- Eli Lilly launched its "Start How You Can" campaign starring Caitlin Clark on May 9, 2026, timed to the Indiana Fever's WNBA season opener.
- Unlike typical pharma advertising, the campaign promotes exercise as disease prevention, not medication, extending Lilly's broader "health above all" brand platform, developed with agency partner Wieden+Kennedy.
- Lilly confirmed it has had an existing relationship with both Clark and the Fever since she entered the league in 2024, making this a deepening of an already established partnership.
- The campaign includes broadcast, OOH, cinema placements, social takeovers, and local and national print, with centerspread placements hitting the New York Times, LA Times, and Indianapolis Star simultaneously on May 10.
Caitlin Clark and Eli Lilly have teamed up for a new campaign called “Start How You Can,” focused on the idea that exercise is one of the most powerful medicines for better health, not a drug, and not just for elite athletes.
In the 60-second spot created by Wieden+Kennedy Portland, Clark practices in a simple setting alongside everyday people, a pregnant mother running a track, an amputee doing push-ups with his son, each starting their wellness journey in their own way.
Lilly’s CMO Lina Polimeni said the choice of Clark wasn’t about reach alone, it was about shared values. “Caitlin genuinely believes that exercise is foundational to better health regardless of where someone starts. That’s not a message we handed her. That’s who she is.”
This is not a new relationship. Lilly has maintained ties with both Clark and the Fever since her 2024 WNBA debut. On the brand side, Lilly has also worked with Shaquille O’Neal on sleep apnea awareness, Julianne Moore on its “Brain Health Matters” Alzheimer’s campaign, and Eric Stonestreet and Tim McGraw for its Mounjaro “Duets for Type 2 Diabetes” effort.
For Clark, Lilly joins a portfolio of major brand deals. Just as she fronted State Farm’s new basketball campaign and starred in Xfinity’s latest push, she continues to pull in endorsements from Nike, Gatorade, and State Farm, ranking sixth among the world’s highest-paid female athletes with nearly $16 million in 2025 endorsement income.
On the court, the timing couldn’t be sharper. On the same day the campaign dropped, the Fever’s May 9 season opener, Clark became the fastest point guard in WNBA history to reach 1,000 career points, doing so in just 54 games.
She returned from an injury-plagued 2025 season, limited to just 13 games, finishing the opener with 20 points, seven assists, and five rebounds.
Takeaways
This one goes beyond the usual athlete-brand playbook. Most pharma campaigns sell a product, Lilly is selling a mindset.
By centering the “Start How You Can” message on everyday people (not Clark’s highlight reel), Lilly is betting that accessibility is more persuasive than aspiration. And using Clark’s return from injury as the backdrop? That’s not just good timing, it’s good storytelling.
The fact that Lilly deepened an existing relationship rather than signing a fresh face tells you something about how they build.
Clark is also increasingly selective about deals, telling media this offseason she’d be turning down endorsement money to prioritize basketball, which makes her saying yes to Lilly more meaningful, not less.
Can a pharma giant genuinely shift public behavior around preventative health or does that always get crowded out by the medication ads that follow? With Clark publicly pulling back on endorsements to focus on winning, what does it say that Lilly made the cut?
