Is Pharma Marketing Going Through "Thinking Recession"?
A couple of weeks back, an advertising agency friend during a casual meet, told about some brand manager from a top MNC with 5 years into the role, already trained in the art of delegation without direction.
No clarity. No insight. Another agency owner told me something similar: "They ask us, 'Aap kya kar sakte ho?...' We send them a plan, and if the boss likes it, they take the credit. If not, we’re blamed." The brand manager casually throws the agency under the bus "Agency barabar nahi hai."
This is not brand management. This is brand forwarding. I have nothing against agencies nor marketers. In fact, some of my closest friends run great ones and handle big brands.
But this is not about them. This is about how pharma marketing, once driven by brand managers and sales managers, has quietly handed over the role of thinking to agencies. And no one seems to be talking about it.
Let’s Rewind 25 years
I say this not as a critic from the outside, but as someone who was once part of the inside. Back then, I was privileged to be part of probably one of the earliest healthcare agency team that introduced something fresh to Indian pharma.
The idea of brand retainerships, teaser campaigns, and AV-led product launches. I remember when we were presenting a brand launch pitch in a leading pharma company and proposed options of "teaser" series first and then launch, the marketing manager quickly exclaimed, how can you think my representative will tease a doctor. We can’t do.
We pitched simple FMCG ideas, but even a "teaser" was bold to pharma then. A couple of brave clients bought into them, did it well and tasted success. With no social media to amplify us as agency, word-of-mouth did the trick. It worked.
Soon, every other company wanted it, and doctors started getting bored of being victim of teasers is another story. Coming back, in just a few months, and over the next couple of years, agencies mushroomed.
Pharma and healthcare creative shops were everywhere. It felt like a creative revolution in pharma then. But here’s the twist.
After a point, when I moved back into pharma brand management, I got to observe from the other side of the table though I had never really relied on agencies for ideas but only have them for implementation. I and many like me, didn’t need to.
We knew what our brand needed. We had insights, hooks, consumer understanding. Agencies were brought in for execution, not ideation. We didn’t wait for a third party to tell us what our own brand should say. We built brand stories from within, and the agencies helped bring them to life.
Cut to Today
What we see now is shocking. Many brand managers can’t write a one-liner without three rounds of creative inputs from someone. People whose primary skill is forwarding PDFs and saying, "Please ideate."
What they know?
How to send emails, how to conduct status calls, how to ask for changes without a clue why.
What they don’t know?
What their brand stands for or why it exists, who the customer is, what the big emotion or pain point is, what bold idea could make a dent or mark.
Most brand managers and even senior teams don’t start with insight or strategy. They start with the question: "Which agency should we hire?".
In fact, I’ve been told by my old students and industry colleagues, that in meetings discussion is not on why a campaign is being done, but only who is doing it.
Somewhere along the way, I feel the "thinking" job is being fully outsourced. The role of the brand manager, once a strategic mind behind the brand is now reduced to a project manager passing files, working on promo-inputs as per compliance, following timelines, and giving vague briefs.
I often start my creative thinking sessions with a question and a statement. "If we banned agencies tomorrow, many pharma divisions would come to a standstill."
Why? Because we’ve built a system that no longer knows how to think from within. There are many teams or managers who haven’t given up that from their control.
Let me be blunt
The real crisis isn’t the creative fatigue or content overload in pharma. It’s the collapse of internal "brand thinking" and rise of more of some XYZ event-based thinking. This is not an attack on agencies.
The good ones are still doing phenomenal work. But even they are frustrated. Because over some weekends, when I meet agency friends, what they get from brand teams are not insights or clear directions but incomplete briefs and lazy one-liners like "Make it catchy" or "Add some emotion" and that legendary phrase after presentation "Maza nahi aya."
That’s not a brief. That’s a cry for help. Let’s face it.
Many brand managers today have never been trained in "brand thinking".
They’ve been trained in timelines, sales reports, and executional hygiene. But not in the core skill of marketing: building emotional, storytelling, strategic insights, differentiated brands.
So, what’s the result?
- Brands that look identical because the same few agencies are running the show for different brands.
- Campaigns that are event-first, style-first, colour-first, soul-last.
- Managers who fear taking bold calls unless an agency first presents it or some other company does it.
Reality Check
Even now, a good agency is like a great tailor. But if you don’t know your size, your style, or the occasion, you’ll end up wearing someone else’s suit. That’s what brand managers make agency give them. The real "thinking" isn’t "Which agency do you use?" but "What problem are you solving for the brand?"
The best brands I’ve seen weren’t built by large retainers or glossy agency presentations. They were built by brand managers who cared deeply, thought critically, and owned the brand voice. But what needs to change?
- Brand managers should be trained not just in process, but in insight writing, storytelling, consumers’ mind decoding, and sharp messaging.
- Use agencies smartly for executional excellence, visual craft, and reach. Not to think on your behalf.
- Reward ideas, not decks. Try to see the idea on a large-scale visualisation. Learn to spot the gold.
- Don’t ask who the agency is. Ask what the brand idea is?
We need to bring "brand thinking" back into the house. Because when brand managers stop thinking, they stop leading, they forget the ownership.
And when brands stop leading, they start fading. Time to build brands that come from the brain and the heart of the brand manager/marketer and not just the pitch room of the agency.
Let’s make brand managers thinkers again because, real professionals who became brand managers never give up the ownership. An agency is not your brain. It is your hands, and the greatest brand building doesn’t start with a retainer.
It starts with a restless mind. Let’s bring that restlessness back.
