Joao Camacho, chief creative officer India and MEA, Havas Life, who is a juror this year for the London International Awards, spoke with us for the August issue of Manifest.

For him, the biggest difference between working in a health specialist unit and a mainline advertising agency comes down to one word: purpose.

“Mainline advertising often changes what people buy. Healthcare has the opportunity to change how people live,” he said.

It is a distinction that is more than professional for Camacho. Having lost his mother to cancer, he says one of the hardest parts of the experience was not only dealing with the disease, but also how little his family understood about it.

“That experience shaped how I see this industry. Every campaign is an opportunity to educate, reduce fear and give people confidence to make better decisions about their health,” he said.

For Camacho, this is what makes healthcare different from almost any other category. The audience is not simply a consumer making a purchase decision. It could be a patient trying to understand a diagnosis, a caregiver navigating treatment options or a healthcare professional evaluating the science behind a therapy.

That perspective has been shaped not only by personal experience, but also by his career path. Before returning to the agency side, Camacho spent time on the client side as global executive creative director at Novartis. Far from being a detour, he described the experience as 'probably the best education' he could have asked for.

His time at Novartis gave him a closer understanding of healthcare from the inside — the science, research, regulatory environment and the people working to develop medicines.

“It gave me enormous respect for the complexity behind every therapy,” he said.

The experience also changed his understanding of what creativity needs to do in healthcare. Returning to the agency side was, in some ways, a natural move because he labels himself 'an agency man'. But he returned with a deeper appreciation of the gap between scientific and human understanding.

“Science alone doesn’t change behaviour. People do,” he said. “Our role is translating complexity into empathy, clarity and action so patients and healthcare professionals genuinely connect with it.”

That translation becomes particularly important in a category where creativity operates within strict regulatory boundaries. For Camacho, however, regulation should not automatically be viewed as the enemy of creativity.

“Regulation exists for very good reasons. It protects patients and builds trust,” he said.

The challenge, he believes, is ensuring that regulation does not become a barrier to education. With patients now having access to more health information than ever before, the responsibility of communicators is increasingly to help people distinguish between what is credible and relevant and what is not.

“Creativity isn’t about pushing boundaries irresponsibly. It’s about finding better ways to communicate within them,” he explained.

For him, the best healthcare creativity is therefore not necessarily the most attention-grabbing. “The best healthcare creativity isn’t louder. It’s clearer, more human and more useful.”

India and the Middle East

Camacho's role at Havas Life spans two markets with very different creative histories and cultures: India and the Middle East. That makes the comparison inevitable, particularly after Cannes Lions 2026, where the UAE took home 15 Lions compared with India's five.

But Camacho cautions against reading too much into the awards tally alone.

“The two markets aren’t investing under the same conditions,” he said.

The Middle East, he argues, has spent years deliberately investing not only in creative work but also in attracting global creative talent, with an explicit ambition of producing work that can compete internationally.

“Those awards don’t happen by accident. They’re built with intention from the brief, through production, right to the award stage," he said.

That does not mean he sees India as lacking either talent or ambition. Quite the opposite. He points to the strength of the teams he works with and the strategic and culturally relevant work being produced in the market.

“What I do see is a market in transition,” he said.

One reason for the Middle East's rapid creative evolution, according to Camacho, is its multicultural audience. The region has had to embrace a broader range of voices and storytelling styles, creating an environment that is increasingly receptive to bold and unconventional ideas.

India, meanwhile, has traditionally leaned more heavily on emotional narratives and familiar cultural cues. But that is changing as audiences become more demanding of brands.

“Today’s Indian audiences expect brands to educate, entertain and take a stronger point of view,” he said.

Camacho is particularly sceptical of the industry's continued reliance on emotion as a catch-all creative strategy.

“I often joke that if I had a rupee for every time someone asked for ‘an emotional campaign’, I’d probably be able to retire,” he joked.

He is quick to clarify that emotion remains important. The issue, he believes, is treating it as a strategy in itself.

“Emotion absolutely has its place, but emotion isn’t a strategy. The work that wins today combines emotion with originality, cultural relevance and a clear role for the brand,” said Camacho.

And that is where India has considerable room to grow according to him.

A smaller gap between markets

Despite the differences between India and the Middle East, Camacho stated the gap between the two is narrowing.

“The differences are becoming smaller every year,” he says.

Across both markets, he is seeing patients become more informed, proactive and involved in decisions about their health. For India in particular, he sees an opportunity in the country's scale to make patient education a much bigger part of healthcare communication.

As healthcare systems place greater emphasis on prevention, adherence and long-term outcomes, the role of communication will extend beyond explaining treatments. It will increasingly involve empowering people to take greater ownership of their health.

“That’s where creativity can have enormous public health value,” he said.

For the full interview, get the August issue of Manifest, which can be bought here.