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Imagine a life-saving or life-transforming medication, backed by groundbreaking science and years of painstaking development, failing to make an impact in the market—not because it doesn't work, but because stakeholders don’t understand its value. In the pharmaceutical industry, where the stakes are high, the difference between a product thriving, languishing, or vanishing often lies not in its efficacy, but in its positioning.
How does an innovative new product cut through the clutter in a competitive, highly regulated marketplace and communicate its value with clarity, relevance, and impact?
It is essential that new products, even those that are truly breakthrough, have an effective pharmaceutical brand positioning statement—a task that marries the precision of advanced science and clinical evidence with the creativity and art of storytelling. It is not merely a marketing exercise but a strategic imperative, shaping how health care providers (HCPs), patients, caregivers, advocates, and payers perceive and adopt a new treatment.
In this essay, we will explore the core principles, challenges, and best practices for systematically shaping a positioning statement that resonates with diverse stakeholders, empowers prescribers, and ultimately fulfills its promise to improve lives.
At its core, a pharmaceutical brand positioning statement is far more than a tagline, advertisement or salesperson’s pitch—it is the backbone of a product’s identity. It serves as a compass, guiding all communication and engagement strategies to ensure the product resonates with its target stakeholders. The most effective positioning statements achieve an intricate balance: they are rooted in the scientific evidence that validates the product’s efficacy and safety, while also addressing the emotional and practical needs of the end user. This duality is critical, as today’s complex and cluttered healthcare landscape demands not only innovation but also relevance, accessibility, empathy, and trust.
Without a formidable positioning statement, even the most promising drug risks being misunderstood, undervalued, or overshadowed by competitors.
Merck’s blockbuster Keytruda is an example of what success looks like. Keytruda is positioned as a transformative therapy that harnesses the power of peoples’ immune systems to fight their cancer, and, in doing so, providing hope to patients and their loved ones through extended survival and quality of life. Keytruda stands out as a first-in-class treatment with an innovative mechanism that works across multiple tumor types by targeting immune checkpoints and enabling the individuals’ immune systems to attack tumors. Through data-driven leadership, Merck has established Keytruda as a cornerstone that can be used as a stand-alone or in combination with other anti-cancer treatments. It’s currently the top selling drug worldwide.
While assiduous customer-centric brand building can yield a success story like Keytruda, the path to crafting such a statement is fraught with challenges and pitfalls. Unlike the world of consumer packaged goods, where brand positioning can lean heavily on emotional appeal and where there is greater creative latitude, pharmaceutical marketing operates within stringent regulatory guardrails. Every claim must be substantiated, every word is scrutinized for compliance, and every benefit weighed against potential risks.
Moreover, pharmaceutical marketers must navigate the complex matrix of stakeholders, each with distinct needs, beliefs and perspectives. For example, an HCP may prioritize clinical data and/or mechanistic qualities, while a patient might seek assurance of improved quality of life, and payers might focus on impact to their cost structure. Encompassing these diverse priorities in a single, concise statement is a formidable task—but when done well, it has the power to transform a drug from an unknown entity into a trusted solution, and ultimately a routine customer habit.
A conventional misconception about a pharmaceutical brand positioning statement is that it serves as an outward-facing marketing slogan. In reality, the positioning statement is an internal beacon guiding the strategic direction of all branding, messaging, and customer engagement efforts. It acts as the foundational blueprint that aligns the organization—from marketing teams to sales representatives and beyond—around a unified understanding of the product’s purpose, benefits, and differentiators. Unlike the public-facing tagline or advertising campaign, which can be adapted to different segments, audiences or regions, the positioning statement remains singular and steadfast, ensuring consistency and clarity in how the brand is communicated both internally and externally.
At its heart, the positioning statement is a mission statement for the brand. It succinctly answers the critical questions: Who are we serving? What problem are we solving? Why are we the best solution? By anchoring these answers in a singular, focused declaration, the statement ensures that all communications reflect the product's core value proposition.
For pharmaceutical brands, this internal mission statement must be scientifically grounded, carefully balanced, and strategically crafted to resonate with diverse stakeholders while simultaneously adhering to regulatory guidelines. When the internal alignment around the positioning statement is robust, it cascades into effective marketing strategies, authentic patient engagement, and credible, persuasive stakeholder communication. In this way, the positioning statement serves as the engine driving the brand’s success.
Before diving into the development of a positioning statement, pharmaceutical brand teams and their agency partners must first conduct thorough "pre-positioning" work—a step that is often omitted or conducted hastily, but which is essential to success. This phase involves the exploration of the current situation, unmet medical or other needs, behaviors and habits, and the explicit and implicit psychological drivers influencing behavior.
Skipping this foundational work can lead to positioning statements that are misaligned with market realities, leaving potential customers confused or indifferent. For example, without understanding the real barriers that prevent HCPs from achieving their optimal outcome in a specific therapeutic area, or the emotional concerns of patients navigating a diagnosis, a brand risks crafting a message that fails to resonate with its intended audiences.
