Cause Marketing: Eli Lilly Brings Free Mammograms and Health Education to WNBA All-Star Weekend -

Eli Lilly and Company is on a mission to insert wellness into cultural conversations by highlighting the link between health and sports. So to drive awareness of the importance of early breast cancer detection, the pharma brand headed to WNBA All-Star Weekend, July 17-20 in Indianapolis, to deliver free mammograms, sponsor activations and health education, right in its hometown. Across every touchpoint, the company wove in “99” messaging based on a critical statistic—that when breast cancer is caught in an early, localized stage, the five-year survival rate can be as high as 99 percent.

WNBA All-Star’s cultural significance and high viewership rate, combined with Eli Lilly’s history of supporting women’s sports and current partnerships with the Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark, made the event a prime destination for broadcasting the 99 message and furthering the brand’s goal of making health care more accessible.

So in partnership with Black Health Matters, from July 17-19, Eli Lilly sponsored a community screening event in Indianapolis that provided free mammograms via one of its mobile screening units. Celebs and players were on-site to lend their voices to the cause, including breast cancer survivor and ESPN host Hannah Storm, sports commentator Andraya Carter and college hoops star JuJu Watkins. The effort was part of a longer-tail strategy to provide communities with accessible screenings, which launched in Tampa during this year’s NCAA Women’s Final Four tournament.

“When you catch cancer in an early, localized stage, there’s a 99-percent survival rate of five years, and we found that a lot of people are not aware of that,” says Lina Polimeni, chief corporate brand officer at Eli Lilly and Company. “And, obviously, cancer is a very, very difficult journey. But at the same time, we find that, in general, there’s not a key understanding of just how chronically manageable cancer is, and how important early screening is to get the best chance of survival. So that’s really the key message.”

On the fan activation front, Eli Lilly crafted a pop-up experience at Indy’s Monument Circle, an outdoor location not far from the convention center. There, fans could stop by to meet and snap photos with women’s and men’s basketball personalities, score swag, play games like pop-a-shot, and learn more about early breast cancer detection. Throughout WNBA All-Star Weekend, various partners and influencers helped amplify the brand’s presence and the 99 message. Beyond Monument Circle, Eli Lilly popped up around the city in partnership with brands like Glamour, which co-hosted a fireside chat with Caitlin Clark for a discussion on the importance of early breast cancer screening and detection.

“We believe that health should be part of a life conversation, so it shouldn’t be kept just for very somber communications,” Polimeni says. “It’s actually very important for us that we find a way to mix that engagement with the message, but in a way that is authentic to the brand.”

Ultimately, she says, making health a central part of the conversation and providing education on early detection will help prevent consumers from needing the company’s medical solutions down the road.

“We want people to be screened early so that, hopefully, they never get to our medicine. If they have cancer, they can find it early, and they can have treatment that is potentially life-saving early on,” says Polimeni. “So I think this is a new frontier, in marketing, specifically, because it’s a way to do brand-building that’s relevant in culture. And that is through foundational brand-building, but that stems from very humanistic insights, and it’s true to that human experience.”

Photos: Courtesy of WTHR Indianapolis; Eli Lilly and Company