Author: Jack O’Brien for MM+M (Medical Marketing and Media)

Publication date: March 26, 2025

Chief creative officers (CCO) have come quite a ways from the Mad Men era.

Gone are the days of hard drinking in the office, overnight work days and a my-way-or-the-highway approach to copy.

Modern creative chiefs are more refined and nuanced than their predecessors, focused on utilizing data to develop engaging campaigns that deploy across a host of digital and in-person mediums.

In the world of medical marketing agencies, the work of supporting clients that interface with healthcare professionals (HCP) and patients is all the more important. 

Several CCOs emphasize that while advertising for verticals like retail, automotive or CPG may be more flexible in nature, medical marketing is much more mission-driven and fulfilling from a professional perspective.

For Jim Larmon, chief creative officer at Unlock Health, his move from years of working on credit card and beer brands to health clients has allowed him to leverage his creative prowess to deliver meaningful stories through ads. 

Once an afterthought at Cannes, he says medical marketing is making a splash across the broader advertising industry. 

“Healthcare creative storytelling is catching up to where I think it needs to be,” he says. 

And what a chief creative needs to be in 2025, according to the creatives MM+M spoke to for this story, is a leader capable of creating an environment where creativity flourishes. CCOs should be using the tools, especially AI, at their disposal to enhance the work instead of fighting progress. Ultimately, the best chief creatives understand how to get buy-in for big ideas from both clients and internal stakeholders across the C-suite. 

Better work, more meaning and more AI

There are many factors motivating great creatives right now, including the mission of healthcare advertising, the ability to do human-first storytelling and new tools, like AI.

A medical marketing CCO’s job is centered around bringing top-notch creativity to important causes like disease awareness campaigns or the promotion of life-saving medications.

The CCOs interviewed for this piece largely agree that the work is improving and receiving more attention and accolades.

According to Justin Rubin, chief creative officer at Spectrum Science, there’s a growing emphasis on meaningful work in healthcare marketing, where connecting with the company’s mission is crucial for attracting and retaining talent.

He says what gets him and other CCOs out of bed in the morning is the remit to “connect humankind to its best health life.”

Further fueling the creative produced by medical marketing shops is AI, which affects everything from ideation to content creation. 

While some have viewed AI as an existential threat to their jobs, most CCOs consider AI as a tool to enhance creativity, not replace it. 

Going forward, Rubin says the role of creative leaders will increasingly focus on highlighting overlooked stories across the patient journey and provide critical thinking that AI cannot replicate.

“Creativity is all about making uncommon connections. AI is going to do a logical progression — it’s not going to make that lateral movement and put two unlike things together in a way that a human can,” he says. 

Keeping humans — be they HCPs or patients — at the heart of the storytelling is going to be a necessity in the future, Rubin predicts. 

Diane Iler-Smith, chief creative officer at Biolumina, adds there’s a critical need for CCOs to communicate complex medical information concisely and empathetically to target audiences.

Plus, agencies increasingly find themselves in a “culture of efficiency,” where pharma clients expect work done in a quicker, more streamlined fashion. She singles this out as an area where AI could lend a hand in a practical way. 

“At the end of the day, [advertising] is still about the idea,” she says. “All of these tools that we have at our disposal are great, but you have to have a great idea.”

Creative standouts with leadership chops

At one time, a creative all star could ascend to the CCO post simply thanks to their own skills.

However, the role has changed over the years and become more comprehensive in scope, requiring leaders to have strategic business acumen in addition to pure creative skills.

CCOs now need to be well-rounded executives who can engage with pharma clients, understand their business challenges as they arise and lead cross-functional teams.

“The difference between being an excellent creative and being a strong creative leader is creating an environment where creativity can flourish,” says Stephanie Berman, chief creative officer at the Bloc.

While some may aspire to climb the corporate ladder, there are sacrifices creatives must make along the way. 

Kathleen Nanda, chief creative officer at FCB Health New York, notes many creative professionals are hesitant to move into leadership roles because it takes them away from hands-on work. 

In order to be a successful CCO, she says a person must enjoy problem-solving and understanding the larger business dynamics at play.

These leaders also need to maintain a balance where team members feel supported but driven to deliver quality work to clients. 

Most creative leaders have horror stories from earlier in their career when work was crumpled up and tossed in their face, they were berated or belittled for their output or faced with unrealistic deadlines and expectations.

Pivoting from the aggressive leadership styles of previous decades, Nanda adds that CCOs must now focus more on supporting their teams emotionally and creating a collaborative environment.

She commends millennials and Gen Zers for making their impact felt across the industry, particularly when it comes to sharing their familiarity of technology and media consumption habits. 

However, she also urges them — along with their Gen X and Baby Boomer colleagues — to maintain traditional qualities like hustle and resilience in creative shops.

“The people who can get back up again and keep going are going to be the most successful,” she says. 

What does the CEO expect?

It’s one thing for a CCO to be accountable to their team, but they also need to deliver to the rest of the C-suite.

The Bloc CEO Jennifer Matthews says this role requires “relentless focus” on how the work gets done — demanding discipline, tenacity and a lot of energy.

She advises CCOs to establish trust with their respective CEO, work collaboratively with members of the executive team to debate ideas constructively and own the agency’s brand and creative expression.

The ability for a CCO to develop and execute a creative vision for a pharma client is key, Matthews says. From her vantage point, creativity is critical to solving business problems and driving meaningful change. 

Additionally, she considers inspiration to be a core leadership trait and suggests CCOs should be able to get buy-in from other members of the C-suite before an idea goes out to market. 

“If we’re not getting inspired in that room, I can promise you, no one’s getting inspired outside of that room,” she says. 

Status check

When medical marketing CCOs are asked to evaluate the state of their jobs, answers range from “always on” to “energized.”

Medical marketing CCOs have noticed a shift in the kind of projects that agencies are delivering for clients as well as the fact that the quality of the work has improved over the last several years.

However, the progress shouldn’t stop there, according to Larmon. 

He urges his colleagues to continue to raise the bar and produce better quality work because, as he puts it, “our industry deserves it.”

Nanda says it’s an exciting moment for this title set, acknowledging how medical marketing has crossed over into the mainstream.

On the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic, she says more people are paying attention to their health and creative agency leaders have an opportunity to meet them on the level. 

“Health is front and center in so many people’s conversations — in their psyche, in their mindset and we are able to enter that conversation at all different points. It’s an interesting moment for us,” she says. 

Read the original article in MM+M.