The pre-positioning phase should center on gathering insights from key stakeholders—patients, HCPs, and payers—aimed at deeply understanding their needs, their decision-making processes, their pain points, and their priorities. Robust market research, including qualitative interviews, quantitative surveys, and competitive analysis, can reveal critical insights into customer psychology and behaviors. By understanding not just what stakeholders say they want, but also the deeper motivations behind those needs, brand teams can start envisioning a positioning framework that resonates on a more meaningful level.
Failure to engage in this step often leads to positioning that is either too generic to stand out or too focused on the product itself, rather than addressing the true needs of the audience.
The development of a brand's positioning starts with a brainstorming session, where the pharmaceutical brand team and its agency partners collaborate to generate hypothesized positioning concepts. These concepts – which are referred to as “territories” -- represent broad strategic directions and possibilities that encapsulate potential ways to position the product in the market. Besides pre-positioning, other marketing research study results that can be brought to bear in this brainstorming initiative include customer journey, segmentation, market landscape, and target profile testing (drivers and barriers to adoption).
Building upon insights from the pre-positioning phase and other studies, the team weighs different combinations of customer needs, product attributes, emotional benefits, and competitive gaps. Each hypothesized territory ideally should articulate a distinct angle, such as clinical superiority, patient empowerment, ease of use, or economic value. The goal is to create a diverse and differentiated array of options that explore various facets of the product's potential identity, each with a unique focus that could address different market needs.
Typically, positioning territories are often structured in a "premise / promise / proof" format to ensure clarity and strategic alignment.
Once these hypothesized territories are defined, they should undergo rigorous qualitative testing to assess their resonance and relevance with stakeholders. In-depth interviews with HCPs, patients, and payers provide a data collection vehicle for feedback on the emotional and practical appeal of each concept. This qualitative research helps to identify the language and tone that stakeholders find compelling, as well as any unintended interpretations or emotional reactions. Importantly, this phase reveals whether the territories feel relevant and authentic while also surfacing insights into which territories align best with the stakeholders’ psychological drivers and decision-making processes.
After refining the territories based on qualitative feedback, a potential next step often is quantitative testing to verify which positioning concept offers the greatest potential to drive behavior change. Through quantitative survey techniques, brand teams can measure the appeal, differentiation, and actionability of each territory at scale. Quantitative methods allow teams to evaluate how well each positioning resonates across diverse demographic and professional segments, ensuring that the chosen direction will have broad market impact.
The winning territory is the one that scores highest in three critical dimensions:
This customer-first, data-driven approach ensures that the final positioning statement is not just creative but also scientifically validated for its strategic effectiveness.
Customer Driven Positioning (CDP) is a qualitative research methodology pioneered by ThinkGen to integrally involve stakeholders in shaping the optimal positioning for a pharmaceutical brand. By breaking the positioning statement up into its core constituents—premise, proof, and promise—this approach allows respondents to independently evaluate and select the elements that resonate most with their needs and priorities.
The methodology ensures a focused exploration of each component, starting with the premise, or the contextual problems the product seeks to address. Interview respondents review a range of potential premise statements, offering insight into which needs or challenges they find most relevant and compelling. This step ensures that the foundation of the positioning resonates authentically with the target audiences.
The second phase of the CDP process introduces the proof elements, which remain static across all iterations of the positioning. Proof points typically consist of clinical data, safety profiles, real-world outcomes, or other evidence that reinforce the brand's credibility. By evaluating the proof in isolation, respondents confirm whether it sufficiently buttresses the proposed positioning without being swayed by broader messaging. This step is critical in ensuring that the foundation of the brand is scientifically robust and trustworthy, regardless of how aspirational or emotionally charged the promise may later become. Respondents’ feedback during this phase also helps highlight any potential gaps in data or perceived credibility issues that may need to be addressed.
Finally, respondents examine the promise element options, which crystallize the aspirational mission of the brand and its unique value proposition. By saving the promise for last, CDP ensures that stakeholders first anchor their perceptions in the reality of the problem (premise) and the product’s substantiation (proof). This sequential evaluation helps respondents select a promise that aligns with the premise while being bolstered by the proof.
Once all components are reviewed, the ThinkGen research team synthesizes respondents’ feedback to identify the optimal combination of premise and promise that resonates most strongly with target audience(s). This approach ensures that the recommended positioning statement reflects both the aspirational mission of the brand and the practical needs of the customer, resulting in a message that is relevant, credible, and transformational.
ThinkGen’s CDP offers a significant advantage over traditional approaches by nullifying a major challenge in the evaluation process: respondents often struggle to assess a multi-faceted positioning statement that bundles premise, proof, and promise into a single concept. When presented with an all-encompassing statement, research respondents can become overwhelmed or conflicted, finding it difficult to articulate which elements resonate or fall short. This can lead to feedback that is unclear, inconsistent, or biased by the strongest or weakest aspect of the bundle. By isolating and sequencing each component – premise, then proof, then promise – CDP ensures that respondents can focus on and provide thoughtful input for each element individually. This approach not only generates richer, more actionable insights but also results in a positioning framework that is more precisely aligned with customer needs, making it a superior methodology for crafting impactful and resonant pharmaceutical brand positioning.
