Trust me — building pharma brand trust

The impact branding has on your pharmaceutical business to help build trust.

The context

Let’s say you’re a relatively new player in your market and your product is absolutely perfect for the pharmaceutical industry. The product is a new form of pill bottle that allows for more translucency in the plastic to better see the pills without it being an orange UV blocking material.

The problem, however, is there has been a low uptake by pharma companies that are open to changing their existing pill bottle packaging to a new player (your biz).

What do we do?

We first understand what the underlying business goals are in response to the problem.

The Business Goal

For most business owners, the two overarching goals are typically:

1. More consumers (customers, clients, audience)
2. More sales (profit, repeat business, market share)

Other goals might be:

• Market growth to focus on a larger/varied market
• Business growth (more stores/offices, more staff, more products/services)

However, the business goal for this brand is to attract more clients which for them equals more sales.

However, the business goal cannot be achieved without solving the brand goal first.

The Brand Goal

On the flip side, a brand goal is typically more a more psychological objective. After all, a new logo is very unlikely to bring in the big bucks as it takes a tremendous amount of brand clout overtime to influence buyer behaviour the Nike logo is to a plain white cotton t-shirt.

Other brand goals can include an ambition to be:

• A recognisable brand
• A remembered brand
• A brand that people advocate for
• A reputable brand
• A responsible brand
• A valuable brand
• A valued brand
• A trusted brand

There are many more but for this particular example, especially in the health and pharmaceutical industry, trust is a big reason brands in this space may fail. For this brand to achieve its business goal, they need to genuinely be perceived as a trustworthy brand.

How does your brand make a trustworthy impact?

Well for starters, there is one, if not many pain points that typically need to be overcome for a brand and business goal to be achieved.

For this example, this brand has several pain points. Namely:

• Trust in the efficacy of the product to preserve the medication pills, the same if not better than they do in an existing pill bottle products.
• Trust that their product won't attract a lawsuit(s) if the packaging is defective in any way.
• Gaining trust to outline the benefits of opportunity cost, versus the cost of supply chain changes in a clients manufacturing process.
• A lack of having a reputable name in their market to be able to express their experience, superior product and manufacturing process, along with their health certifications.
• Lack of trust in themselves to identify what their brand strategy is. So that they are able to understand how they are supposed to convey to their target clients that they are a trustworthy brand.

How does your brand overcome it’s pain points?

For any brand and at any time a brand faces a new challenge, be it entering a new market or offering a new product, a brand strategy to overcome those pain points and reach the end goal is required from the outset.

Without it we have no clarity around:

• Who it is we are trying to target
• Why they need us and why they should care
• How we can meet their needs
• What direction we need to take to achieve that goal step by step

So in this scenario, we’re focusing on three aspects: Credibility, Communication, Brand Personality, The End-User (their client's customers) and their specific Target Market.

1. Proof of credibility

After engaging with you in a strategy discovery session we come to realise that in the pharmaceutical industry (globally), a huge amount of trust is placed on the certifications and approvals given by government associations like the FDA (USA), TGA (AUS), or MHRA (UK).

Without them, prescription drugs can’t be sold in these territories. So showing your product is certified for use, is the first step in building trust both for your client and for their customers as it shows credibility from that first impression and might be the first pre-requisite they are looking for when approached. Which is why we want to make sure it’s front and centre.

2. How it works… “Now with technical jargon!”

Part of a brand’s existence is to communicate ‘how it does what it does’ and ‘why it’s needed’. Typically with the jargon removed so as not to confuse the target market.

However, as the experts in your field, your knowledge of the industry tells us that technical specification is required. Your target clients want to know the details about your products as the stakes are far greater if something should fail AND they’re people who are just as knowledgable from a scientific and packaging experience standpoint to understand your product.

So we need to realise your brand messaging is not targetted at their own end-user because your target market isn’t an industry to dumb things down to but we still want to create a compelling message. Meaning a tiered approach for messaging where the deeper a client goes to understand the product, the more technical the messaging and branded touchpoints become, as per industry necessity.

Additionally, we also want to consider and communicate how our product differentiates itself over the competition and the greater benefits than the product our target market is currently being supplied with. Your product alone may even create a seed of doubt in the product they are currently using when compared to your own.

Implementing this strategy creates trust in the brand. As it will clearly demonstrate the product’s effectiveness and its benefits over the competition when correctly communicated in a selling process that ultimately speaks their language.

3. Does your brand have a trusted personality?

Just like we do as people, we engage with those we know, like and trust. The same goes for a brand/business.

As part of a brand strategy process, we’re defining key persona to know who it is we’re specifically targeting. We want to know exactly ‘who’ we’re targetting, as we want to be for someone and not everyone. This allows us to reverse engineer our brand to be one that aligns with that of our customer, audience or in this case, your pharma client company.

But not just the company, also it’s employees and the specific people your business would typically engage with. To know who they are, their needs, expectations and pain points.

