Pharma loves strategy. There are workshops, frameworks, and slides with more arrows than a medieval battlefield. But when it comes to early adoption, strategy alone is never enough. What really matters is communication.
You can have the most sophisticated launch plan in the world, backed by brilliant data and meticulous access modelling, but if the story isn’t clear, it won’t land. Early adopters — clinicians, payers, policymakers — are bombarded daily with “breakthrough” claims. If your message is complex, inconsistent, or buried in jargon, it disappears in the noise.
I’ve seen excellent strategies collapse because teams assumed that clarity would emerge at the end. Communication was treated like the final polish rather than the engine that makes everything move. By the time the message was ready, the audience had moved on.
The truth is, communication shapes adoption. It builds trust, aligns teams, and reassures decision-makers that you know what you’re talking about. When communication is fragmented — with Medical, Market Access, and Commercial each saying something slightly different — payers lose confidence.
Good communication starts early. It’s about simplicity without dumbing down. It’s about testing the message with real audiences rather than internal echo chambers. And it’s about consistency: every slide, dossier, and meeting should reinforce one coherent value story.
One British professor I worked with used to say, “If you can’t explain it to your aunt over Sunday roast, you don’t understand it yourself.” It’s an unfashionable truth but a vital one. The best communicators in pharma are translators — people who can turn complexity into clarity without losing meaning.
If your early adopters can repeat your core message after one meeting, you’re halfway there. If they can’t, all the strategy in the world won’t help.
Try This
Ask three colleagues from different functions to explain your product’s value story in one sentence.
If they all say the same thing, your communication is strong.
If they don’t, fix that before you fix anything else.
