WHY BUILDING INTERNAL BELIEF IS ESSENTIAL
Brand changes are often seen as a risk during periods of political disruption and economic instability. However, in reality, this state of flux is exactly when a strong belief in your brand matters most.
In health and life sciences, where organisations are complex and constantly evolving, brand change is not about repositioning, but about building belief and returning to the core of what your organisation stands for.
When done properly, it doesn’t just enable change, but brings strength to the organisation as a whole. It means that people are grounded in clarity, confidence, and alignment, and are able to thrive.
In short, when change is happening around you, the riskiest thing a brand can do is not evolve.
How important is brand strategy to internal alignment?
Crucial, and more so than in most sectors.
In a state of confusion, to change direction is often perceived as adding to that instability. But particularly in complex organisations such as within the health and life sciences sector, clarifying your positioning and value internally can actually inspire your employees to get creative when adapting to change.
By empowering understanding, you enable your people to act with confidence and deliver what the organisation stands for. If they don’t believe in the direction you’re moving in, they can feel lost and unable to drive your mission forward.
In health and life sciences, where teams often operate in highly regulated and complex environments, this can be amplified. We’ve seen this first-hand in our recent work with organisations like Springer Health+, where brand strategy played a critical role in aligning 400 staff members across numerous brands in 17 global locations.
Why do health and life sciences struggle to build culture?
When your people don’t understand the brand’s vision or don’t feel empowered to act on it, paralysis can set in. As an agency specialising in brand strategy for health and life sciences, we often see that in a sector with so many complex moving parts, employees are stuck in a state of flux, unsure of what the shared purpose is.
During periods of change, even well-established organisations can struggle with clarity. At GSK, organisational change highlighted the need to clarify internal purpose and priorities. This was not about reinventing what the organisation stands for, but helping people navigate what had changed and what hadn’t, ultimately building confidence in its mission.
For this reason, when working with senior leadership teams, the question is rarely: “What should the brand look like?”, but rather “What do you actually want to stand for right now?”
Often, there’s a clear correlation between not being able to answer and a weak internal culture. This is where the brand strategy starts.
What does internal brand advocacy look like in life sciences?
To get the foundations right, we break down brand strategy into three guiding principles.
Comprehension that leads to clarity - does everyone understand what the organisation stands for and why? Defining a clear vision is the first step.
Uniting around a shared belief - do employees believe in the direction and feel confident as part of it?
Building a strong culture - are people empowered, aligned, and motivated behind this belief, and is it present every day?
Without these three things on side, organisational change exposes weaknesses, and even capable teams can freeze.
When is the right time to act?
From our experience working with some of the top brands across health and life sciences, one big barrier we face is brands being afraid to act without 100% of the answers right from the get-go.
Our advice? We find it’s better to launch a brand with the room to evolve.
When you launch at 80%, you also allow your audience to help shape it into something even more relevant. When you leave space for them to input, you learn how the brand operates in the real world, with the option to adapt to learnings when they come to light.
Brand as an anchor in times of flux
When culture, clarity, and belief are in place, a brand becomes more than a visual identity, rather an anchor that connects all levels of an organisation so it can remain strong in times of change.
Teams know what they are supporting, why it matters, and how their work contributes to the organisation’s mission.
Brand provides the framework to make that level of clarity possible across an organisation.
The bottom line
When you take time to build comprehension and clarity internally, your people will carry their belief in your organisation out far and wide, intuitively. This is the power of belief.
When we work with organisations to build a brand identity, what we’re really doing is building a culture people understand and believe in. A brand is an anchor in times of confusion and grounds people in a common purpose, but more so, it becomes the blueprint for the values and decisions your organisation can stand by.
Robert Grant
Date
February 2026