Eli Lilly & Co. hopes its sponsorship of an event tied to the heroic coach Pat Summitt will do just as much for the company as the many commercials it runs each year.
When “Celebrating Pat Summitt: Live Reunion Special,” airs on ESPN2 on Sunday, March 29 at 7:00 p.m. eastern, viewers will be told the program is sponsored by the pharmaceutical giant, which is eager to support programing that features real-life examples of people working their way through specific medical challenges, says Lina Polimeni, senior vice president and chief consumer marketing officer of Eli Lilly & Co., during a recent interview.
Summitt’s Tennessee Lady Volunteers never missed the NCAA Tournament during her 38 years of coaching, which ended following a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. With that element a strong part of her biography, Lilly was interested in sponsoring the event after the producer, Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, reached out. UTA helped orchestrate the arrangement.
“I don’t want conversations around health to only be when people are sick,” says Polimeni. “I want health to be part of the main conversations in culture. Sports is a big part of that.” So too, she says, are accurate depictions of people with medical conditions.
The one-hour television special is moderated by ESPN’s Holly Rowe and was filmed at Knoxville’s historic Tennessee Theatre in December in front of a live audience. The reunion features former Lady Vols stars Candace Parker, Nikki Fargas, and Andraya Carter alongside Dawn Staley, head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks.
Lilly has worked for several years to change the way people grappling with disease rae portrayed in film and TV. The pharma giant worked with the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, whose study revealed that characters with some of the most prevalent diseases rarely appear on screen, and are often portrayed with stereotypes or one-dimensional roles when they do.
The executive says she is not looking for “any specific placement” in a film or program, but more of “a partnership to change perspective and having a way to talk about disease culture that is natural.”
Others have tested similar tactics. Consumer-products giant Procter & Gamble in 2018 orchestrated an arrangement for an episode of ABC’s hit comedy “black-ish” that featured a plot that included references to Black parents preparing their children to deal with racial bias.
The alliance gives Lilly a different way to reach consumers other than the ubiquitous TV commercials upon which most pharma giants rely. These ads stand out because they have become the lifeblood of most major media outlets, but also because they are typically longer than other ads, largely because government regulations mandate that consumers be made aware of the potential side effects of any particular drug. A sponsorship of a TV program that does not mention specific medicines does not need to spend time on discussions of side effects or urge viewers to reach out to a doctor for more information.
“It’s always important that if we talk about medicine, we always talk about the benefit and the risk of anything. I’m very, very careful of that,” says Polimeni. In the case of this sponsorship, she says, “we’re not talking about any product.” The goal is “creating good storytelling that makes people reflect,” she adds.
Eli Lilly has developed and manufactures Kinsula, a drug that can be used to treat early cognitive decline but also has been found to have side effects. The medication is not being advertised during the ESPN program.
Lilly has tried to stand out from other pharmaceutical manufacturers with ads that portray itself as “a medicine company,” something Polimeni says creates a mission for employees.
“We truly see a person on the other side of the prescription,” she says. “Each and every one of us comes to work with a very clear vision of what that is.”
The company continues to seek out potential projects it might sponsor, but hopes to find stories that portray people navigating disease with depth and detail. The company hopes to find “filmmaking and storytelling that is nuanced, and great characters that have the nuance of life,” she says. “And so it could be a great sitcom that also has a mom in recovery from cancer, for example.”
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