Similarly, the personality we want to create for your brand is one that is culturally aligned with your client, it shares similar values (especially if they relate to your clients end consumers), it has a similar tone of voice or one that appeals to their nature and also has a character that is engaging on their level. Being these things to your client builds a brand that is liked and far more trusted if they can see a genuine personality they can connect with.

Though the biggest reason for creating a brand personality is that your own business (in this example) is not a one-person show. You’re a team of individuals with your own unique personalities. But placing an effort on creating a unified personality that speaks with the same voice, is something that can be learned and applied across your team when each of you engages with your clients. This offers a consistent and more trusted experience as they’ll clearly see your team are all on the same page. Trust doesn’t breed on disunity in a company both internally or from external eyes looking in.

4. Why it’s needed over what they already have

One of the hardest things to do as a number two or a new to market brand is to convince people that you’re better. People inherently don’t like change and switching from something that is working for them or that is hard to switch from, creates friction. So the reason for change needs to be highly beneficial, if not as painless as possible to reap the benefits.

Now let's say that we learn you’ve already produced genuine video testimonials from people in your client’s customer base who have benefited from the features of your product…If you haven't yet, this might be a wink, wink, nudge, nudge moment for you to get onto this idea.

It’d be crazy not to make it part of your branded experience!

This not only demonstrates a step up from what the features of their products currently are. But it also builds long-term trust and loyalty from the bottom up. Meaning that if your client’s own customers benefit from your product and would choose your product over others when given the choice, it demonstrates a market desire and potential need based on that sample size of positive advocacy before it reaches their market with their branding on it.

You’ve done the hard yards for them and your business. But most importantly you’ve not made this brand goal to sound a like a trustworthy brand be your based on your own words, but in the words of their own customers. After all, there are many in the branding arena who say,

“A brand is not what you say it is, it’s what they say it is” — Marty Neumeier

How do we put it all together to solve it?

“Personalisation in communication”

With a clearly defined brand strategy that tells us who we should be targeting. It reveals that presenting a trusted brand presence to a specific pharma company’s packaging manager is the best strategic approach. They are the one with the buying power and they influence the decision making of those within the pharma companies ranks that handle the chemistry side of their own pharmaceuticals and the distribution of their products.

Now to get on their radar, especially for something new to the market, a personalised pitch of multiple, consistently branded touchpoints would be suggested to present that individual pharma company manager with. To get their attention and make you stand out from the competition and/or their existing supplier.

So aside from making first contact with that packaging manager. One part of this personalised approach could include something like a bespoke branded web landing page. Imagine a site with a custom web address of their name or company and tailored messaging that not only greets them by name and their companies name. But it goes on to outline their needs, why their customers want your product, certifications, product efficacy and why the change is worth it for them to switch to you.

However, imagine if you even took things to an even more personalised level.

Say you found out they liked golf. Imagine being flown to an amazing course for 18 holes with custom branded golf balls and a glove that had your name on it with both your companies logos on printed on them. You’ve not only received a considered, customised experience but also a memorable branded experience. You’ve just gotta back it up with a hole in one product that’ll change the game for them and this over-indulgent golf game simply becomes a way to get their attention to seriously consider your brand.

Hell, could you imagine hiring space on a billboard that this person would drive by on their commute to and from their companies office!? Ok, I’ve gone a little overboard.

The latter examples are most likely overkill, but there is a point to it all

Now I’m not saying you need to go to these audacious lengths, which I have no doubts there have probably been some really crazy examples over the years that have happened. But why do this? And let’s say in a non-over-the-top way.

Because it shows you’ve taken the time to understand them and their business. You’re diligently ensuring that they are seeing everything they’d expect to see that makes them feel like they are making the right decision with a trustworthy brand, based on an experience that is appropriate to meeting or exceeding their expectations.

But think about this…

When tens if not hundreds of millions are on the line and your product’s success may rely on two or three major pharmaceutical companies that carry your products, would you not want to consider every marketing, advertising, experience and branded touchpoint idea possible to make that person the centre of your attention and look beyond your competition?

The Takeaway:

Know who it is you’re targeting and what they need to know to trust you.

Just keep in mind however that you can’t just say “trust me” and people will. Nor is there a single smoking gun answer to make a customer, client or audience trust you.⁣
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It takes a combination of business and brand efforts that allow a customer to see who you are, what you do, how you do it and why you do it. To reveal whether or not your intentions are to help them AND not just them, but potentially someone they are trying to help if your client has their own consumers that trust them.⁣

Ultimately, knowing who you’re targeting and what they need to know to trust you, is but one realisation that brand strategy can reveal. Brand strategy isn’t just about how we can make your brand look and sound the part. It’s a process of understanding your market, your position in it and how to build a brand that can best engage with your market to achieve greater success.

This is the impact branding has and the value it can deliver.

This article is part two of a series I’ve innovatively called, the “Branding Impact Series”. Purely to demonstrate the impact and value branding has on the success of a business that you may not consider. Stay tuned for more!

Reagan ‘Frank’ Mackrill, is a brand identity designer from Sydney, Australia.
To contact him, email: gday@gdayfrank.com
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