Digital brand voice for Life Sciences companies: guidance.

Our experience made us see a lot of promotional digital content from the Pharma industry...

Today the digital world is crowded with content. And the Life Sciences industry is part of it! Healthcare professionals digitally receive tons of content delivered through various formats by Pharma companies’ brands.

One thing that has always captured our attention is the digital brand voice that is (or is not) expressed through the delivered content.

Although the importance of a graphical identity is well known, that much more subtle aspect of branding is often neglected.

But what is digital brand voice and what is it used for?

Offering an effective product is no longer enough. This is why Pharma brands are investing heavily in personalized digital content.

Healthcare professionals are looking for brands that align with their vision and add value beyond the product. Part of that is also the way Pharma brands present themselves, which is quite important in a digital savvy world.

The immediacy with which we are exposed to various content makes it difficult for HCPs to keep track on everything and engage with everything. Content is delivered in a space that it is fast and continually evolving.

The brand voice generally refers to the unique brand personality and emotion that is instilled in a brand's communication.

As a much straightforward example in order to better understand the brand voice, let’s think of us humans! Each of us have our own way of sharing, presenting our ideas, putting context to our stories, telling our stories using space when moving, attitudes and so on. Our people will recognize our personality and style from miles away. That same personality will trigger emotions and reactions from others, so we connect with each other.

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In other words, the brand voice is the expression of a brand identity and style that makes it recognizable through its messaging allowing for connection and engagement. It is applied to the delivered content. So, pardon my French, content is somehow a voice for the brand voice. Therefore, content must support the digital brand voice. It is the wire to connect with the audience.

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That is exactly why content should ACT when a brand delivers it to its audience. It should express an attitude under the influence of the brand's voice. Pharma companies must understand that although we are in a very constrained and regulated industry, just as in any industry, the brand they expose to a group of physicians will have an impact at different levels or not at all.

A Pharma brand that doesn’t oversee the digital brand voice within the content creates confusions in HCPs’ mind.

You may not have full control over whether your brand will be prescribed by the HCP you’re visiting but what you can control is how you present your content and that should be more intentional. Pharma brands must be more purposeful when creating content.

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Now, imagine, walking into a room where you see several objects, furniture crowded together, to the point that you can no longer clearly distinguish every element or find the most important piece of the room that you are interested into. The feeling towards this piece is confusion and discomfort.  Would you like to stay in that place or run next door?

Well, this room is actually the same as many screens or slides we usually see in digital sales aids delivered by Pharma brands for instance. Packed with content, messages written in small typographies…

So how you present your content to the world matters deeply meaning how you present the content to your audience affects the message, thus the whole brand identity. Even though it’s scientific or medical content mostly regulated. It is no longer enough to stand out from the crowd using a logo or a brand name or even an efficacy message. It’s not only about what you say.

It is important to develop your brand voice through your content to engage with your audience. Eventually, digital brand voice is the way you connect with your customers.

What does brand voice through content involve?

Why should you care about your digital brand voice?

When presenting content to an HCP, we show texts, images, graphs etc. that themselves should express messages that themselves would trigger a reaction from the HCP that will eventually create engagement.

And we usually fail to reach the objective.

Why?

Because what we see is that Pharma brands put texts, images and any elements to create a message before thinking it through.
The digital landscape is crowded. It’s filled with brands messages all over the place. Content needs that same attention and consistency you give to the elements of your brand presence such as the logo or value proposition.

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To better understand how to build up brand voice through content, let’s use a Brand Pyramid introduced by Gibson Biddle (former VP of Product Management at Netflix).

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The Brand Pyramid is a way to look at your brand as a customer would. Building up the brand from its foundations into a greater entity such as the brand legacy. From bottom to the top, each level adds up to the other.

How to keep HCPs connect to a point where they reach that “Something bigger”?

We adapted the Brand Pyramid to our essence: CONTENT - which led us to the Content Brand Pyramid.  

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Always having our audience in mind aka HCPs, we should answer to the following:

Content attributes: what are the content features that deliver benefits to customers?

What we see is crowded as stated above. Too much content on the same page, hardly readable, several messages in one place, etc. Sometimes it lacks clarity and focus on what matters the most.

