Beautiful Sound

Joyous sounds for cancer patients… WPP and the American Society of Clinical Oncology worked together to create the first-ever audible sound of cancer cells being destroyed by a new technology.

Grey Health & Wellness came up with the idea of giving people undergoing cancer treatment an understanding about how chemotherapy or medication works.

Its team worked with researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital to isolate the sound of breast and lung cancer cells at the precise moment of death.

Dr. Conor Evans was the principal investigator in the research. “Like all cells, there is an inherent motion and vibration within cancer cells,” he said. “What is truly exciting about this idea is the ability to give something invisible real perspective that could be truly powerful for patients as they go through their cancer journey.”

“The Most Beautiful Sound” debuted at the 2023 ASCO annual meeting in Chicago. Attendees listened and watched a video showing the reactions of patients experiencing the sound.

Kristen Neese, ASCO’s chief marketing and communications officer, said The Most Beautiful Sound “can inspire hope and resilience among people living with cancer and their caregivers, uniting us in our quest to conquer cancer.”

ASCO and the Health@WPP community of Grey Health & Wellness, BCW, GCI Health, Ogilvy Health, VMLY&R, TANK Worldwide, Hogarth, CMI Media and Wunderman Thompson Health have made the sound available to all healthcare professionals, caregivers and patients who want to use or study the audio.

One out of three Americans are expected to experience cancer, which accounts for 20 percent of annual US deaths.

WPP did the cancer community a great service.

Big year for corporate busts… Nearly 300 companies declared bankruptcy during the first months of 2023, which is the biggest number of Chapter 11 filings since the Great Recession year of 2010, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Bed Bath & Beyond, Serta Simmons Bedding, Vice Media, Christmas Tree Shops, Big Horn Restaurants, Jenny Craig and Monitronics, parent of Brinks Home Security, were among the big names to go belly-up.

High inflation and interest rates are two reasons for the 286 Chapter 11 filings this year.

There were 402 bankruptcies during the first five months of 2010 and 828 for the entire year.

The consumer discretionary spending category suffered the most bankruptcies this year, 37.

Industrials (31), healthcare (25) and financials (21) followed.

Targeting Generation Z... The Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, a federally recognized tribe of about 4,000 people in Michigan, want to hire a firm to create PSAs focused on the dangers of alcohol and marijuana abuse.

The target audience is young people aged nine to 20 years old. Interested parties should contact Mandy Szocinski at [email protected] by June 19.

Here's the RFP (PDF)

Closing the books on Chris Licht… CNN advertising revenues declined 39 percent to $312M during the first four months of 2023, according to a report by MediaRadar.

The number of advertisers on CNN’s TV and online outlets dropped 23 percent to 2,100 compared to last year.

MediaRadar also found fewer big advertisers on CNN. Only 17 companies invested at least $2M in CNN this year vs. 68 a year ago.

It reported that major companies, including Walt Disney Co., Apple and Cisco Systems cut CNN’s ad spending by more than 90 percent.

It looks like David Leavy, CNN’s newly installed president for commercial operations, has his work cut out for him.