Publicis Foundation Working With Cancer Erases Workplace Stigma
Working With Cancer is a 2023 corporate-purpose initiative and cross-industry pledge platform created by the Publicis Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Publicis Groupe, designed to erase the stigma of cancer diagnosis in workplaces around the world.
The initiative launched formally on 17 January 2023 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, with its mass-media companion campaign, titled "Monday," following on World Cancer Day, 4 February 2023. Developed in France under the Publicis Foundation banner and executed through a coalition of Publicis Groupe agencies — including Publicis Conseil in Paris, Publicis Groupe UK in London, Digitas in New York, and Saatchi & Saatchi Health in New York — the campaign represents one of the most structurally ambitious healthcare communications efforts to emerge from the French advertising industry in recent memory. The initiative operates simultaneously as a pledge drive, a media campaign, and a cultural intervention targeting employers across every sector.
The strategic foundation rests on a tension documented by the initiative itself: half of all cancer patients fear disclosing their diagnosis to their employer, while the overwhelming majority acknowledge that workplace support materially improves their health outcomes. Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun's own cancer diagnosis in April 2022 catalysed the platform's creation. After making his condition public, Sadoun received thousands of personal testimonies revealing the professional fear that accompanies a cancer diagnosis, according to publicisgroupe.com. Those accounts shaped both the pledge mechanics and the creative direction of the campaign. In France, where the Publicis Foundation is headquartered, and across the global network, the initiative invited companies of every size to commit to cancer-forward workplace policies at a dedicated digital platform, Workingwithcancerpledge.com. Publicis Groupe's own pledge included at least one year of job security for employees with cancer and dedicated career support for patients and caregivers alike. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 79 out of 100, reflecting strong strategic coherence and cultural resonance against a backdrop of limited independently published effectiveness data.
The Publicis Foundation built Working With Cancer on a specific and verifiable tension inside the healthcare and employment landscape. Cancer patients routinely conceal their diagnoses from employers despite evidence that workplace support accelerates recovery. That insight — not a general awareness ambition — gave the campaign its strategic precision and distinguished it from conventional cancer awareness efforts.
In France, cancer remains one of the leading public health priorities. Macmillan Cancer Support has documented the profound impact that employment uncertainty has on cancer patients' mental and physical health, a dynamic that translates directly into the French workplace context that Publicis Foundation sought to address. The World Economic Forum provided a credibility platform that few charitably motivated campaigns can access, positioning Working With Cancer as a policy-adjacent intervention rather than a conventional advertising play. By launching at Davos on 17 January 2023, according to publicisgroupe.com, the campaign entered conversation among heads of state, institutional investors, and multinational employers simultaneously — an audience composition that no single healthcare charity campaign could ordinarily reach.
The competitive context is instructive. Established cancer-support organisations such as Macmillan Cancer Support in the United Kingdom and Cancer Research UK have long addressed the personal and medical dimensions of a cancer diagnosis, but neither has constructed a structured cross-industry employer pledge mechanism of this architecture. The Gustave Roussy Institute and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, both leading oncology research centres, lent clinical authority that separated Working With Cancer from peer-led or testimonial-only campaigns. The coalition model — combining a French founding institution, global oncology partners, and the World Economic Forum — allowed the campaign to move across geographies while retaining France as its institutional anchor. According to Little Black Book, the campaign was supported by up to $100 million in donated media from partners including Disney, creating a distribution footprint that charity-funded campaigns rarely achieve.
The creative execution of Working With Cancer centres on a film titled "Monday," directed by Elena Petitti Di Roreto and Martin de Thurah, according to The One Club. The film takes its name from the specific, mundane dread of the working week — the moment when a cancer patient must return to a professional environment while concealing an overwhelming private reality. That structural choice, grounding the campaign in a recognisable temporal experience rather than a clinical setting, defines the creative register across the entire initiative.
