Havas Health & You has launched a new division dedicated to cannabinoids, with a focus on education as opposed to science-based programs. The firm, called Havas ECS, will operate out of Havas' New York and New Jersey offices and will hold a conference this fall.

A study by the Association of National Advertisers reveals that in-house agencies are struggling with issues such as attracting the best talent and then keeping them creatively engaged. "As we've said all along, agencies will continue to bring outside perspective, provocation and expertise to their brand partners," says 4A's President and CEO Marla Kaplowitz, adding, "Ultimately, it's this talent and creative thinking that drives growth for brands."

The World Health Organization has released an updated model list of essential medicines, which now includes 12 new treatments for diseases such as leukemia, melanoma, multiple myeloma, and prostate and lung cancers. The revised list, which is recommended internationally for public health systems, now contains 460 products due to the addition of 23 medicines for children and 28 for adults, and also includes new uses for 26 products already included in the list.

The US spends almost twice as much on health care as other developed countries, with pricing driving the cost trend, says Edward Hoffer of Harvard Medical School. Hoffer says site-neutral payments, bundled payments and transparency are three potential solutions.

Facebook is planning to tighten the creative limitations for its mobile News Feed ads in August, which will decrease the aspect ratio for photos and videos from 2:3 to 4:5 and reduce the number of visible text lines from seven to three and enable viewers to click for more, writes Kerry Flynn. Ad executives are interested in seeing whether the stipulations will be a burden or impetus for creative changes and are troubled that they didn't have more advance knowledge of the restrictions.

Twitter is replacing its SnappyTV third-party video publisher tool with the launch of LiveCut. Housed within the Twitter Media Studio, the tool will enable marketers to more easily create and distribute video clips of live broadcasts through the platform, monetize them through Twitter Amplify and integrate efforts into Twitter's tech stack for advanced analytics, including views, average watch time and video completion rate, writes Kerry Flynn.

BBDO New York's Greg Hahn chats in this podcast about using the technique of "mindhacking" to come up with innovative creative solutions. "It's about how you approach problems and solve them, and how you can do it by thinking about them differently," he says, noting, "You can come up with solutions that are dramatically simple, but the effect they have is tenfold."

Marketers have been focused on serving customers across various platforms and touchpoints, but consumers still need to develop emotional ties to a brand, says Forrester's Keith Johnston. The sentiment is relayed in Forrester's "2019 CMO Predictions" report, which found 50% of CMOs intend to make brand-building their top priority during 2019.

To avoid a patchwork of different data privacy regulations spanning 50 states, the federal government is likely to create national data privacy regulation, said Alison Pepper, senior vice president for Government Relations at the 4A's, at the recent Coalition for Healthcare Communication's Rising Leaders Conference on Healthcare Policy, held in Washington, D.C. Pepper pointed out to attendees that "bifurcated state-by-state legislative efforts in this area are a very big concern for industry," and noted that "the potential of having 50 different regimes for how you use data in whatever context is obviously going to be an administrative nightmare and a liability nightmare." Read more.