Eli Lilly is putting out a new message to mark the start of the Olympic Games: “You only get one body, let's fight like hell for it.” The Big Pharma, which is partnered with Team USA, put the message across in a 60-second ad about how any body can get sick—but nobody needs to accept that.
In the ad, Lilly shows the diversity of shapes and sizes of Olympian bodies. We see a basketball player, a first-person perspective of a gymnast flying through the air, a weightlifter and a Paralympian runner. The voice-over comments on each person in turn, explaining that the body we get “might turn out seven foot tall,” be the perfect size for gymnastics, “take up a lot of space” or “move differently.”
All the athletes, and everyone else, have a common fate. “Some day your body might get sick, because, no matter how strong you make your body, its health may be out of your control,” the voice-over says. Yet, the ad draws a distinction between inevitability and acceptance when it comes to the fact your body may get sick.
“You don't have to accept that,” the voice-over says. “After all, about a billion things had to happen for you to even be born. And since you only get one body, let's fight like hell for it.” Those final words play out over footage of a baby coming screaming into the world, seeing the healthcare professional and then their mother for the first time.
Lilly has partnered with more than 25 Olympians who will share the film on their social media platforms throughout the games. Suni Lee, the Team USA gymnast featured in the video, has shared the ad on Instagram.
The drugmaker’s agreements with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams and NBCUniversal, U.S. media partner for the games, have given it a way to muscle in on Sanofi’s hometown party. Sanofi is sponsoring the games in Paris, but Lilly is still visible because of its deals in the U.S.
Both companies are running a range of campaigns in relation to the games, with Lilly making U.S. gymnast Simone Biles the face of an ad campaign for its GLP-1 drug Mounjaro and Sanofi pushing various digital and real-world materials as part of its “biggest corporate activation.”