Brand Building is the mantra for all business.
Strong brands are recognisable. They stand for something distinctive in the customer’s mind, create preference and, over time, can build loyalty and enduring business value.
Yet when was the last time you heard “Brand Building” discussed in a pharma business meeting or even an annual business review?
Sales. Market share. Productivity. Top line and bottom line. Target achievement. All these find a place in our discussions.
But what about Brand Building?
Of course, brand plans are created every year. Some companies also conduct brand reviews. But in the pharma world, when is the deliberate building of the brand itself actually discussed?
Let’s examine this issue by looking at four different aspects.
A. We assume our products are brands
But this can happen more by default than by design.
The product was launched. It had good science. It was differentiated in some way. The sales force built relationships with doctors. The company consistently promoted it. Doctors continued to prescribe it. Years passed. The product became successful.
But was the brand deliberately built?
That is a different question.
B. Why does this matter in Business?
For many of the world's strongest businesses, brand building is not simply a marketing activity. It is a business-building activity.
Strong brands create preference and can become an enduring competitive advantage — even a powerful moat.
Pharma and healthcare are not different in this respect. The customer, regulatory environment and purchase dynamics are of course very different from other businesses, but the fundamental principle still holds.
So why don't we have the same conversation in pharmaceuticals?
C. Pharma has traditionally built brands differently
Pharma has traditionally built brands through a model that has been highly effective.
Introduce a good product. Differentiate it through science. Communicate and drive usage via a highly skilled sales team.
It's not that this model has stopped working; the problem is that the environment around it is changing.
Competition is increasing, differentiation is becoming harder in many categories, and customer engagement is becoming more fragmented. Doctors are exposed to more information and communication than ever before.
In such an environment, simply having a good product, a strong sales force and a large customer base may not be enough.
The brand itself needs to create differentiation, preference and enduring value.
D. Managing a brand is not the same as building a brand
This could be the real gap in pharma marketing.
- Rather than only tracking sales and market share, shouldn’t we also ask how strong the brand itself is becoming?
- Is the brand becoming more distinctive? Is it increasingly associated with something meaningful?
- Are we building associations that can endure beyond the next campaign?
- Are we creating an asset that becomes more valuable over time?
These are questions about brand building.
In short, what do we want this brand to stand for, and how do we want it to become stronger over the next three to five years?
In practical terms, brand strength in pharma is reflected in measures such as top-of-mind awareness among target HCPs, clarity and consistency of brand associations, preference in near-equivalent therapeutic choices, and trust in the brand’s scientific ecosystem. Other parameters and measurement approaches exist; those can be covered separately.
Tracking these alongside sales and share turns brand building from an abstract idea into a manageable business asset.
So, what needs to change?
To start with, three things need to happen.
1. Brand building needs to become a leadership agenda
Marketing will continue to shoulder much of the actual brand-building work, but leadership must drive its importance.
A company’s top leadership needs to recognise the brand as a business asset and understand the role it can play in creating sustainable growth.
If brand building is not part of leadership thinking, it will inevitably get overtaken by the immediate demands of sales, targets and quarterly performance.
2. It needs to become part of the commercial DNA
A brand is not built by marketing alone.
Sales shapes the customer experience. Medical shapes scientific credibility. Learning and development shapes how the organisation communicates. Customer-facing teams influence how the brand is experienced at every touchpoint.
Every function may not own the brand, but every function has a role in building it.
Brand building therefore needs to become part of the commercial DNA of the organisation, rather than being seen as a marketing responsibility.
3. It needs to become part of management systems and processes
Finally, brand building needs rigour.
It starts with understanding what makes a brand strong, defining what the brand should stand for and identifying how that strength will be created and nurtured.
It then needs to find its way into brand planning, reviews, leadership discussions and performance management.
The question for each of us is - are we deliberately building brands as business assets, or merely managing the products that happen to have become successful?
In a business environment where differentiation is becoming harder and customer attention is increasingly fragmented, that distinction matters more than ever.
Is Brand Building a conversation in your organisation?
At Aovantage, we work with pharmaceutical and healthcare companies on brand strategy, brand building and marketing effectiveness.
If this is a topic you would like to explore, we'd be happy to have a conversation.