Marketing is all about speaking to people and making them listen and learn about your brand and product. This will be only possible if you are speaking like a real person rather than a robot with automated responses. The masters of this should be healthcare and pharmaceutical brands, which are literally the most ethical of all sectors, but they are not. Too frequently, technology firms like Google are somehow “out-humanized by multinational healthcare and pharmaceutical companies charged with saving or improving the quality of life for millions of people. These large tech firms are communicating, expressing themselves, and behaving in ways that are far more human than many of the major brands in health and wellness. And so, they succeed with their brands and their reputations rise. So what is it about big brands like Google that makes them the best? The answer is simple, Empathy. They understand people and communicate with them in a way that good-well reputed companies lack these days. Empathy in healthcare and pharma is something that is rare, as sales reps and healthcare providers are often chasing targets to pay attention to whether their message has been received properly or not.  

The pandemic has given brands, including pharmaceutical brands, the opportunity to demonstrate emotional empathy by reacting with consistent demonstrations of treatment to the need for trust and confidence. Never has the strength of emotional communication been clearer. Pharmaceutical brands will need to accept the growing evidence base of human science behind understanding emotions to capitalize on the potential, and they will have to invest in growing their expertise.

If a healthcare corporation is much more focused on how a drug or medical product is separated from what it really does and how it relates to a treatment system that better supports people, even when the end result is countless lives saved, you end up seeming like you lack empathy. That’s the lesson now learned by the industry, and solving it means behaving in more human ways and communicating better the meaning and intent of these brands that are so important to our societies.

For too long, images and advertisements that reflect a dated understanding of the patients they represent, such as pinks and purples for women-focused products, have been trafficked by some healthcare and pharmaceutical firms, as if those familiar clichés make you feel like an empowered superwoman. If this industry wishes to be seen as genuinely “patient-first,” it needs to participate rapidly in the work of truly knowing patients and the dynamic world in which they live that means including empathy in healthcare and pharma. Branding and branding should lead the way by helping these businesses represent a more straightforward reality when engaging with a more genuine and human voice.