Viagra takes home the Pharma Grand Prix at 2025 Cannes Lions

The Make Love Last campaign for Viatris’ erectile dysfunction brand Viagra was awarded the 2025 Pharma Grand Prix in Cannes.

The cinematography effort was created for Viagra by its agency partner Ogilvy Shanghai.

Cannes Pharma Lions jury president Franklin Williams, EVP and executive director of experience design for Area 23, a 2025 MM+M Agency 100 honoree, announced the award on Monday.

 

 

 

 

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The work answered the question of how to promote Viagra in a country where pharma ads are banned and intimacy is often considered a taboo subject. 

The agency worked with three couples as they shared their challenges with intimacy. An artist then captured their intimacy through time-lapse photography, so their action was ultimately a blur. 

The unbranded video featured just the iconic diamond shape of the blue pill with three words: "Make Love Last.”

“Entertainment that earns your attention tends to be something that rises to the top,” Williams said, noting that the work also had “craft with purpose.” 

“It wasn't craft for craft sake,” he said, but instead, it was “craft that actually told a story and maybe broke down some barriers.”

Williams said the jurors looked at the fact that the campaign addressed the realities of the problem it was trying to solve, and the pragmatic ways it dealt with a sensitive subject.

“How do you speak about the realities of the most intimate moment when you can't actually show that most intimate moment? The answer is, you hide it in plain sight. You show so much of that moment that it starts to blur the edges of the reasons why it couldn't be approved, and it immediately becomes approvable,” Franklin said.

He added that spreading education is now something that more consumers and brands want to see, because we live in a world with so much user-generated content that people can't find where the truth lies. 

As trusted entities, pharma brands now have an opportunity to explore truth spreading more deeply. 

Production on the campaign came from Boxcutter in Auckland, New Zealand.

In addition to the Grand Prix, the Cannes Pharma Lions jury recognized the Friedreich’s Back campaign from Biogen in support of its FDA-approved treatment Skyclaris.

The entertainment work was created by 21Grams, a subsidiary of 2025 MM+M Agency 100 honoree Real Chemistry. 

On Wednesday, Biogen and 21Grams will be hosting an activation on the main stage at Cannes to explore the power of humor in addressing serious medical conditions, like the campaign’s namesake Friedrich's ataxia. 

The campaign features celebrity science advocate Bill Nye and Fiona Calling, a patient advocate and comedian, to humanize the disease and reduce stigma.

Production on the campaign came from Minusl and Room42 in New York as well as Score a Score in Los Angeles.

This story first appeared on MM+M.