Hasta La Creative!

This week marks the first-ever Cannes Lions Health festival — signaling that creative in the highly regulated industries of health and pharmaceuticals is now competitive with creative in non-regulated markets. As we’ve seen with other regulated industries over the past year — such as finance and alcohol — innovation is exploding despite inherent challenges.

Here are some of the challenges marketers in these industries face: Compliance with government regulations limits opportunities for a brand to deliver its message and correct misinformation; internal governance often prevents participation in social media and the adoption of new technology; and institutions often lack the experience to better manage risk. Marketers in regulated industries experience this pain more acutely than those in non-regulated industries, because they are inherently constrained in how they can market from the onset.

While it may seem counterintuitive, innovation has exploded in the regulated fields of finance and other regulated markets due to two complementary factors. First, consumers are taking more control of their decisions around life’s most important issues, such as money and health, through mobile and social media. This has shifted control from the brand to the consumer for the first time. And marketers in regulated industries — who had largely been on the sidelines of digital and social innovation due to compliance issues — have been able to watch and learn from the mistakes of their colleagues in less-regulated industries.

Continue reading at AdAge.com