Pharma Ads Are Stuck in a 60-Second Rut. One Genentech Executive Thinks He Knows the Way Out
CANNES, France — A car jack branded as Viagra, a botox campaign that never describes the product overtly, a GLP-1 drug reminscent of the Mac-versus-PC guys. Picture a pharmaceutical ad, and these wouldn’t be top of your list – but that, according to one industry exec, is precisely the problem.
The pharmaceutical industry’s direct-to-consumer advertising has long been defined by a recognizable formula: efficacy claim, then 30 seconds of a voiceover listing side effects while someone walks a golden retriever on a sun-drenched beach. Regulatory requirements are real, but the creative paralysis they produce is, at least partly, self-inflicted, the argument goes.
That distinction matters more than ever as pharma’s media mix shifts under its feet, said Marc Minassian, head of media and innovation at Genentech, in a video interview with Beet.TV recorded at the Cannes Lions 2026 festival. He said The industry has confused the boundaries of what it must do with the limits of what it can do.
Regulatory ceilings, creative floors
FDA rules governing fair balance and risk disclosure have, over decades, trained pharma marketers to think inside a very specific box, Minassian said – one shaped almost entirely by the demands of 60-second linear television.
“Regulatory restrictions do place limits on what we can say and how we can say it,” Minassian said. “And I think it has created boundaries that we’re just comfortable staying within, particularly on linear television. The pattern is … pretty much all that pharma is able to do on linear TV in the span of 60 seconds.”
That comfort, he argued, is not the same as necessity. At Cannes, a Viagra campaign from Blue Brands – barred from direct-to-consumer pharma advertising in mainland China – won recognition for branding everyday consumer products, including a car jack, with the Viagra name.
Nothing about the pharmaceutical product was said. Brand awareness and sentiment were built anyway. “So brilliant,” Minassian said.
The ‘I Choose’ lesson
Minassian drew on his own experience to illustrate how the same logic can work inside the U.S. regulatory framework. While working on Botox Cosmetic, a boxed-warning medication, he was part of a team that wanted to break out of the 60-second mold and unlock shorter formats – 30s, 15s, and even six-second ads – without triggering the safety-language requirements that make short-form nearly impossible for claim-based creative.
“They found things that they could say that were factual and true and built positive sentiment for the brand without necessitating 60 seconds and 30 of that being safety language,” he said.
The resulting campaign, called “I Choose,” featured patients explaining why they chose Botox Cosmetic in brief, claim-free terms. The approach required a genuine partnership between brand marketers and creative agencies willing to explore the space outside conventional pharma creative conventions, he added.
A Cannes winner in the health category, “Loosen Your Tight Ends” – a campaign framing a blood test in unexpectedly playful terms – was the kind of output that kind of partnership can produce. “It takes that partnership in order to expand beyond what we think the boundaries are,” Minassian said.
The DTC challenger mindset
A new class of direct-to-consumer entrants, many built around GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and telehealth distribution, has been approaching pharma marketing from a fundamentally different starting point – consumer marketing first, regulatory constraints discovered later. That sequence, Minassian suggested, produces a different creative posture.
“They don’t have the legacy of what we can and cannot do, so they’re more inventive, more inclined to be innovative,” he said. That freedom has not gone unnoticed by regulators: the FDA sent warning letters to more than 30 telehealth companies in early 2026 over allegedly misleading claims related to compounded GLP-1 products. Minassian declined to comment on specific companies’ legal situations but was clear about the prerequisite for any creative risk-taking. “Your legal and compliance and regulatory folks need to go along for the ride with you,” he said. “They obviously need to accept that risk before you do it.”
The broader industry numbers suggest the creative rethink cannot come fast enough.
- U.S. pharma digital ad spending is projected to reach $26.15 billion in 2026, up 5.6% year over year, according to eMarketer.
- Traditional pharma ad spending – including linear TV – is forecast to fall 12.1% to $6.9 billion.
- Prescription drug TV spending fell to $2.82 billion in the first half of 2026, down 5.3% from the same period a year earlier.
CTV first, not linear first
The structural argument Minassian made about creative also applies to media planning. Pharma, he said, has long operated with a “linear TV first” mentality, treating every other channel as secondary. That sequencing is increasingly out of step with where audiences actually are.
“There is a percentage of the population you will never reach if you’re only running linear TV ads,” he said. “There is a percentage of the population you will never reach if you’re only on social.”
The implication is that omnichannel planning – designing creative simultaneously for CTV, social, online video, and linear – is no longer optional for brands trying to reach prospective patients and their “connected populations” who are actively searching for medications.
