• by Les Luchter , Staff Writer, June 6, 2024

“Are their lives worthless?, declares the headline of FCB Health New York’s latest ads on behalf of its four-year-old “Trial for #ClinicalEquality” campaign. Or is that ending supposed to be “worth less”?

Either will do, as the line is deliberately designed as a double entendre, according to the agency, part of IPG Health.

The solution is clear, though: ‘When we take action and invest in diversity…clinical trials are worth more,” Kathleen Nanda, FCB Health New York’s chief creative officer, said in announcing the new ads.

To illustrate how clinical trials shortchange people of color -- with a resulting cost of trillions of dollars to society -- the campaign’s static ads and a nearly two-minute YouTube video use 15 incredibly sharp AI-generated images of people representing a range of ethnic minority groups, genders and ages.

Each image is accompanied by such lines as “3% of patients in heart disease clinical trials are Black, yet they die of this disease at the highest rate,” “and “1% of clinical trial patients are Asian, yet chronic hepatitis B affects them the most.”

Pharma & Health Insider spoke with Nanda to get a deeper insight into the campaign and its use of AI .

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Pharma & Health Insider: With DEI initiatives under attack on many fronts these days, what new challenges has The Trial for #ClinicalEquality been facing?

Kathleen Nanda: The lack of diversity in clinical trials is not just a “DEI” issue. It’s a moral, scientific, economic and public health problem. We need the vital data that diverse bodies can contribute to improve our treatments. Plus, our healthcare system and economy suffer if we sideline people and leave them to get sicker.

There is still a lot of advocacy and support for this kind of work. Since launching in 2020, we have received enormous support from media, pharma and tech companies, both in terms of donated media and other kinds of partnerships.

The main challenge we face is not pushback against our message, but trying to get the message out during an age when people are being bombarded with so many other global and political issues.

P&HI: Besides the YouTube video, what media and creatives is FCB using to get out the “Worth Less” message?

Nanda: We have a multichannel campaign ready to go to market: website, web banners, print ads and out-of-home. We are currently looking for media partners to join the movement and contribute ad space. We also have an active presence on social media, including X and LinkedIn, and are doing a series of interviews with leading experts for our YouTube channel.

P&HI: How has the messaging for The Trial for #ClinicalEquality changed over the past four years? 

Nanda: In 2020, our message focused on the lack of representation of Black and Hispanic Americans in cancer clinical trials. Failing to include Black and Brown patients in clinical trials was essentially sentencing them to death, because clinical trials are often a lifeline – sometimes the only lifeline – for patients with advanced cancer.

Visually, the campaign was fairly similar to this new iteration, with simple but powerful black-and-white portraits of Black and Hispanic Americans.

Over time, we learned that the lack of diversity in clinical trials goes beyond just cancer and some minority groups. For instance: 0% of clinical trial participants are Native American, even though they are disproportionately impacted by diseases like diabetes.

This is not just a problem for Native Americans. Studies show that this lack of representation actually harms science, public health and public trust in the medical establishment.

That’s why we’ve broadened our messaging to include multiple ethnic groups, multiple disease states, and to talk more holistically about the impact this problem has on society,

P&HI: Can you explain generative AI’s role in the new campaign, and why you took that route?

Nanda: The creative team was finding it difficult to curate a portrait gallery of diverse patients with a similar pose, expression, camera, angle, lighting, and tone.

When the team looked through Adobe Stock’s library of Generative AI images and saw just how much diversity and range it offers, it became clear to us that they were going to be beneficial for this campaign. While the portraits were created using AI, our creative team adjusted them to make them feel like a cohesive image campaign. 

AI provided the tool and opportunity to represent a broader range of ethnic minority groups, with a consistent tone, look and feel. This is something we found quite challenging with stock photography, particularly when it comes to Native Americans, for example. Just like certain demographics are underrepresented in clinical trials, they are also underrepresented in real-life stock photography.

What I also really love about these AI-generated images is the quality, the individuality, and just the sheer emotion they convey: everything from the depth of their wrinkles and the detailing in their hair to subtle features like age spots add depth and pathos. We don’t see AI images, we see people.