10 uncomfortable truths about brand and comms strategy in regulated industries

Does it ever feel like the role of strategy is, er, limited when it comes to complex or highly regulated categories, such as finance, healthcare, or pharma? And if so, how does that change the way strategists find meaning within those categories?

That’s what we discussed on our latest Salmon Crew panel. I invited crew members Bia Assevero (Founder, Klosis Consulting), Erica Martinez (Head of Strategy, Princeton10), Jon Crowley (Partner & Head of Strategy, FUSE) to talk about their experience with more regulated industries. Below is our full conversation.

Some highlights that stayed with me from this one.

Think environments not journeys

If you assume every patient journey is always the same, chances are you might miss important opportunities to stand out in your specific category. People don’t go through cancer treatment in the same way as asthma. To get to that level of nuance, it’s more effective to think about the broader emotional, physical and digital environment people go through as they make decisions towards buying a certain treatment.

Your competition is larger than you think

Brands routinely compare themselves only to direct category competitors, but customer expectations are defined by their overall experience regardless of category. So if you run a financial services app, you’re not just compared to other financial services apps, you might get compared to what it feels like to buy something through Amazon or Vinted.

Treat legal as a brand defence line

We love to demonise legal and compliance teams, except it’s our fault when we only bring them at the tail end of a project as gatekeepers. It’s much more effective to treat them as creative partners from the start, because you will know what pitfalls to avoid and help them buy into more of your thinking. It also helps if you reframe their mandate from eliminating all risk, to helping the brand defend itself if there is a challenge.

Know when it’s impossible or just hard

Teams in highly regulated industries frequently self-censor too early in the process, because they mistake a difficult problem or idea with an impossible one. If everything were easy…

Career incentives influence creative risk

Big corporations in complex categories are rarely threatened by a poor ad campaign, the actual risk aversion tends to come from more junior brand or marketing managers who are looking to safeguard their personal career progression.

Loyalty might just be inertia

In regulated categories like finance, pharma or health, brands often assume customer retention is a function of loyalty. More often than not, it’s driven by inertia and high switching costs.

Learn to productively compromise

When managing stakeholders, it’s useful to think about how conceding some things is better than being right and nothing going ahead. What matters is if the final output succeeds as a whole.

You can, and should, challenge clients and colleagues on where you think people might be assuming things, but know when it’s time to move on. Challenging once is important. Challenging twice may be necessary. Challenging three times might start pissing someone off. Keep monitoring what is the right dosage.

We should aspire to have more productive compromise, where we’re willing to concede some things while fighting over others, but there’s a natural line. If you die on every hill you alienate teams, if you don’t die on any hills you eventually only produce bland work.

There’s probably a sweet spot of 2-3 hills worth dying for.

Define the problem but also your role

The role of strategy isn’t always clear on a project, so spend far more time upfront than you assume you need determining what it should be. Sometimes there’s a gap in the audience understanding, or the brand’s messaging, or the tone of voice, or the way a brand shows up. Sometimes the role is just to protect the good stuff that already exists. Know which situation you’re in, and state it clearly.

Document like your creds depend on it

Even if clients disagree with your recommendation, state it in writing. Chances are you won’t be brought to court where this counts as evidence, but you’ll feel you’ve done a good job to the best of your abilities. The rest is outside of your control.

Forget love, just be trusted

Sometimes the job is not to get people to love a brand or product, but simply to trust it enough over the alternative. You may not love your antidepressant, but the cost of switching for a possibly better one might be too great to even consider it.

Thanks again to Bia, Erica and Jon for their excellent takes. If you want to join them in future exclusive events, join the Salmon Crew.