Last week, my daughter, Fiona Cauley, added another feather to her cap. Her “dark humor” campaign for Biogen—developed in partnership with the agency behind Skyclarys—just brought home a Gold Lion at Cannes. That’s no small feat. It’s a rare accolade for a campaign about a rare disease. But perhaps the most remarkable part of this achievement is the risk they took to make something truly resonant.
Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA) is a degenerative neurological condition that affects every part of a person’s body and life. It’s not funny. And yet, the campaign made it relatable—through humor. That creative decision turned out to be both bold and brilliant.
With over 9 million views on Instagram and TikTok, the campaign reached an audience more than 600 times larger than the total number of people in the U.S. living with FA (approximately 15,000). That kind of reach is more than a win—it’s proof that relatability matters and drives scale. When done right, humor can become a bridge: disarming, humanizing, and deeply impacting a target audience. Especially for people living with long-term or chronic conditions, humor can be a survival mechanism—a way to build hope even in the face of progressive loss.
Biogen deserves real credit here. As a global pharma company, it’s no small feat to invest in creative that pushes boundaries. Especially in biotech, where patient-facing communications are tightly regulated, most brands play it safe. Most ventures in the biotech space don’t make it, and those that do—particularly with an orphan disease—rarely see the same kind of ROI as mass-market treatments like Cialis.
Skyclarys was initially developed by Reata Pharmaceuticals, a company that put years of effort into the clinical development process. Biogen then acquired the drug and brought it to market with the kind of marketing support and global reach that only a major pharma player can provide. That backing included this unconventional, creatively courageous campaign.
And it worked. It made people care. And that, at the end of the day, was the goal, a goal that matters.
At Punching Nun Group, we often remind clients that the most effective campaigns don’t start with the product—they start with people. Whether we’re designing a brand, crafting messaging, or building out sales enablement tools, we begin with humanity. If you don’t connect with the patient experience—if you don’t make someone care—then all the functional benefits, technical differentiators, and service claims won’t matter.
Biogen and their agency understood that. They didn’t just promote a drug—they told a story. They gave a voice to people living with FA, one that wasn’t sanitized or overly somber. It was authentic. It was human. And yes, it was funny.
That’s not just good marketing. That’s good medicine.
For more information check out: https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/humor-drug-ads-biogen-and-21grams-makes-it-work-gold-winning-skyclarys-campaign-cannes and https://www.pharmavoice.com/news/biogen-cannes-festival-bill-nye-friedreich-ataxia/751394/.
