Havas launches wellness entertainment offering for brands

Havas is launching an offering that combines wellness and entertainment, the holding company said today during the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. The offering, called Welltainment, will be led by Eric Weisberg, global chief creative officer of Havas Health & You and Andre Gray, chief creative officer of Annex88. The network is looking to sign clients within what it defined as six key “crisis” areas of focus: hypertension, diabetes, obesity, mental health, pediatric asthma and sexual wellness. The wellness entertainment division will also be focused on “positive” storytelling, according to Weisberg, who said the idea for the offering came as Gray and Weisberg were brainstorming what they believe is a new way of approaching health care creativity. “We started to dive into what work was out there, and the advertising was all built on fear, built on guilt, built on shame,” Weisberg said. “If you get diabetes, you're going to lose a toe. If you're obese, you're going to get cancer. It was just one thing after another. And so we started thinking about what would it take to put a different kind of work in the world. How do we start using creativity in a different way because the current way of working is only making it worse.” Cannes Lions coverage Follow our live blog here Sign up here for email updates See all of the Grand Prix winners here Havas will look to co-create entertainment content with writers, producers, musicians and game programmers to create content such as movies, TV shows, games and music. Havas wants to create work on the order of the map it made within Minecraft that helps screen players for dyslexia and a comic book that the agency created in collaboration with Marvel and Pfizer. Current partners that will work with Havas on the offering include Marvel, Universal Music Group, production companies Hana Kuma, Saville Productions and Studio Canal, and video game publisher Gameloft. The offering is also meant to bring creators more upstream in the process of content creation, according to Gray, who cited the recent controversy Bud Light has been involved in after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney made an Instagram post with the brewer’s product. “[The industry] continues to try to treat people like they're media metrics—that we can just buy a billboard,” Gray said. “Bud Light stepped in it a bit because they just [tried to buy an audience],” rather than work authentically with creators and causes. Authenticity is key for celebrities such as Tiffany Haddish, founder of entertainment media company Hollywood Unlocked, and Jason Lee, reality star and CEO of Hollywood Unlocked, who appeared on a Havas panel announcing the offering. Neither, however, are at this point directly involved with Welltainment. “Authenticity is important, because you're not sponsoring ads; you're investing in communities,” Lee said in an interview. “Being able to invest in giving people the knowledge and access to the resources that they would never have is important.” Haddish is launching a grocery store serving Black and minority communities in Los Angeles. Beyond working with global farmers and mostly Black and minority vendors to supply the food, the store, which is opening in Haddish’s hometown of South Central, will offer financial literacy and cooking classes. “From my experience as an individual who grew up in the foster care system, who felt like nobody cared about her, once I understood how money worked, and once I understood how food worked, how I thought about things completely changed,” she said in an interview. Lee, meanwhile, has launched the Hollywood Cares Foundation, which is meant to help underserved youth in Stockton, California, with issues such as mental health and financial literacy. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs

Havas launches wellness entertainment offering for brands

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