This week marks the 40th anniversary of Havas Lynx, so we’re revisiting the archives to see how a team of two became a powerful global healthcare communications agency with offices in Manchester, London, New York, and beyond.

 

1986 – 1995

When Stuart Wilson, our founder, opened our first doors on Oldham Street as Creative Link, the aim was to work with clients who could bring about ‘positive social change’. Within three years, we’d won our first Pharmaceutical Marketing Award for our work with Rheumox, marking the beginning of our successful path in pharmaceuticals.

Through our first few years, we outgrew our office space twice, moving to Houldsworth Street, then extending to gain more space, and worked on lots of Manchester projects, branding and launching Manchester Arena and acting as sole creative agency for Manchester’s 2002 Commonwealth Games bid.

 

1996 – 2005

A decade in, remaining committed to our city, when the IRA bomb struck in 1996 Manchester City Council enlisted us (by then named Creative Lynx) to create the briefing package for the rebuilding and re-planning of Manchester City Centre. We launched the package worldwide and Manchester came back, alive and kicking. Across the next few years, we worked on even more local projects, the Manchester Evening News Area, Manchester Arndale Markets, and Sir Alex Ferguson’s Street to Stadium Charity.

We successfully launched the first gold standard Alzheimer’s disease treatment for a global pharmaceutical company. For patients and carers, this was the first glimpse of hope and the potential of a better outcome.

As we continued to build our business and reputation, it was time to build the team. We recruited future directors and gained one of our biggest and longest-term clients who would contribute to the new direction of the agency; at the forefront of pharma.

 

2006 – 2015

Some of the most instrumental in Lynx’s development came up next.

In 2012, we merged with Havas, becoming Havas Lynx, and opened up our first office in London. New clients and long-standing relationships saw company numbers swell, so we introduced smaller, multi-disciplinary teams to encourage the collaborative value of smaller agencies. We launched our first thought leadership white paper, The Patient Cliff, sparking critical conversations with policymakers, industry leaders, and charitable organisations, and proving that bold ideas can drive positive societal change. This marked the beginning of an ongoing commitment to launching impactful thought leadership white papers year on year.

Externally, our work was having a profound impact on patients, healthcare professionals and the wider industry. Highlights include an EGFR disease awareness campaign that shaped national guidelines, creating the first fully integrated pharma campaign to harness social media and smartphone technology, and being appointed to the London 2012 Olympic design and artwork rosters – the only North West agency from 13,000 others!

Internally, our focus remained on building and retaining our culture. We launched The Academy, an unparalleled internal training offering. It still runs today, sharing knowledge, providing inspiration, and developing our next generation of talented leaders. We also launched our very first graduate programme –  bringing fresh new talent into the agency.

 

2016 – 2026

By 2016, our work was changing more than conversations, it was changing the world

Our Change the Face of HIV campaign engaged 250,000 people in just two weeks – becoming one of our most awarded to date. But we didn’t stop there. We sped forward with more category-first ideas – like the world’s first photochromic safety poster for Cancer Research UK and a global movement for brain health told through a new brain emoji.

We won Cannes Lions Healthcare Agency of the Year for the first time in 2018, and new launches kept us leaping forward, with Havas Lynx Faze – our response to one of healthcare’s biggest challenges – patient trial recruitment, followed by Havas Lynx Media, the first global, healthcare‑specialist media offering.

The world shifted when COVID hit, and so did we. Working remotely, but always as one. With ‘Andi Goes’ we wrote a child’s bedtime story that helped parents quietly screen for dyslexia – and won our first ever D&AD Graphite Pencil. We got up close and personal with communities hardest hit by opioid overdose and helped them save a life by carrying naloxone themselves – life-saving and award-winning work. And was it our calm in the chaos of covid that gained us LIA European Pharma Agency of the Year for the first time? Probably.

In 2023, we went further, opening our New York office and bringing the Lynx way of thinking to the world’s biggest stage. The launch of Point.1 followed – our proprietary data product ingeniously built to put sharper insight at the heart of creative decision‑making.

With all this growth we stayed true to our purpose. Never losing sight of what we’re here to do, our Healing the Healers white paper to shine a light on the fastest deterioration of healthcare professional wellbeing in history, followed by Climate of Health, to drive meaningful change for HCPs, patients, healthcare systems, and ultimately for our planet.

More recently, we recognised misinformation as a medical emergency with our Doctored Truths white paper, shining a light into the confusing world of health misinformation, where medical nonsense has stopped being a nuisance and started being a crisis. The white paper was our call to arms for the industry to stop looking the other way.

The last 40 years have seen us bring home more than 450 awards and shortlists (and counting!), most recently securing LIA European Healthcare Agency of the Year, Lisbon Health’s Agency of the Year and Network of the Year for 2025, and maintaining our position as Cannes Lions Top UK Healthcare for the second year running. But the best is yet to come.

As we grow, we know one thing. Our people are the key to our success. We’re thrilled to be part of Great Place to Work’s list of the UK’s Best Workplaces in Advertising, Media & Marketing™ for 2025, and continue to invest in the Lynx team to ensure they are equipped with all the tools they need to deliver exceptional campaigns that truly make an impact that matters.

As we look towards the next 40 years, there are more firsts to come, new discoveries to find, and even greater challenges to solve. Whether it’s pioneering the next life-saving therapy or finding new ways to make healthcare truly equitable for all, our mission remains the same, to create an impact that matters.

Here’s to the next 40!