It happens every time we engage with a new biopharma client to help them build their brand. We scan the competitive horizon and behold… the sea of sameness. Interesting companies doing amazing things, founded by visionary leaders and filled with brilliant, passionate people. But their brands say the same things as their competitors about being patient centered, science driven, innovative. And they even seem to be doing their best to look the same with their ubiquitous patient lifestyle shots, photos of scientists in the lab, and molecular illustrations.

It’s frustrating to see, because the value of having a distinctive and compelling brand has never been higher for biopharma. You have to fight harder than ever for the partners, assets, and talent that are essential to your growth and success. A brand that gives you an advantage for attracting essential audiences and resources should be a must have, and yet so few biopharma companies seem to have one.

Our deep experience working with biopharma companies has taught us a lot about how to define and express a brand story that sets you apart – and boosts your ability to compete for attention and resources. Read on for 5 powerful lessons we’ve learned.

1. Being patient-centered is a necessity, but it’s not a differentiator
This lesson might be a tough one to hear. Caring for patients, striving to improve their lives, putting them at the center of your decision making – these ideas are cornerstones for your company, people, and culture. But it’s hard to make a commitment to patients the focus of a distinctive message when everyone says it. What’s more, saying it over and over doesn’t necessarily make it resonate externally. A 2023 PatientView survey found that only 54% of US patient groups say the industry is excellent or good at patient centricity – a 12 point drop from 2022. To build your best brand story, you probably need to look past patient centricity to more specific and distinctive ideas about what you do and why you do it.

2. Your marketing needs to be as bold as your innovation and daring
When you’re dealing with things as weighty as serious illness, scientific rigor, safety – it’s a reasonable instinct to be conservative with your brand expression. But being serious about disease doesn’t mean you have to be staid about marketing. You have license to be bold and even provocative when it reflects real urgency, passion, and new thinking. The challenges facing healthcare worldwide are calling out for innovators who dare to try new approaches and pioneer new science. If that’s who you are, your marketing needs to signal it to the world with a brand story and expression that dares to be bold as well.

3. Biopharma isn’t big pharma, and shouldn’t try to look like it
Big pharmas made some serious reputation gains during the pandemic. But they still carry a legacy perception as behemoths where greed, siloes, and egos can get in the way of making an impact – especially among ambitious industry talent. Biopharma companies are perceived differently: nimbler, more inventive, a fresh alternative. And yet, many biopharmas reach for big pharma’s tired visual and verbal tropes. (We once found the same retired couple walking the beach in stock photography used on the homepages of three different biopharma companies.) Emulating these familiar brand expression moves may seem like a safe choice, but the truth is the opposite. The bigger risk is getting perceived as a run-of-the-mill pharma company instead of the fast-moving, ground-breaking biopharma you are.

4. Your approach isn’t just good science, it’s a good story
We’ve often found that what’s distinctive about a biopharma is something about its approach. It could be about leveraging a proprietary scientific platform. It could be about a powerful molecule with a lot of potential applications. It could be something more operational: a way of collaborating with partners or designing clinical trials more effectively. These powerful ideas are usually underemphasized or presented as dry, technical information. Instead, your unique approach should be brought to life as the center of an inspiring story – revealing new thinking, breakthrough work, and exciting potential. This could be the key to moving beyond the common “what” of therapeutic focus and “why” of patient outcomes to a distinctive “so what” that convinces investors, partners, and talent that you are truly worth prioritizing.

5. Branding is an overlooked source of biopharma advantage
With all the hard, urgent work it takes to build a biopharma company, brand can find itself on the back burner. But creating a truly distinctive brand story is really an investment in supporting core business priorities. In a crowded industry, it gives the market a shorthand way to remember you, the sophistication of your business and the uniqueness of your approach. It establishes a foundation of equity with critical stakeholders beyond your pipeline, your latest data, your submissions and approvals – making sure there’s a reason to believe that’s bigger than the next milestone or molecule. It’s an essential advantage in the fight for talent, inspiring prospective hires to notice you and elevating your company as an opportunity they long to be part of. And the fact that so many of your competitors have underdeveloped brands means investing in your own can deliver outsize returns.

The powerful brand story you deserve is within your reach
Why do so many biopharma brands fail to take advantage of these best practices? It’s not that they don’t have the potential to make their brands stand out. But it does take doing the hard work of mining for what is truly distinctive about you, and why that matters to the outside world. That means identifying key components of a great brand story, like what you’re fighting for on behalf of your constituents, your unique point of view on an industry problem worth solving, and the distinctive way you go about addressing it.

Few companies are doing work as valuable and interesting as biopharmas today, and the pandemic has only made that clearer. The world needs to know about your value, your brilliance, your passion. You deserve to have a brand story that’s as inspiring and unique as you are.