Home / Intelligence / Blog / Are Pharma Brands Really Transformational?
Published February 5, 2025
How can pharma brands connect digital marketing experiences to achieve truly transformational customer engagement?
Brands that are leading the way demonstrate a complete grasp of fundamental digital marketing concepts and drive innovation in the ways that they engage customers. These brands maintain consistency in their message and interactions but tailor them to customer specific needs—and the innovation differentiates them in a market where many brands follow similar go-to-market strategies.
By exploring new ways of engagement in existing channels, they create unique, memorable customer experiences.
How are brands evolving their digital customer interactions?
The 2024 TGaS Digital Marketing Competency Report measures how brands are rapidly evolving their interactions with customers online. The report examined 150+ brands across 100 characteristics and found:
AI adoption is becoming a reality.
Chatbots powered by AI are now widely used across the industry.
Simpler, more patient-friendly language is gaining traction.
60% of “About” product pages are written at or below a 7th-grade reading level, up from just 2% in 2021.
Brands are diversifying their social media presence.
76% of brands now use 3+ social media channels, compared to 36% in 2021.
Telehealth takes center stage.
Lilly and Pfizer launched LillyDirect and PfizerforAll to centralize telehealth services, leading to overall higher utilization as an industry.
Increased support for Spanish-speaking patients.
A 200% increase in websites offering Spanish translations reflects a greater focus on accessibility for U.S. patients.
How do some brands rise above the others?
| Rank | Position Change | Brand | Total Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | Breztri AstraZeneca | 2.97 |
| 1 | N/A | Nurtec Pfizer | 2.97 |
| 3 | | Slynd Exeltis | 2.96 |
| 4 | | Opzelura Incyte | 2.94 |
| 5 |  | Hemlibra Genentech | 2.90 |
| 5 | | Vraylar AbbVie | 2.90 |
The truth is not all brands excel in all areas. Transformational brands seek to disrupt the market through innovation and enterprise capabilities. Pfizer has led the study for the past two years, but in 2024, it is tied for first place with Breztri as the industry as a whole closed the gap. Pfizer has consistently demonstrated executional excellence across all channels and is always pushing boundaries whether its unique data integrations personalizing media or creating influencer campaigns that are in-line with ex-industry consumer brands. In 2024, more brands are bringing the same focus to their experience, helping to elevate the overall industry.
Behind the Insights: How the Report Was Built
The 2024 Digital Marketing Competency Report provides an in-depth analysis of over 150 pharmaceutical brands, assessing their digital marketing capabilities across 100+ characteristics. The rankings place brands on a spectrum from Transformational to Novice.
The characteristics were broken across five main categories, each weighed individually with their respective category
- Website
- SEO
- Paid Search
- Social Media
- Paid Media
With four years of data, the report not only uncovers trends that showcase the industry’s growth and adoption of specific marketing channels but also provides cross-analysis to reveal how factors like revenue, budget, and time-in-market influenced performance.
How to Access the Report?
The study excerpt and complete list of brand rankings are available here.
The full report is limited to TGaS Omnichannel Solution members or available for purchase. For more information about the full report, please email Jerry, Tim or schedule a meeting.
Innovation—and connection—is key.
The innovations that drive transformational customer engagement range across the tactics chosen, the content created and the technology that powers digital marketing programs.
But customer-centered innovation without connection to continually refined, enterprise-level data may fall flat. (See our recent blog Foundational Differentiation: CE Requires Efficient Operationalization of Data for more.)
Data operationalization enables targeted, nuanced insights to drive the type of innovation that differentiates brands.
Authors: Jerry Luciano & Tim McLaughlin
This blog is part of the One Chapter Ahead blog series, a Customer Engagement-focused thought leadership initiative to bring an informed, inspired point of view. Our intent is to bring a fresh perspective, driven by data, benchmarks, insights and expertise.
Other blog posts in this series:
- What Does “Good” Look Like in Customer Engagement?
- Get Ready to Orchestrate a Better Customer Experience
- Integrated Data + Hyper-local + Cross‑channel = Customer Engagement
- Foundational Differentiation: CE Requires Efficient Operationalization of Data
- Key Takeaways and Learnings from HLTH 2024
- Is Medical Omnichannel Poised for Growth?
- Culture and Collaboration: Keys to Customer Engagement Success
- Medical Affairs Customer Engagement: What’s Next?
- The Evolution of CRM in Life Sciences: Navigating the Split
Have a question? Reach out to our experts.
Ask Us A Question | Schedule A Meeting | info@trinitylifesciences.com
Explore Trinity Customer Engagement | www.trinitylifesciences.com
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