Discovering a Hidden Story in Pharmaceutical Regulatory Information

Recently, Afiniti were asked to work on an overarching portfolio of initiatives and strategies that work to transform how regulatory information is delivered to accelerate global approvals and provide medicines to patients faster. It is complex, with many conflicting and duplicating initiatives feeding into it. Its strategy works towards building a future state of sustainable and seamless delivery of more patient benefit with a single submission process, built on a technology enabled real-time landscape. This not only encompasses a diverse and complex set of stakeholders, but also global health authorities and the patient.

Due to its complexity and future focus, Afiniti were approached to evolve the positioning / presentation and its strategy out to the wider stakeholder community. This would include co-creating an engagement story and visual theme, with accompanying templates and icons to be used by the wider core team on their various workstreams. In addition, Afiniti would be supporting on ad-hoc creative and communication support to maintain momentum after the initial identity and narrative are launched.

During initial discussions, it soon became apparent that there were challenges to not only how the story was going to be articulated and presented, but also concerning what each member of the core team required to align to their individual workstreams against a backdrop of complexity and organisational change.

Afiniti therefore proposed that we conduct informal workshops with each of the core members to help streamline and gather the correct information to ‘find the story’. The interviews were recorded and analysed to form the basis of the narrative and used to inspire the ‘visual identity’. It was a fundamental part of the Afiniti approach to work collaboratively and closely with all the core team members so that they felt involved and heard throughout the process. This would help to secure their support for the finalised story and identity, but more importantly, encourage them to take the engagement story and use it to cascade the change messaging and asks across their own stakeholders.

We also ran several sprint sessions with the core team to create the Key Message Framework which would act to align the change messaging and the purpose. Alongside this, Afiniti provided several visual identity concepts to support the narrative and set the project apart across the organisation while also demonstrating the complexity and future focus, without overwhelming the audience. The visual identity supported the organisations branding and would be used across materials and channels so that this project would have the maximum impact throughout their future communications. We then developed a set of icons and templates for the team to use, making sure that they were customisable and fit for purpose.

Through a 360-feedback approach across the core team, Afiniti co-created the engagement narrative in full, which was to be used in presentations and workshops during the roll out. The complex nature was simplified and broken down to provide a no-one size fits all approach, where elements of the strategy that were relevant could be used when needed.

By using an in-depth and analytical approach to creating the story and visual identity, Afiniti were able to harness the power of the wider team’s knowledge and deliver a narrative that excites and engages while also being adaptable to different stakeholder groups and audiences. The visual identity grew to support different stages of the strategy so that the team are now able to use a ‘pick and choose’ package approach with the materials and narrative, adapting to their individual workstreams.

The story and visual identity are being used widely across the entire regulatory function, helping employees within regulatory to understand how their work impacts the strategy and what they can do to contribute to the organisation’s future.