Most pharma and healthcare marketing is anodyne or laughable...usually both. Bayer's Global CMO Patricia Corsi is on a crusade to make ad creative live up to its name again. Her team has executed one of the few major marketing campaigns I have seen in recent years that authentically earns the otherwise empty buzzword "purposeful branding". Starting in a test in Brazil, the Vagina Academy used data to drive a key cultural insight and then addressed it with consumer-driven creative energy that broke harmful taboos.

Gaming is as huge as it has been hard for marketers to crack. Advertising traditionally is all about interruption and distraction, but players engage their favorite shooter or tile-match app specifically to avoid distraction, to immerse their senses, to focus attention. PepsiCo is among the true pioneers marketing into this space. Paul Mascali, who leads that effort, tells Brand Insider this week that enhancing gameplay, not distracting from it, remains the simple rule of marketing into game experiences. The goal is not just to be in the game, but to think like a game designer.