Why pharma has finally started branding like it matters

When the CEO of Novo Nordisk spent an hour on the Wall Street Journal’s podcast, discussing the comeback plan for the brand, it felt closer to a tech founder talking about the launch of a new product than it did a Chief Executive Officer discussing investor relations for their pharmaceutical company.

Six days later, the company dropped Nordisk from the name altogether. Novo. Coupled with the bull now facing forwards (clever), which had remained unchanged since the 1920s, he said, “Healthcare must become more responsive, relevant and easier to fit into everyday life. Our brand and culture are strategically important and will enhance how we operate and compete."

Historically, this is not the sort of message you’d expect to hear from a company that’s spent the last 100 years making insulin and this would’ve very likely raised eyebrows across the industry before now. However, we’re seeing more and more that this is the new normal.

Late to the party

Other industries have been doing this for decades. When your product is functionally the same as your competitor’s, the story wrapped around it became the only space left to be truly different. Nike became synonymous with performance and Apple later did the same with rebellious simplicity. Having a distinct brand personality is expected.

Pharma somewhat missed all of this. Regulators dictate what you can say about a medicine almost word for word. Doctors prescribe based on efficacy data. Corporate identity mattered to shareholders and regulators, but rarely were designed for the end user, the people taking the medicines. So, it stayed a logo on a letterhead, because nothing about the industry required it to be any more considered than that.

The groundwork was already laid

Novo aren’t the first to do this in pharma by any means, they’re just the most recent. GSK modernised its identity a while back and Sanofi did the same. Moderna shortened its name. This doesn’t just stop with the companies making the drugs. Veeda, a contract research and manufacturing group, spent last year rebuilding itself as Veeda Lifesciences. Their CEO talked about a "forward-thinking approach," which is essentially corporate speak for when everyone can list the same capabilities, your brand identity and perception is your differentiator.

What’s driving it?

If you were to ask ten people in pharma why this is happening you’d probably get ten different answers. However, there are a few different external pressures landing on the industry at the same time and it’s this mix that is likely what’s pushing the importance being placed more firmly on brand.

Starting with our attention spans. Gloria Mark's research at UC Irvine found it takes over 23 minutes to fully refocus after an interruption and Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index puts the average knowledge worker's day at roughly one interruption every two minutes. Doctors, patients, investors, partners, everyone pharma needs to reach is living inside that same fractured attention span. A forgettable message isn’t necessarily just down to being poorly written, but more because the odds of it landing was stacked against it in the first place.

Your health is no longer discussed once you’re in the doctor’s office. GLP-1s have turned obesity treatment into something people actively research and compare, more akin to buying a car. Telehealth platforms built entire businesses on making prescription medicine feel more consumer-led and talking in plain, simple language. By the time a patient sits down with their GP, they've often already formed an opinion about a drug's brand. To be involved in these early conversations, healthcare companies need to be top of mind way before these discussions take place.

Trust plays a part too. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer puts trust in pharmaceutical companies at 63%. Which isn’t exactly ideal for an industry whose products people's lives depend on. A generic corporate identity doesn't say much when steadiness is the one thing that needs to be communicated. A considered brand, repeated consistently, is a brilliant tool companies use to earn the trust it claims to have.

And then there's the number of people any pharma company now has to talk to at once. Patients, physicians, payers, regulators, investors, plus a talent market that increasingly would rather align themselves with tech and finance over healthcare. Corporate brand is the common thread holding all of that together. Since none of those audiences are hearing the same message only the brand can do that job, which can’t be communicated by simply a logo on a letterhead.

There is one key factor that sits underneath all of this more recent importance on brand, AI. When anyone can generate content, a logo or even an entire brand, using tools trained on largely the same data, most of what is being put out there starts looking and sounding the same. Forbes put this bluntly "the algorithmic middle is death" for any brand trying to stand apart. Some big brands are finding this out the hard way, with their AI generated campaigns being called soulless, the opposite of the emotional brand equity companies have spent years building. For an industry already fighting to be remembered, sounding unmistakably and authentically human is turning into the real competitive edge.

Change is industry wide

Change can be seen across the entire industry. From market access, logistics partners, CDMOs, distributors to specialty providers. Because most compete purely on service, brand is an important (and sometimes the only) point of difference.

Cencora is a good example of this outside of drugmakers. It's the name AmerisourceBergen rebranded with a few years back, a pharmaceutical distributor that moves treatments from manufacturers to pharmacies and patients. With over $200B in annual revenue, more than 46,000 employees, the company still decided a full identity overhaul was worth doing, because in a supply chain saturated with others doing broadly the same job, an identity people can actually hold onto has become a key part of how you compete for business.

Essentially, brand is now commercial infrastructure. Sitting alongside pricing, regulatory strategy and sales structure as one more thing that decides whether contracts are won or lost. Once one player in a value chain starts treating brand seriously, everyone else chasing the same business has to catch up, or they risk losing pitches that can’t be won on capability alone.

Is corporate brand firmly an agenda item in boardrooms?

Once brand becomes part of how a company explains itself to the market funding it, it stops being a line item that gets cut in a lean year.

The line between B2B and B2C pharma marketing is blurring. Tactics built for drugmakers chasing consumer recognition, tone of voice, personality-led media, are already travelling sideways into service businesses whose customers are other companies. A CDMO buyer is still a person scrolling a feed before a meeting, forming an impression exactly the way any other consumer does.

Capability is no longer the headline, pretty much every pharma company and everyone adjacent to it, will soon say they are the fastest and most compliant. What's left to differentiate on is tone, character, the specific way a company says the same things as everyone else. And when this is done right, it sticks in minds far easier.

Consolidation is going to speed all of this up. As businesses keep folding into bigger groups, having a distinct identity is what keeps a business unit visible inside a much bigger name. The companies putting real effort into brand now are betting that being memorable is what stops them being folded into the company that’s bought them.

If brands in this space continue to be treated as only a logo or a colour palette, they will very quickly get left behind. Brand is one of the tools businesses run on, it communicates why a company is the obvious choice when their competitors catch up. A coherent identity is what gets a business chosen when the competition looks interchangeable.

The logo's the easy part. Building a pharmaceutical brand that consistently wins is much harder. And that point has now been made loud and clear, on a podcast.

Looking to refresh your pharmaceutical brand or just sharpen your messaging? Get in touch, we’d love to chat about how to make your brand can work harder for you.