Andy Bird, founding partner and chief creative officer at Le Truc, articulated the governing principle behind the campaign's tone. As reported by creativereview.co.uk, Bird stated: "The biggest consideration was just being true and empathetic to the issue. Nearly everyone on the project has been affected by cancer or had family members who have, so it was something we were aware had to be handled with real sensitivity." That proximity to the subject matter is evident in the film's construction, which prioritises restraint over spectacle and lived recognition over persuasive argument. In a category — healthcare advertising — where emotional manipulation is a persistent creative risk, Working With Cancer deploys empathy as a structural device rather than a rhetorical one.
The campaign was produced across multiple Publicis Groupe agency teams, with Publicis Conseil leading creative development in France and Digitas and Saatchi & Saatchi Health contributing from New York, according to adsoftheworld.com. The multi-agency architecture reflects the initiative's ambition to operate simultaneously at the level of French institutional communications and global mass-media distribution. The "Work/Life" campaign strand, which illustrated the daily reality of concealing a cancer diagnosis from colleagues, complemented the pledge platform with emotionally immediate storytelling, per publicisgroupe.com. Together, the two creative strands — the employer-facing pledge and the public-facing film — form a coherent creative system designed to operate across earned, owned, and paid channels simultaneously.
Working With Cancer won the Health Grand Prix for Good at the Cannes Lions Health and Wellness awards in 2023, according to oneclub.org and The Drum. That award, among the most competitive in international healthcare communications, confirms the campaign's standing as a benchmark creative achievement within the category for the year.
No verified performance data for Working With Cancer is publicly available in terms of sales lift, brand-tracking movement, pledge-conversion rate, or independently reported awareness uplift. What the public record does confirm, according to publicisgroupe.com and lbbonline.com, is that the campaign was supported by up to $100 million in donated media from partners and was designed to generate approximately one billion impressions across markets. Those structural facts — the scale of donated inventory and the intended reach — speak to the platform's ambition even in the absence of independently audited outcomes.
The Davos launch on 17 January 2023, described by Adweek as positioning "Monday" as a global wake-up call about workplace cancer stigma, as reported by mediapost.com, gave the initiative immediate institutional visibility at a moment when global employer policy was under sustained scrutiny. In France specifically, where the Publicis Foundation operates, the campaign's coalition model — uniting the Gustave Roussy Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Macmillan Cancer Support, and the World Economic Forum — created a multi-authority endorsement architecture that amplified credibility beyond what a single-organisation campaign could achieve. The Clapboard Score of 79 out of 100 reflects the campaign's strong strategic architecture, clinical partnership credibility, and creative restraint, weighted against the absence of independently published outcome metrics.
Working With Cancer is a 2023 initiative by the Publicis Foundation designed to eliminate cancer stigma in the workplace. Launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 17 January 2023, it combines a global employer pledge platform with a mass-media film campaign titled "Monday," released around World Cancer Day on 4 February 2023.
Arthur Sadoun's April 2022 cancer diagnosis directly prompted the initiative. After making his condition public, Sadoun received thousands of personal testimonies from employees who feared professional consequences of disclosing their diagnoses, according to publicisgroupe.com. Those accounts informed both the pledge mechanics and the creative strategy of the campaign.
Working With Cancer won the Health Grand Prix for Good at the Cannes Lions Health and Wellness awards in 2023, according to oneclub.org and thedrum.com. The campaign was credited to Publicis Conseil in Paris, Publicis Groupe UK, Digitas New York, and Saatchi & Saatchi Health New York, working for the Publicis Foundation and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
The Working With Cancer campaign was supported by up to $100 million in donated media from partners, according to publicisgroupe.com and lbbonline.com. The campaign was designed to generate approximately one billion impressions across markets. Donated-media partners included Disney, enabling distribution at a scale that charity-funded healthcare campaigns rarely achieve.
"Monday" was directed by Elena Petitti Di Roreto and Martin de Thurah, according to oneclub.org. The film was shaped by a creative team with direct personal experience of cancer, a factor that chief creative officer Andy Bird of Le Truc described as central to the campaign's tone of genuine empathy, as reported by creativereview.co.uk.
Publicis Groupe committed to providing cancer patients with full job security for at least one year and career support for both patients and caregivers within its organisation, as documented by the Publicis Foundation. The pledge platform at Workingwithcancerpledge.com invited companies of every size to define and publish their own cancer-support commitments publicly.
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