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Some of the attributes would be:
Readable – Simple – clear – visual – organized – creative – consistent style (layout architecture).

Content benefits: how does the content benefit HCPs?

While the content may provide a value to HCPs, sometimes it goes unnoticed because the content lacks emphasis or it is not structured following a narrative, so it doesn’t help the sales help to get to the point in an easy manner.

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Some of the benefits would be:

Provides value

Interactive

Enlightening

Engaging

Demonstrative

Digital friendly.

Emotional benefits: how does your product make customers feel? (Customers invest more in brands when there is an emotional connection)

We often see content that addresses with health conditions that impact the whole journey of a patient, usually presented in a strictly objective, evidence-based way - it lacks what will trigger that emotional connection. Another example of what we also see is content that isn’t shaped following a personal brand tone in the way it is told.

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Some of these benefits would be:

Feeling understood (captures/meet HCPs’ needs)

Pushes to informed and educated decision

Trustworthy

Helpful

Memorable

Creates conversations.

‍HCPs’ experience:

‍At the end of the day, once the content is fully delivered ticking the boxes for each stage above, the content features and its emotional benefits to HCPs, how this translate into the HCPs experience with the brand content? Most marketers and agencies overlook this final step and jump to delivering their content.

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Now what are the elements that are used on a consistent basis across digital content? These elements must address these questions. In order to incorporate your brand personality. Any element will bring your brand identity forward.

The digital brand voice is the consistent expression of your brand message and values to your target customer as you work your way up the Brand Content Pyramid.

Just as brand identity is based on a set of colors, typography and logo variations that are usually defined within the brand guidelines, brand voice brings together the rules or guidelines for consistent communication that will lead to a reaction to your brand message.

It is all about how content is shared out there. It is how you show up and act front of the physicians (the style, the tone and the attitude).

How to? The components of your Digital Brand Voice.

In fact, brand voice involves several important items of the content:

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• (Digital) Design rules
• Storytelling
• Narrative
• Consistency

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Get started with these tips:

1. Create Digital content production guidelines.

Follow guidelines we mean not only your brand guidelines but digital content guidelines. We have seen several very complete brand guidelines precising how to use colors, logos, value proposition, typographies on various formats (print, digital, web etc.) but never a more comprehensive guidelines providing rules to make digital content readable, which help convey the message for instance (one of the defined content attributes of the Content Brand Pyramid that will generate content benefits to the audience). Screen design rules are important as we do not create digital content as we create print materials. This material provides essential clues about designing content to engage like how to organize content for digital etc.
This document should be shared to all your business units, countries affiliates, creative agencies and any stakeholder involve in crafting content.

2. Boost your storytelling skills.

Storytelling allows to:

Give a personality to the brand

Enhance its message, know-how and values

Connect your targets by creating emotion

Give emphasis to the brand's image

Build brand awareness

Offer outstanding user experience

Where to put emphasis when designing content? Which language resonates with my audience and personas. It’s the tone of the brand voice.
It generates the emotional benefits of the Content Brand Pyramid. When mastered, storytelling is a way to engage HCPs you’re talking to on a journey with your brand.

3. Find your narrative and communicate it.

The narrative or the content structure create space for agreement at each step of the way when a sales rep is for instance detailing to an HCP toward an objective. The way content is structured and delivered is a signature that is part of the brand voice.

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Last but not least, the golden rule: stay consistent.

Consistency must be a golden rule for any content that is produced. If it doesn’t comply with digital design rules, it doesn’t address content attributes, content benefits or it doesn’t apply principles such as storytelling and the narrative in place, then it should be reviewed.

Consistency is key to strengthen the Digital Brand Voice. It shows your HCPs audience that the brand is reliable and their experience with the brand will be clear and well considered. It builds confidence and trust.

Failing consistency across every content delivered leads to confusion from HCPs who may not recognize the brand value and its personality from an interaction to another.

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Make your digital brand voice heard.

Stay tuned!

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If you’d like to learn more about digital marketing management in Pharma, feel free to reach out to us at contact[at]hexagone.life.

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