Basic instinct

In pharma communications, translating complex science into a ‘simple’ narrative is often treated as an essential skill. But finding the right kind of simplicity for the right audience is anything but simple.

Does it mean shorter sentences? Fewer technical terms? One clean message that everyone can remember? And how do we know when we have struck the elusive balance between accessibility and accuracy?

To mull over this topic, I spoke to Simone Jendsch-Dowe, who leads European oncology communications at Daiichi Sankyo, a global pharma company based in Japan. She describes her job as “making complex science understandable, relevant and meaningful without stripping away the uncertainty, nuance or limitations”.

However, she was quick to explain that, although patients, healthcare professionals and journalists need accessible information, a tidier headline should “never come at the expense of accuracy”.

Her instinct to translate – rather than oversimplify – was shaped outside of the pharma bubble. Simone’s first taste of working life was as a local newspaper intern, sent out on a scooter to meet people, ask questions and report on the stories shaping life in the town.

She went on to study American cultural history and communications while working for newspapers and radio stations, before moving into agency PR across consumer electronics, food and drink, and other fast-moving consumer sectors.

Asking the questions experts forget

She later applied for a role at Daiichi Sankyo without, by her own account, entirely knowing what she was applying for. Nearly ten years later, she has watched its European oncology business swell from just 30 people into a huge, complex and increasingly global organisation.

She has shifted gear from corporate and internal communications into product communications, which necessitated some speedy learning about treatment lines, patient populations, data milestones and that unique rhythm of a medical congress.

As she settled into her years in oncology, Simone became increasingly confident about where her strengths should be played in. She realised that, although communicators need enough scientific understanding to translate responsibly, their value does not lie in impersonating the medical expert in the room.

Their role is to ask the questions an expert may no longer think to ask: what does the data actually mean? What is genuinely new? Why should anyone care?

Senior comms leaders should make space for those questions, including the ones that feel embarrassingly basic. If a communicator cannot follow the explanation, there is a fair chance much of the intended audience will struggle too. Asking for clarity – and then asking for more – is evidence that comms is doing exactly the job it was brought in to do.

However, that all-important accuracy depends on keeping every message tied to robust evidence. Simone explained how she had become used to a consumer style of communications that aimed to create preference and influence behaviour. She needed to unlearn that very quickly in healthcare, where responsibilities are covered by professional communications codes and verbal nuance matters hugely.

Pressure to secure attention can still tempt teams to inflate an announcement beyond what the evidence supports. But words such as ‘statistically significant’ and ‘clinically relevant’ are not interchangeable decorations, and not every development is transformational.

Some are useful, encouraging or simply worth noting. Simone’s advice reminded me of a parent’s dinnertime refrain ‘if you do not have anything to say, be quiet’. It may not delight a content calendar, but audiences notice when every update is presented as a breakthrough and they eventually stop believing any of them.

Building narratives that work globally

As Daiichi Sankyo’s oncology business has grown, Simone’s role has also become more about connecting the internal dots.

When medical affairs consider the data, commercial colleagues look at the wider business, market access brings a country-by-country view and affiliates understand what will and will not land locally, it is communications that helps the organisation connect and make sense of those perspectives. Simone and her team find the stories that can hold them together and keep information moving between teams.

So, what are Simone’s words of wisdom for comms peers with ambitions of success in a multinational leadership role?

Firstly, she wants to be clear that regional comms teams cannot build an effective narrative centrally and drop it onto markets from a great height. Instead, Simone’s advice is to involve local teams early, co-create the messages and allow sensible exceptions where audiences or contexts differ.

Online consistency has become more important as AI systems increasingly draw on published content, but consistency should not be justification for copy-and-paste execution everywhere.

Secondly, Simone urges comms leaders to invest in scientific literacy but not to ask teams to masquerade as scientists. Reward the person who challenges an overclaim rather than the person who finds a shinier adjective.

Bring markets and patient-facing colleagues into the work before the narrative is fixed. Treat internal connection as a strategic communications task rather than something to be delegated. And occasionally give everyone permission not to publish something.

Finally, remember that complexity is only a communications problem when nobody has done the work to understand it.

The communicator’s craft is to learn enough, keep asking until the meaning is clear and explain it without hiding the evidence or uncertainty underneath. That requires curiosity, judgement and respect for the science – grounds for hope that AI will not be taking over our jobs any time soon.

Jess Farmery is Senior Account Director, Health at Lexington Communications