Once the qualitative and quantitative research phases are complete, the team should reconvene for a focused strategic session to synthesize the findings and finalize the brand's positioning statement. This meeting is more than a review of data—it’s a pivotal moment to balance the voice of the customer with the overarching business objectives and marketing strategy.
While primary marketing research can provide invaluable insights into customer psychology and preferences, the leadership team must also weigh other factors, such as competitive dynamics, the product’s long-term potential, portfolio considerations, and alignment with the company’s broader vision. The task is to distill the collective input into a cohesive, impactful statement that not only reflects customer needs but also positions the brand for sustainable, enduring differentiation and success in the marketplace.
As a framework for building an internal positioning statement, companies traditionally utilize a 5-box structure:
At this stage, it’s essential to remember that brand positioning is ultimately a strategic choice, requiring brand and corporate leadership to make deliberate decisions about how the brand will present itself and compete. The team must weigh the implications of each potential positioning direction—considering not just how well it resonates with the target audience, but also how it aligns with the brand's core strengths, regulatory constraints, and future growth opportunities. This process often involves healthy debate and critical evaluation of trade-offs, ensuring the final positioning achieves the optimal balance between customer-driven insights and strategic priorities.
When done well, the result is a positioning statement that serves as both a rallying cry for the organization and a guiding light for all future branding and communication efforts.
As a major industry trend that is accelerating as we head into 2025, artificial intelligence (AI) has significant potential to revolutionize the pharmaceutical brand positioning process by bringing unprecedented speed, precision, and depth to decision-making. AI-powered analytic tools can scrutinize vast amounts of data from diverse sources—ranging from patient and physician feedback to market trends and competitor analysis—to uncover nuanced insights that might otherwise go unnoticed.
As an example, natural language processing (NLP) algorithms can mine qualitative research transcripts to identify recurring themes and emotional drivers, while machine learning models can predict which positioning elements are most likely to resonate based on historical data. By leveraging AI, pharmaceutical marketers can move beyond traditional methods to create more data-driven and evidence-based positioning statements that are not only compelling but also aligned with evolving customer needs and market dynamics.
However, while AI can undoubtedly elevate the process of analyzing vast quantities of data, it should complement, not replace, the human element in pharmaceutical brand positioning. The art of crafting a positioning statement always requires empathy, creativity, and strategic judgment—qualities that algorithms cannot replicate. AI tools can provide insights and test hypotheses, but they lack the ability to navigate the subjective, aspirational aspects of brand identity that ultimately connect with human stakeholders.
Additionally, AI must be carefully deployed to ensure compliance with regulatory guidelines and avoid over-reliance on predictive analytics that might lead to generic or overly mechanical, and impersonal, outcomes. When used as a tool to enhance the rigor and depth of the process, rather than a substitute for human insight, AI has the potential to help pharmaceutical marketers develop positioning statements that are not only differentiated but also deeply aligned with the customer voice and the strategic vision of the brand.
In the competitive and highly regulated world of pharmaceutical marketing, effective brand positioning is not just a tool for differentiation—it is the foundation for a product’s success. A well-crafted positioning statement serves as the strategic anchor that aligns internal teams, guides external communications, and ensures the product is perceived as relevant, credible, and transformative. It helps HCPs understand why they should prescribe, assures patients of the product’s value, and persuades payers to invest in access.
Without strong positioning, even the most innovative drugs risk being overlooked or misunderstood in a marketplace where there is almost always a pre-existing solution. This underscores the vital role that positioning plays in connecting science and strategy to real-world impact.
A rigorous, customer-first process is essential to achieve a positioning statement that resonates deeply and drives action. By prioritizing the voice of the customer throughout the research process, pharmaceutical brand teams can identify unmet needs, uncover deep psychological drivers, and craft messaging that truly speaks to their audience. Traditional methods, which often bundle complex elements of positioning into a single concept for evaluation, risk alienating respondents or failing to capture nuanced feedback. Instead, a methodical, step-by-step approach ensures that each aspect of the positioning—premise, proof, and promise—is thoroughly validated and optimized. This customer-driven rigor not only increases the likelihood of success but also fosters trust and credibility with stakeholders.
ThinkGen's CDP represents a decision science breakthrough that permits respondents to play a more empowered and integral role in shaping a brand’s identity. By isolating and sequentially evaluating the components of the positioning statement, this approach generates clearer, more actionable insights, while giving respondents the opportunity to prioritize what matters most to them. The result is a positioning statement that is not only customer-informed but also strategically aligned with the brand’s long-term goals. In a field where the stakes are high, the products are not easily understood, and the audience diverse with different needs, this disciplined yet flexible approach ensures that every word of the positioning statement is crafted with purpose, ultimately driving the success of the pharmaceutical brand in both the market and in improving patient lives.
