What story does your brand tell your audience?

A brand narrative is a concise, strategic document that acts as the road map for an organization’s marketing and communications efforts, providing a framework for communicating the brand’s essence to its customers.

As “storytelling” has become increasingly ubiquitous, the importance of this exercise has grown exponentially.After all, marketing is just telling a story to an audience in an effective and compelling way. A strategic brand narrative is simply an account of how to describe a company, brand, or mission and how you accomplish a benefit for customers, accompanied by a storyline that weaves and holds it all together in the most relevant, seamless, and cohesive way possible. Ultimately, it’s a sketch of how you intend to captivate, inspire, and engage an audience with what a brand “stands for.”

Examples from consumer world

While there isn’t one definitive person credited with “inventing” the term “brand narrative,” the concept has been championed by various consumer branding and marketing experts.

There are some famous examples of brand narratives from the world of consumer marketing that are so successful that most people recognize them even if there was no name attached. For instance, do you think you can identify the brand from just these brief snippets of famous well-known narratives?

A connected group of technologies, that are at once effortless and intuitive, where devices and services work together seamlessly without user intervention in a connected ecosystem. It just all works.

Steve Jobs often used this simple narrative phrase to describe his vision for the future of Apple’s product offering.

Here’s another phrase from the narrative of a famous brand:

We are dedicated to inspiring athletes and non-athletes alike to overcome challenges and achieve their personal best. Our mission is to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. If you have a body, you are an athlete.

Most everyone would probably recognize this narrative if we mentioned the associated rallying cry of the legendary Nike tagline “Just Do It.”

Narratives in Pharmaceutical and MedTech Marketing

So those are relatively easy, as they’re prominent global consumer brands. But what about brand narrative in pharma HCP marketing?

Typically, this story is a bit more complicated than tech products or athletic shoes; it’s about people’s health and well-being. If anything, this makes the strategic brand narrative even more important.

And while pharma and medtech companies may have their own corporate narratives like Apple or Nike, each brand they market should have its own narrative as well. This is especially true if the story we’re marketing is about an unknown or new brand, or is in a crowded field of competitors in the same disease state and indications. A solid, wellreasoned brand narrative is at the heart of all the positioning, campaigns, and tactics It needs to appeal to healthcare professionals on multiple clinical, rational, and emotional levels. It is also different from a consumer narrative in that it is almost always about solving or addressing a medical issue versus creating a feeling of happiness or achieving a personal best.

Hallmarks of a Strong Narrative in HCP-Marketed Brands•

Finds the right mix of clinical, rational, and inspirational• Flows from the challenge to the brand solution to the brand essence• Culminates in a short, powerful rallying cry for the brand• Can appeal to internal and external audiences• Robust enough to lay the foundation for the brand’s “future state”

Building a Narrative for a Specialized or Healthcare Brand

So, that is the nature of what an HCP brand narrative does, but what about its structure? A powerful narrative for a pharma brand has three parts.

• First is a well-researched and meaningful description of the problem that the brand is dedicated and passionate about solving. This can be about the condition or disease the brand will be treating, the patients it will help, or the challenges the brand faces. It can be about the context of a category or marketplace that the brand is entering and plans to disrupt. Ultimately, the purpose of this part of a narrative is to demonstrate a nuanced understanding of the problem the brand will address and to describe the building blocks to establish a relationship with customers, which starts by demonstrating a thorough understanding of their needs or challenges. That lays a foundation for how they will understand that the brand fully grasps their problem—and it’s about more than just selling a product.

• The second part pivots to the role the brand will play in meeting the challenge, or how it may disrupt a stagnant and inadequate status quo in the marketplace. It can be about how the brand can address, improve, or enhance how the medical professional treats a problem. “Because healthcare brands often rely more heavily on professional sales forces than consumer-facing models, the brand message isn’t just a catchy tagline—it needs to serve as a source of inspiration.”

• The third part is to express in a condensed and creative way the summarization and essence of the brand’s message. This is where themes like “Just do it” were originally inspired in the consumer world. This part of a consumer brand narrative is often directly tied to a future promotional headline or tagline. In pharma marketing, it’s more like boiling down the most salient and singular points from the first two parts into a “rallying cry.” Some clients refer to this as a “commanding claim,” and unlike consumer examples, if used externally in promotion, HCP rallying cries must of course be supportable with evidence. And, in some cases, depending on if the phrasing may be used in promotional or sales materials, approved by the FDA.

Because healthcare brands often rely more heavily on professional sales forces than consumer-facing models, the brand message isn’t just a catchy tagline—it needs to serve as a source of inspiration. It should equip reps with compelling, empowering language that resonates with their audience and supports meaningful, relevant conversations throughout the sales process.

The strategic brand narrative is a useful and necessary start to mapping out the entire life of the brand. It’s a key part of guiding the brand development process that no healthcare brand should skip or underestimate. It’s truly one of the most powerful tools we must use to build a strong, sustainable brand with momentum into the future.

Written by Frank Powers from Elevate Healthcare (mail fxp@elevatehc.com). First published on PM360.