CANNES – In a move that bridges health and wellness shopping data with community conversations, CVS Media Exchange (CMX) used Cannes Lions to announce a partnership collaboration connects CVS’s 90 million ExtraCare members with Reddit’s 108 million daily active users.
The collaboration aims to create new opportunities for brands to reach health-conscious consumers where they’re already discussing symptoms, treatments and product recommendations.
In this Beet.TV panel at Cannes Lions, three execs involved discussed the tie-up, its possibilities and how brands should lean in on personalization.
- Parbinder Dhariwal, VP, GM, CVS Media Exchange (CMX)
- Mike Romoff, Chief Revenue Officer, Reddit
- Kelly Kavanagh, Sr. Director, Integrated Marketing & Media, Haleon
Healthy attention for health messages
“One of the unique things about Reddit is that it’s anonymous, and so you’d think that that would bring out the worst in people, but actually, it brings out their vulnerabilities,” said Romoff.
“They talk about conditions that they may have – health is a huge category for us. You may not want to talk about that unusual rash underneath your own name, but you can talk about it honestly and find support, find treatment.”
That’s something Haleon liked the sound of. For brands like Haleon, which markets products including Advil, Sensodyne and Tums, the partnership represents an opportunity to reach consumers at critical decision-making moments.
“It really made sense because I can’t tell you how many people in my life, whether they’re struggling with mental health or physical illness… so much of the conversation when we’ve been checking in with those friends is, ‘Well, I was looking on Reddit, and I saw that this medication helps,'” said Haleon’s Kavanagh.
Balancing personalization with trust
As retail media networks leverage increasingly sophisticated data capabilities, maintaining consumer trust becomes critical. CVS emphasizes that its approach to personalization keeps the consumer experience at the center.
“Whenever we think about any kind of segmentation of our audience or any way of targeting our audience, the consumer is at the heart of everything that we do,” CMX’s Dhariwal said. “The policies that we exhibit are to protect the consumer, to protect our brand, and make sure that anything that we do from a retail media perspective is additive to the experience
“No one has been able to provide that end-to-end attribution model from a retail perspective, or any other perspective. That’s why this partnership that we’re doing right now is a first of its kind,” Dhariwal explained.
You’re watching “The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2025, presented by CVS Media Exchange” For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2025, presented by CVS Media Exchange. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2025 here.
