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Eli Lilly reframes medicine as lived experience in 150th anniversary campaign

150 Years of Everything Else, Eli Lilly and Company, US

US – For its 150th anniversary, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly has released a brand film with Wieden+Kennedy that trades the language of clinical achievement for something more human.

Shot in a home-film aesthetic, the spot anchors Lilly’s legacy in the ordinary moments medicine makes possible, rather than in breakthrough molecules or government approvals.

‘When people talk about what medicine meant to someone they love, they never describe the medicine,’ says Lina Polimeni, senior vice president at Lilly. ‘They describe the life that followed. Birthdays, love, Tuesday nights with the people that matter most. That’s what Lilly has always been making possible, and the future we continue to shape.’

It lands at a significant moment. The Trump administration is cutting research funding and amplifying narratives around alternative medicine, placing institutional science under mounting pressure to justify its place in public life. Rather than counter that with data, Lilly is counter-programming with feeling, repositioning pharmaceutical impact as cultural rather than purely clinical.

It’s a concept we explore through our Era of Expertise framework – in our Accredited Beauty macrotrend – looking at how science is communicated and sold.

Strategic opportunity

As trust in institutional science comes under attack, brands operating in health and wellness have an opportunity to reframe their impact through human experience rather than clinical authority. For more, explore our Human by Design report.

YSL Beauty cracks the Gen Z product launch with block party concept

Nu by YSL Beauty

Spain – YSL Beauty is reshaping brand experiences for Gen Z. In March 2026, the brand hosted a six-hour block party attracting content creators, micro-influencers and local youth at Café Comercial in Madrid.

Starting at 4pm and ending at 10pm, the day party was inspired by TikTok’s What’s Next report which highlighted that content featuring daytime parties grew 2,000% over an 18 month period. We previously reported on the rise of Coffee Shop Raves as go-to destinations for younger partygoers as part of the shift towards health-conscious living.

Guests were allowed to bring several +1s to YSL Beauty’s block party to ensure a varied turnout. The event featured vending machines filled with YSL’s products, a churros truck and local DJs to create a low-fi experience that can be adapted to different locations, such as London and New York.

Public parties are quickly becoming a popular Third Space Retail strategy for brands wanting to engage Gen Z in an organic and immersive way.

The block party concept demonstrates the value of consumer behaviour research in informing retail strategies. Head to our Generations page for more ethnographic research and quantitative data on everyone from Boomers to Betas.

Strategic opportunity

Map what your audience values – for instance, Gen Z seeks community, hangout spaces and cultural connection – and design in-person events that let your brand and products show up naturally in their world

Ipsos reveals the leadership gap the world still can’t close

Curated Spaces, UK

Global – Six in ten people globally (60%) agree that the world would run better if more women held positions of responsibility in government and companies, according to a 29-country Ipsos survey conducted with King’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership in early 2026.

Women are even more emphatic, with 66% holding this view, although the finding cuts across gender: more than half of men (52%) agree too, with Gen Z men (53%) virtually aligned with their older counterparts.

A further 54% say women simply won’t achieve equality unless female leadership in business and government increases. Yet progress has stalled. Overall attitudes toward gender equality are broadly flat, showing little change since 2025, and half of all respondents now say efforts toward equality have already gone far enough – a figure that has risen sharply from 33% in 2019.

Despite this, optimism for the future is stronger for young women than young men – a gender disparity issue we pinpointed in our Generations: Now & Next report, specifically in relation to Gen Z.

The Ipsos study shows that 55% of all respondents think young women in their country today will have a better life than women of their parents’ generation, with only 40% thinking young men will have a better life than men of their parents’ age. Even though the appetite for women at the top is real, the political and social will to get them there is another matter entirely.

Strategic opportunity

With Gen Z set to overtake Baby Boomers in the full-time workforce, a second wave of rethinking workplace culture could be just around the corner. This means that businesses will need a strong strategy for not just closing the leadership gap, but maintaining ground gained on gender equality in the workplace