The Disconnect to Address in 2025

In the constant stream of LinkedIn posts wrapping up 2024, one caught my attention from Paul Argenti, a frequent commentator and professor of corporate communications at Tuck.

He posits that PR and perhaps comms more broadly remain stuck in the 1950s, saying “There’s a disconnect between communicators’ presence at the leadership table and their actual impact on decision-making,” which has been an issue as long as I can remember.

And, well, Argenti says that this was noted nearly seven decades ago and that not much has changed.

Honestly, that’s been my own experience and what I’ve heard anecdotally across our community.

Why, then, are we seeing all these reports that trumpet our profession’s success?

Reports with headlines like: “CCO+ roles are rising,” “More comms executives are reporting into CEOs than years past,” or CCOs are “leveraging close alignment with CEOs to influence strategy, manage reputational risks, and build trust.”

Researcher and consultant Stephen Waddington has a theory: Industry guard dogs “protect and defend boundaries, maintaining the status quo,” rather than challenging it. He says there’s a difference between acting on BEHALF of management and as PART of management.

To be clear, I’m not calling all these positive reports fake news.

Rather, I’m saying that as communicators, particularly in healthcare and life sciences, it’s incumbent upon us to bring together these one-off hard-truths I see here and there across platforms like LinkedIn, and to reframe the conversation.

The good news is this year we’ve seen a noticeable shift toward community-driven professional growth.

I believe that niche communities like Ticket to Biotech are the wave of the future.

These spaces that provide a variety of access points to enrich your career or your relationships however you see fit are where we’re going to have those productive, but hard, conversations.

My hope is that for my last video a year from now, in 2025, maybe I’ll have even more good progress to report!

Taking My Own Medicine (In a Good Way)

I’ve been looking back on how far we – this whole community – has come and coalesced this year, and while I’m not sharing some notable stats right now (that’ll come soon, I promise),I wanted to talk about both why and how it’s been possible.

So, what’s the big secret?

I’ve been doing all the things for myself and this community that we as communicators recommend as best practices for our clients and companies!

As someone who’s used to being behind the scenes, like a lot of you are, this has been a monumental shift and admittedly, is still a work in progress.

I still have to pause and take a deep breath before every single one of these weekly videos!

To get to the “why” we’ve been successful, it’s because we defined our mission up front and have stuck to that no matter what.

From day 1, Ticket to Biotech has been here to cultivate conversations and connections for biopharma communicators.

But “how” we’ve done that this year has undergone metamorphoses many times over.

Because all of you have been so generous with your time, your positive energy, your candid feedback, and you’ve taken a leap of faith to support our grand vision, you’ve enabled me to stay agile and pivot constantly – all while staying true to what we’re here to do.

Together, we’ve done what this industry does best: experiment, scrutinize the results, take what we learned, and try again until there’s proof of concept.

The magic that’s happened as a result of all these efforts is rooted in your trust in me and this community. Thank you.

The Biopharma Communicator’s Problem Statement

At a holiday networking event last week, someone doggedly kept asking me what problem I’m solving with our community.

I’ve always seen an OPPORTUNITY with T2B, but this line of questioning made me reconsider whether we are in fact a solution to a problem.

We all know that what we do as communicators in THIS industry is so unique and complicated and highly specialized.

We also know in our heart of hearts that we can have a huge impact on our individual clients and companies.

But have you thought about how much we as an industry are holding ourselves back with the current conservative, siloed structure?

To put a finer point on it, I suppose the problem statement here is a future WITHOUT any changes to the status quo across our profession.

Ask yourself this: What’s the point of all of our colleagues’ tireless hours in the lab, painstaking study designs, negotiating with regulators – all of it – if the people who need to know about this work don’t know about it or understand it?

Or worse, what if these medical advances of the future are acknowledged but then rejected?

Honestly, in my opinion, none of it matters if we’re not reaching the people who are meant to receive these updates and making a lasting impression in their hearts and minds.

With an uncertain political environment, mis-, dis-, and mal-information lurking in every corner, the beginnings of unprecedented technological shifts with AI, and a huge trust problem with our industry, we can’t afford NOT to challenge the status quo.

T2B’s mission from day 1 has been to create community by cultivating connections and conversations.

We’re constantly listening to all kinds of biopharma communicators and evolving HOW we create those opportunities, but with over 750 members, the need is apparent and the movement is real.

So, I challenge you to think bigger than maybe you have in the past.

What can YOU do to change the course of storytelling in human health, and how can we help you do that?

Social Impact as an Employee Engagement Strategy

We heard from Sarah MacDonald last week that part of the value of community impact initiatives lies in the opportunity to connect employees with our companies’ and clients’ mission in another way.

We’ve all seen stats similar to this one published in Forbes last year: Three-quarters of US survey respondents indicated they want to work for a company that is trying to have a positive impact on the world.

Even in our industry, as we’ve discussed here at T2B, making medicines is only a piece of that purpose-driven work we so often speak about.

Whether you’re supporting team outings centered around community service, clothing and food drives, or care kit assemblies for patients at local hospitals, as communicators, we have a responsibility to also incorporate this work into our companies’ and clients’ narratives:

It’s not enough to have C-suite support for your initiative. Work with the executive assistants to have all your leaders actively participate.

Regardless if your org has a formal corporate social responsibility program, don’t leave impact initiatives only to your HR and corporate affairs teams. Internal promotion starts at the top, but as Sarah reminded us, it needs to be in line with the leadership team’s expectations and priorities.

Assign your org’s leaders responsibilities, even if that means simply showing up and being engaged. Be clear about their role in the context of any planned activities.

Capture and celebrate with your org the impact your initiatives have, and talk with employees about how you’re going to continue building on that moving forward.

Incorporate the work you’re doing in your communities into your actual communications materials, whether that’s social media, corporate website, intranet or digital signage.

Take advantage of the long shelf life of this work by partnering with your People & Culture and HR teams on how to weave it into talent branding and onboarding resources.

Tell us how you’ve successfully engaged your companies and clients at all levels of the org to engender even greater commitment to living our values and working toward our mission.

Extending Industry Impact

Everyone we know in the life sciences is here because they want to make a difference, improve people’s health, improve lives.

Although most orgs’ missions focus on that, there are plenty of other complementary opportunities to extend our impact.

Look at how to elevate corporate values beyond the nice posters in the hallway. Assess which causes can help you walk the talk and meet stakeholder priorities.

Whether you’re an office of 5 or 50,000, your org is operating in at least one location. In all likelihood, each location was carefully selected for the support it offers the business. Think about how your org can embed itself in the local ecosystem and what you uniquely can contribute to ensure its long-term sustainability.

Consider your current talent pool and what the gaps are. Determine how you can support preparedness for a robust talent pipeline well into the future.

Diversity is critical, full-stop, but research also shows that diversity is good for business. Although many companies are making strides in the right direction, very few, if any, can say that they’ve achieved gender parity. Keep taking that hard look in the mirror and challenging yourself to build infrastructure that facilitates all kinds of diversity and at all levels, from the boardroom to the bench.

There’s much to be said about DEI and broader impact issues like health equity, but we’ll leave you with another actionable nugget that’s applicable, regardless if you’re just entering the clinic or are an industry behemoth: Be proactive about running diverse clinical trials that as closely as possible reflect the actual target patient population makeup.

This list here comprises only a few of the many ways we can amplify the good work we in biopharma do every day.

What are you doing to seize the opportunity to achieve greater good, and as communicators, how can we support these efforts?