Marissa Solan didn't start her career inside a pharmaceutical company. She spent a decade at Edelman leading the Dove business where she worked on notable initiatives such as Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches, Choose Beautiful, #SpeakBeautiful, the U.S. launch of Baby Dove, and the 60th anniversary of the Dove Beauty Bar. So when she moved in-house to Haleon, the consumer health company behind Advil, Centrum, Tums, Sensodyne, and Flonase, she expected the work to feel fundamentally different.

It didn't, not in the way she braced for. What changed was the environment: legal, medical, and regulatory review sit closer to every creative decision. But instead of shrinking the work, those constraints became the thing that makes it sharper.

"There's parameters to a brief that makes good work happen."

That belief shows up across Haleon's creator program. Instead of handing creators a locked script, her team builds social-first claims with legal, then gives creators room to interpret them. The results have surprised her more often. A Flonase creator turned a nasal spray brief into a full song. Emergen-C became the brand's first to go 100% creator-generated in paid social, and now holds one of its strongest ROIs. It's the same principle we build around at Collectively: the tighter the category, the more a brand needs a partner who knows which creators can turn constraint into some of the most memorable work in the room.

Marissa is just as clear-eyed about where trust actually comes from. Citing Edelman's own trust barometer research, she points to a striking finding. Most consumers now consider someone a legitimate health expert not because of credentials, but because they've lived through the condition themselves. That's why Haleon leans as hard into lifestyle creators as it does healthcare professionals, and why the brand treats platforms like Reddit as both a listening tool and a source shaping how AI search engines describe its products.

Her boldest prediction for the industry is that creators won't stay external partners much longer. Ultimately, creators will move inside the building, shape insights, R&D, and brand strategy directly. In a category built on caution, that's not a small bet to make.

Episode 02: How Haleon Builds Creator Content Inside a Regulated Category