When Publicis Groupe CEO, Arthur Sadoun, received his cancer diagnosis last year and publicly shared the news, he received an outpouring of stories and support. He learned firsthand that, in addition to being scared for their health, cancer patients were too often scared for their jobs, and felt the need to hide their illness. This was the impetus of this program.

Our objective was to remove the stigma of cancer at work and stand with every employee dealing with the disease by setting an aggressive goal of $100M in donated media and inspiring at least 350 companies to sign the Working with Cancer pledge in its first four months.

With everyone having been impacted by cancer directly or via someone they love, we knew creating personal and emotional moments would be key. First to generate the donations needed, and then to inspire the world.

In October 2022, we leveraged Publicis Groupe relationships to individually reach out to media company CEOs, announcing the initiative and asking for their commitments to donate media. Our most senior buyers across the company reached out to their contacts on the heels of that message to reinforce the ask and get commitments.

In December, we shared rough cuts with partners – we met one at a time to personally screen the emotional messages, leveraging the long form for maximum impact. Most had a highly emotional reaction – and this is when we made our asks for high-impact units. This helped us secure placements like a 2:00 roadblock with both cinema vendors the first week of launch, and :60 units to follow; premium OOH units in Times Square; broadcast and video units up to :60 in length; and banners and shorter units to blanket the message with frequency, making it unavoidable.

With the global business community’s eyes on the Davos World Economic Forum, we built a top-down approach to ensure our pledge would be an embedded reality of their world. Paid media timed to the event targeted C-Suite newspaper, business site homepage takeovers, and premium placements the week of Jan 16, 2023. Phase one also included donated B2B media to feature the “Work/Life” film (TV in the U.S.) and C-suite targeted OLV and OLA assets globally.

Phase two launched on January 31, timed to World Cancer Day (Feb 4) and Super Bowl (Feb 12), to go in a bottoms-up direction. Mass targeted messaging drove awareness to encourage a more supportive workplace leading to better recovery. $100M in donated media helped get the word out across Cinema, Print, Video, Social, Digital, Audio, and OOH – including prime Times Square placements – with earned messaging from celebrity/influencers driving conversation.

The #workingwithcancer message hit home for so many and surpassed all in-going goals.

$100M+ in donated media was delivered across US, France, and UK; over 2B donated media impressions.

We secured 390 pledge signees 11% over goal, including Fortune 100 companies, all committing to end the stigma of working with cancer. They represent over 13M employees who will be impacted by this work.

The campaign permeated news and social, garnering 295.4M social impressions and coverage across 179 articles spanning Forbes, CNN, Fortune, etc. Our #workingwithcancer hashtag received 16.5M+ impressions.

Our recruiting pace is increasing as companies see their peers and are inspired by the actions they’re taking. And we are working to reduce the stigma for a mass audience with future campaign phases.

Via our commitment and continued industry and corporate support, we believe we can reduce fear, reverse stigma, and ultimately improve health outcomes of those who are #workingwithcancer.