#CannesLions2026: Mandi Fine | SA’s healthcare communicators deserve a louder global voice
Disease burden
Not despite our constraints like the inequality, the cultural complexity or the stretched public health systems, but because of them. When you have to make a message land across twelve languages, in a taxi rank, with very little budget, you learn something about communication that no global brief can teach you.
So, as the global healthcare industry prepares for Cannes Lions 2026, one question feels increasingly urgent: whose voices are shaping the future of healthcare communication?
I have spent 26 years sitting at the intersection of science and storytelling. I trained clinically and simultaneously fell in love with communication. With the idea that the right message, told in the right way, at the right moment, could change a life. That conviction built Fine. It also got me a seat on the Cannes Lions Pharma Jury in 2017 and now again in 2026.
South Africa does not feature prominently enough in the global conversation about healthcare communication. We should. We carry a disease burden most of the developed world can barely comprehend and yet we produce innovative campaigns that are genuinely world-class.
At Fine, we have worked with some of the world’s top brands, created meaningful work in some of the most resource-constrained settings and when I sit on that jury in June, I will carry all of that with me.
Globally, trust in healthcare institutions has never been more fragile or more consequential. Patients are more informed, more questioning and more vocal than any previous generation. At the same time, healthcare communicators are navigating an increasingly complex environment shaped by misinformation, AI and digital overload.
Impact, access and dignity
So when the invitation came to serve on the jury, my first response wasn’t just celebration. It was a pause. Because judging creativity in healthcare is weighty. We are not just asking if this is innovative and well-crafted. We are asking if this makes a difference – does it have real impact? Did it move something that matters? Did it change whether someone sought care, an entrenched belief, felt seen and respected or not?
Patients don’t respond to perfection. They respond to honesty and to vulnerability. To stories that feel like they were told by someone who understands. That is the benchmark I carry with me. I will be measuring work in impact, in access, in dignity. And when I come back, I hope to walk into a room of South African healthcare marketers and say here is the standard. Here is what we need to hold ourselves to.
We have the empathy. We have the resourcefulness. We have the lived experience no brief can manufacture and no AI can generate.
And perhaps that is the most African thing of all. To create something extraordinary, against the odds and let the work speak, because the most meaningful work doesn’t just win awards but changes lives.
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