Winners from the 12th PM Society Digital Awards have been announced after the event was held online for the second year in a row, due to the pandemic.
The Awards celebrate the best in digital communications within the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors and judges include experts from digital, creative and communications agencies, digital specialists and marketers from industry as well as healthcare professionals.
44 agencies and 46 client companies (pharmaceutical companies and other healthcare organisations) had projects in the shortlists of the 19 categories. This is the widest range of finalists in Digital Awards history. This year, Havas Life Medicom stood out from the agency crowd, winning three Gold awards plus ‘Agency Digital Team’, as well as three Silver awards and two Bronze awards. ARK agency were in second place with two Golds and one Silver, and Pharmadoctor came in third with two Gold awards. ‘Digital Project or Account Manager’ was won by TVF Communications’ Marta Zima.
A new category, the Behavioural Science Award, used the Markify behavioural analysis tool to analyse entries across 120 criteria using key behavioural science principles, introducing a new method for assessing the quality of entries.
Chair of the Digital Awards, Rachel Farrow, said: “It was a difficult decision to commit to an online event again this year, a decision that had to be made months ago. I’m so pleased we saw such high engagement with the awards platform. There is something to be said for the accessibility of these largescale and free to attend online events – a much wider community can attend the event, see the finalists’ work, and watch their teams win awards for their great work.”
Rachel continued: I’m particularly pleased with the breadth of finalist companies represented this year. To see work from 44 agencies and 46 client companies is remarkable and I hope it gives inspiration to those smaller, newer companies that haven’t entered before. I’d like to highlight our 58 judges, who put in so many hours of work. One consequence of the pandemic is that the second round ‘face to face’ judging was so much easier online. Agencies can take just 30 minutes out of their day to present to the panels on Zoom, compared to giving up at least a half day when we held our second round judging in person. This is something which we plan to keep going forward.”
Full list of Gold winners
| Brand promotion | Mole digital/JCN for Huntleigh | Virtual lunch meetings |
| HCP education & support | Wave for Janssen | Peer to peer programme |
| Healthcare charities | CREATION.co for Frontline.Live | Supporting HCP PPE needs |
| Patient programmes | earthware for Norgine | LiverSync® |
| Meetings & events | Wordbird/Touch/Lucid/Ruder Finn for Santen | GlaucomaFest |
| Multichannel campaign | Real Chemistry for AZ | Break over-reliance |
| Market Access | Pharmadoctor for klarify | Allergy Test n Treat Service |
| Long-term campaigns | Takeda UK | Keeping pace (T2D) |
| Building digital communities | Havas Life Medicom for Galderma | Rosacea:beyond the visible |
| Film | Area 23, an IPG company for GSK | Behind the scenes |
| Animation | Havas Life Medicom for Novartis Gene Therapies | SMA: Race against time |
| Innovation: Craft | ARK for Biotest AG | SID Ninja |
| Innovation: Effectiveness | Pharmadoctor for klarify | Allergy Test n Treat eTool |
| Internal Comms | ARK for AZ | It’s personal |
| Corporate/External Comms | MJL | Pharma’s best kept secret |
| Behavioural Science (NEW) | Havas Life Medicom | SMA: Race against time |
| Digital Account Manager | Marta Zima (TVF Communications) | |
| Agency Digital Team | Havas Life Medicom | |
| Pharma Digital Partner | Spyros Zervas (Edwards LifeSciences) |
