Hi,

Our Q1 masterclass explored what it means for biopharma communicators to show up fully as strategic partners, focusing on how we understand the business, structure our work, and make our impact more visible.

Andrea Johnston led the session, bringing a builder’s perspective shaped by 30+ years across corporate, agency, and entrepreneurship (including one of the OG firms in our industry, Pure Communications).

Here are 10 takeaways that stood out:

1. Understand the economics of your clients' or company's world. Familiarity with funding dynamics, payer pressures, and revenue models helps communicators anticipate when messaging strategy needs to shift and why.
2. Know your clients' or stakeholders' business as well as your own. Understanding their path to value creation — fundraising milestones, regulatory events, commercial launches — makes communications counsel more relevant at every stage.
3. Make strategic counsel visible. Aligning disparate functions around shared messaging and anticipating leadership needs before they're voiced are among the highest-value contributions communicators make, and worth naming explicitly.
4. Map your cross-functional relationships before you need them. Proactively understanding the pressure points of R&D, HR, finance, and legal puts corporate affairs in a more genuinely strategic position when issues arise, regardless of company stage or size.
5. Ask specific questions to surface real feedback. It's worth remembering that general check-ins tend to generate general reassurance; pointed questions about what's working and where the pressure is tend to surface what actually matters, with clients, agencies, and internal teams alike.
6. Productize your services, even if you're in-house. Packaging comms capabilities into defined offerings helps less familiar stakeholders understand and buy in, regardless of whether anything is being sold externally.
7. Distinguish value-based pricing from project pricing. Project fees are scoped around deliverables; value-based pricing (what Andrea sees as the future!) reflects the impact of the work itself on brand perception, investor confidence, or a critical audience moment.
8. Scenario plan for your own function, not just your programs. Communicators are skilled at planning for pipeline milestones and product launches; applying that same rigor to staffing, capabilities, and team structure is equally valuable.
9. Return to the plan when things go sideways. Checking actual progress against original goals and adjusting when needed keeps programs and practices from quietly drifting off course.
10. Cultivate your network as a strategic resource. A trusted circle of peers provides the kind of candid, off-the-record perspective that helps communicators navigate ambiguity and spot what's coming, whether you're building a practice or leading a team in-house.

And, if you missed the session (or want a second pass), the replay and Andrea’s slides are available here. I particularly found the discourse around project- vs. value-based pricing (#7 above) intriguing and on-point as our profession evolves.

Together, these points paint a clearer picture of where the role is heading, and where expectations are already shifting within our industry. A big thank you to Andrea for sharing so-many well-earned insights!

We already have the Q2 masterclass cooking – stay tuned!

Lynnea

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