The standout star. This is for the trailblazer who led with vision, pushed boundaries, and delivered big. Innovation, impact, and leadership—this marketer brought it all.
Best Use of AI (New for 2025)
For the smartest use of smart tech. This award honors campaigns that tapped into AI to personalize, predict, automate, or otherwise supercharge pharma marketing results.
Influencer-Driven Campaign (New for 2025)
Proof that influence works. This category celebrates campaigns that teamed up with healthcare pros, patients, or creators to build trust, spark conversations, and drive action—authentically and effectively.
Charitable or Philanthropic Campaign (New for 2025)
Doing good, brilliantly. This award spotlights marketing efforts that made a real difference—whether through donations, awareness, or support programs that put purpose front and center.
Agency of the Year
Behind every great campaign, is a great agency. We are looking for the industry leaders, the movers and shakers, the teams pushing marketing to the next level. This category honors the agencies that have shown exceptional innovation, talent, and creativity across their entire portfolio.
Digital Campaign – Non-Social Media
Banners and display ads are the old guard of online marketing, but effective and targeted pharma campaigns spur interest and drive traffic to more information. This category is for those non-social media internet campaigns that exemplify the best of web marketing.
DTC Audio for Pharma and Life Sciences
As consumers and physicians move from reading to watching and now listening, the key for pharma marketers is to translate visual marketing strengths into relevant and unique content for audio. This category showcases the most creative and unique DTC audio campaign.
Impiricus HCP Impact Award (free to enter)
This new award category is judged exclusively by physicians. HCP engagement is constantly evolving but the goal of delivering high-value content to physicians remains the same. This category highlights creative marketing initiatives that result in meaningful HCP impact, judged by the physicians themselves.
Innovation Challenge
Pharma and healthcare companies are tapping the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans in challenges that look for the best ideas around health conditions from diabetes to cancer. This award will recognize the most creative and effective contests run over the past year.
Medical Conference or Event Marketing
While medical conferences may have hit a pause during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the enduring fixtures at those events is the advertising from airport terminals and taxi cabs to hotels and convention arenas. This award will recognize the most compelling conference campaigns over the past year.
Multicultural Campaign
Some health conditions and diseases disproportionately affect people of various racial or ethnic backgrounds. This category honours the health campaigns that effectively and creatively reach specific minority audiences.
New Brand Launch
Even groundbreaking products need marketing. After all, how will patients and professionals get to know and use a new drug or treatment without use-case scenarios and benefit-and-risk lists? This category seeks the best strategies and most creative marketing—and their ensuing sales outcomes —for products launched in the last year.
Online Video or Film
The mainstream TV audience is not always appropriate, or in the budget, for rare conditions or targeted treatments. Online videos and even films can be specifically tailored to smaller, more appropriate audiences. The online video or film category recognizes the creativity and budget efficiency in those projects.
Pharma TV
Television is a proven category for building both product and disease awareness. This category recognizes the most creative and effective TV advertising that goes beyond the tried and traditional to create conversations by educating and informing TV viewers.
Print for Consumer
Pharma companies can pack a lot of information—and disclaimers—into a magazine or newspaper ad. This category looks at the print work that best conveys big ideas and core messages in print.
Professional Marketing
Strong relationships with healthcare professionals are essential to pharma marketing strategies. Companies build those connections with interactions across a wide variety of media channels. This category honors the exceptional social media, digital and print campaigns used to reach and inform doctors, nurses, hospital workers and others.
Public Relations Campaign
Media pitches, healthcare KOL outreach and even cross-country media tours can help pharma companies generate buzz for new products or awareness efforts. These unpaid placements can make the difference in gaining widespread attention. This category recognizes the creative and effective pitches that get pharma products and companies noticed.
Social Media for Consumer
While Twitter and Instagram might not be the easiest places for pharma to navigate, many companies are tweeting and ’gramming, including with influencer partners, for noteworthy campaigns. This category highlights the standout marketing efforts that defy social media character counts and space constraints.
Website for Consumer
Today, most TV, print and digital ads come with links to websites for more information. The all-important landing pages where those links lead can be print-heavy and boring, or dynamic and informative. This category will award the latter, recognizing the best-designed and most user-friendly websites for consumers.
Application Scoring
Applications will be scored by a panel of judges and the aggregate of the scores will determine finalists and category winners. Applications will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
Creativity
Does the campaign break through traditional pharmaceutical advertising? How does it use innovative ideas, application of craft and/or use technology to achieve its goals?
Strategy
What's the strategic big idea behind the effort? How does that idea guide the campaign's message, creative execution and media?
Audience Impact
How does the campaign reach its intended audience (i.e. physicians, patients, advocacy groups, consumers, etc). How does it cause them to think, feel or act differently?
Social Good
Does the campaign address any larger social health issues? How does it help to change thinking, modify behavior and/or contribute to a healthier society in general?
True Innovation
How unique is the campaign? What problem does it solve? Does it fit the definition of "game changing?"
Effectiveness
Are there quantifiable metrics or data that demonstrate the value of the campaign? How cost effective is the campaign, that is, what return on investment did it generate comparative to its budget?