That’s the complete “Added” column text from the revision diff — it runs through the “CTV first, not linear first” section and ends there, since the final paragraph on the page (the eMarketer CTV upfront-spending stat) was a pure deletion with nothing added in its place.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by Swoop. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
CANNES, France — A car jack branded as Viagra, a botox campaign that never describes the product overtly, a GLP-1 drug reminscent of the Mac-versus-PC guys. Picture a pharmaceutical ad, and these wouldn’t be top of your list – but that, according to one industry exec, is precisely the problem.
The pharmaceutical industry’s direct-to-consumer advertising has long been defined by a recognizable formula: efficacy claim, then 30 seconds of a voiceover listing side effects while someone walks a golden retriever on a sun-drenched beach. Regulatory requirements are real, but the creative paralysis they produce is, at least partly, self-inflicted, the argument goes.
That distinction matters more than ever as pharma’s media mix shifts under its feet, said Marc Minassian, head of media and innovation at Genentech, in a video interview with Beet.TV recorded at the Cannes Lions 2026 festival. He said The industry has confused the boundaries of what it must do with the limits of what it can do.
Regulatory ceilings, creative floors
FDA rules governing fair balance and risk disclosure have, over decades, trained pharma marketers to think inside a very specific box, Minassian said – one shaped almost entirely by the demands of 60-second linear television.
“Regulatory restrictions do place limits on what we can say and how we can say it,” Minassian said. “And I think it has created boundaries that we’re just comfortable staying within, particularly on linear television. The pattern is … pretty much all that pharma is able to do on linear TV in the span of 60 seconds.”
That comfort, he argued, is not the same as necessity. At Cannes, a Viagra campaign from Blue Brands – barred from direct-to-consumer pharma advertising in mainland China – won recognition for branding everyday consumer products, including a car jack, with the Viagra name.
Nothing about the pharmaceutical product was said. Brand awareness and sentiment were built anyway. “So brilliant,” Minassian said.
The ‘I Choose’ lesson
Minassian drew on his own experience to illustrate how the same logic can work inside the U.S. regulatory framework. While working on Botox Cosmetic, a boxed-warning medication, he was part of a team that wanted to break out of the 60-second mold and unlock shorter formats – 30s, 15s, and even six-second ads – without triggering the safety-language requirements that make short-form nearly impossible for claim-based creative.
“They found things that they could say that were factual and true and built positive sentiment for the brand without necessitating 60 seconds and 30 of that being safety language,” he said.
The resulting campaign, called “I Choose,” featured patients explaining why they chose Botox Cosmetic in brief, claim-free terms. The approach required a genuine partnership between brand marketers and creative agencies willing to explore the space outside conventional pharma creative conventions, he added.
A Cannes winner in the health category, “Loosen Your Tight Ends” – a campaign framing a blood test in unexpectedly playful terms – was the kind of output that kind of partnership can produce. “It takes that partnership in order to expand beyond what we think the boundaries are,” Minassian said.
The DTC challenger mindset
A new class of direct-to-consumer entrants, many built around GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and telehealth distribution, has been approaching pharma marketing from a fundamentally different starting point – consumer marketing first, regulatory constraints discovered later. That sequence, Minassian suggested, produces a different creative posture.
“They don’t have the legacy of what we can and cannot do, so they’re more inventive, more inclined to be innovative,” he said. That freedom has not gone unnoticed by regulators: the FDA sent warning letters to more than 30 telehealth companies in early 2026 over allegedly misleading claims related to compounded GLP-1 products. Minassian declined to comment on specific companies’ legal situations but was clear about the prerequisite for any creative risk-taking. “Your legal and compliance and regulatory folks need to go along for the ride with you,” he said. “They obviously need to accept that risk before you do it.”
The broader industry numbers suggest the creative rethink cannot come fast enough.
- U.S. pharma digital ad spending is projected to reach $26.15 billion in 2026, up 5.6% year over year, according to eMarketer.
- Traditional pharma ad spending – including linear TV – is forecast to fall 12.1% to $6.9 billion.
- Prescription drug TV spending fell to $2.82 billion in the first half of 2026, down 5.3% from the same period a year earlier.
CTV first, not linear first
The structural argument Minassian made about creative also applies to media planning. Pharma, he said, has long operated with a “linear TV first” mentality, treating every other channel as secondary. That sequencing is increasingly out of step with where audiences actually are.
“There is a percentage of the population you will never reach if you’re only running linear TV ads,” he said. “There is a percentage of the population you will never reach if you’re only on social.”
The implication is that omnichannel planning – designing creative simultaneously for CTV, social, online video, and linear – is no longer optional for brands trying to reach prospective patients and their “connected populations” who are actively searching for medications.
That’s the complete “Added” column text from the revision diff — it runs through the “CTV first, not linear first” section and ends there, since the final paragraph on the page (the eMarketer CTV upfront-spending stat) was a pure deletion with nothing added in its place.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by Swoop. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
