “There is the rise of the nano or micro influencers: So, you have big celeb names for the awareness push, then the smaller, specific influencers for patient stories and then those micro influencers who have a very strong connection to whatever they are trying to message.”
That can include physicians specializing in a disease area or patients with firsthand experience and strong social media followings who can help companies reach targeted audiences.
“The coupling of these people is happening more and more,” Walsh said.
Earlier this year, VML Health urged drugmakers to frame therapeutic value in terms of lives fully lived rather than relying solely on clinical data. Discussing cancer marketing, the agency said pharma communications teams should move beyond survival statistics and incorporate stories and evidence that better capture patients’ lived experiences.
Genentech is one company that has embraced that approach, recently updating its “Life Doesn’t Wait” campaign for World Hemophilia Day with a stronger emphasis on patient stories.
“The data presentation is still strong,” Walsh said. “There is still a place for that, and we still need to make sure that we are pushing out those clear data points, especially in the age of LLMs, when people are searching for information.
“One of the largest requests we are getting right now is how to optimize for those LLMs. We’re not moving away from data; that’s foundational, but pulling it through human stories and patients' views is where we’re seeing the real shift. That’s where the connection happens, especially for patients.”