1. The Pressure Is Real And Getting Harder To Ignore

Pharma brand managers have always operated under pressure. But the nature of that pressure has shifted in ways that matter. 

The urgency extends well beyond the marketing organization. Over the next five years, the pharmaceutical industry faces one of the largest waves of loss-of-exclusivity (LOE) in its history, requiring companies to replace hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue as blockbuster brands lose patent protection. At the same time, launch timelines continue to compress while payer expectations, pricing pressures, and evidence requirements continue to rise.

Brand teams are being asked to deliver more impact, in less time, with greater accountability than ever before. Success is no longer measured by field readiness or campaign delivery alone. Commercial teams are increasingly expected to identify new sources of growth, uncover actionable customer insights, and demonstrate measurable commercial impact. 

The boardroom conversation has changed. According to the fifth annual Boathouse CEO Study, published in early 2026 and drawing on responses from 150 CEOs of major U.S. companies, the share of CEOs who view marketing as a profit center dropped from 65% to just 40% in a single year.¹ Marketing is not becoming less important. It is being asked to demonstrate measurable commercial impact with greater precision than ever before. That view shapes budgets, timelines, and the tolerance for investment without demonstrable return. 

For pharma brand managers, this translates directly into day-to-day reality. Investment decisions are more scrutinized. Timelines are compressed. The expectation is not just that campaigns perform – it’s that they perform in ways that can be clearly measured, attributed, and defended. In this environment, marketing fundamentals matter more, not less. Understanding customers, uncovering new opportunities for growth, and translating insight into measurable action have become strategic capabilities. 

At the same time, the commercial landscape has grown more complex. More channels, more stakeholders, more regulatory constraints, and more data than most teams know how to use effectively. The playbooks that worked five years ago are straining under the weight of what the market now requires. 

From Customer Behavior to Customer Intent
One of the biggest opportunities for commercial organizations is to move beyond reacting to customer behaviors and begin understanding customer intent. Right now, brands heavily focus on touchpoint behaviors and market share. We see an HCP clicks on a safety link, attends a webinar on adverse event management, and downloads a dosing guide, and we treat these as isolated digital signals – triggering reactive campaigns with more content journeys to chase them.  

Instead, by unifying these signals through data and behavioral science, we can decode a physician’s underlying treatment intent. For example, we can identify whether an HCP is an “Aggressive Intervener” (prioritizing maximum efficacy and impact) or a “Patient Partner” (focusing on balancing efficacy and tolerability). 

Including customer intent within segmentation allows the commercial strategy to truly scale. Rather than managing a thousand complex, reactive data triggers, the product-market fit becomes instantly clear.  For the “Patient Partner,” every message across the web, peer-to-peer, and field execution seamlessly pivots to shared decision-making tools and patient outcomes. We drive appropriate engagement and prescribing behaviors proactively because we are aligning with how they naturally practice medicine – making each touchpoint more memorable and strengthening their experience with the brand.

3. The Root Cause: The In-Quarter Performance Trap

Commercialization has become fundamentally multidimensional. Clinical evidence, stakeholder behavior, market access, positioning, communication, and data continuously shape one another. Yet, the intense pressure to deliver immediate, in-quarter commercial performance frequently forces organizations to deploy localized, near-term solutions that cannot fully address a complex market. 

The execution gap emerges not from a lack of vision, but from an operational system that forces a trade-off between immediate velocity and long-term brand health. 

To bridge the execution gap, the commercial strategy must shift from reacting to trailing behaviors to scaling against foundational customer intent. Uncovering why a customer intends to practice medicine a certain way provides a universal blueprint that automatically drives appropriate behaviors across every channel. Once this foundational treatment intent is uncovered, we can create more unified messaging and operational efficiency. 

By focusing the commercial infrastructure on decoding and scaling against customer intent, we relieve the operational burden on the brand team.  A more complete approach integrates three complementary dimensions: medical science, behavioral science, and data science.  Together, these provide a richer understanding of what is clinically true, how stakeholders actually make decisions, and the patterns shaping the market. 

Consider what happens when a campaign is built on data and clinical grounding, but without a genuine understanding of the behavioral barriers HCPs face in prescribing. The message may be accurate and relevant. It may still fail to move behavior. Not because the science is wrong, but because the human science is missing. 

Or consider the inverse: a campaign grounded in behavioral insight and emotional resonance, but lacking the clinical credibility that HCPs require to trust a brand enough to act. The message may connect emotionally while failing to convert. 

Now layer in AI-powered omnichannel personalization – which 65% of teams in the BGBx research are actively deploying.² AI can optimize reach, frequency, and content sequencing with extraordinary precision. But it optimizes toward whatever objective it is given. Without behavioral grounding, it can personalize the wrong message more efficiently. Without medical credibility, it can scale content that undermines clinical trust. More reach is not the same as more impact. 

Throughout this paper, we refer to this integrated perspective as 3D Science. It is not an administrative burden or a critique of current marketing execution; it is an automated infrastructure designed to do the multi-dimensional heavy lifting for the brand team. By connecting these dimensions in the background, organizations can confidently protect long-term market intent.

5. The AI and Omnichannel Inflection Point

The AI adoption data from our research is striking not just in its scale, but in its pattern. Data analytics leads all AI use cases, at 87% of active AI users. Content generation follows at 74%. Campaign personalization at 65%.² These are, in sequence, the inputs to a complete omnichannel workflow. 

Brand teams are building the components of an AI-powered commercial engine. The challenge is that components are not a system. Analytical insights generated in one function are not automatically informing the content strategy in another. Content produced at scale is not automatically personalized in ways that reflect how individual HCPs make decisions. The tools are more sophisticated than the workflows connecting them. 

The greater constraint is not individual adoption, but enterprise readiness. Without connected data, shared standards, and integrated systems, AI can accelerate friction just as easily as it can accelerate insight. Even more fundamentally, AI is only as effective as the quality of the customer understanding that informs it. Without a clear view of customer intent, AI can optimize timing and channel selection while still accelerating the wrong message.

Oncology teams, notably, showed lower active AI adoption in our research than other therapeutic areas, but higher rates of active evaluation. This suggests that the most scientifically complex, high-stakes categories are approaching AI with more deliberation, not less interest. That deliberateness is appropriate. The cost of deploying AI-driven content that misses the clinical or behavioral mark in oncology is higher than in less complex categories. 

The opportunity, across all therapeutic areas, lies in building AI-powered workflows that are informed by behavioral understanding from the outset. Not layered on as a testing mechanism after the fact, but integrated into how strategy is developed, how content is briefed, and how omnichannel sequences are designed. 

The teams that figure this out first will not just execute more efficiently. They will execute more accurately, reaching HCPs and patients at the moments that matter with content that is built around how those audiences actually make decisions.

7. Looking Ahead

The execution gap is not a permanent condition. It is a moment of transition. The brands that move decisively through it will define the commercial landscape for the next several years. 

BGBx has already launched its 2026 research program, with expanded focus on AI adoption and omnichannel integration. As those findings emerge, we will continue to track how brand teams are adapting and share what we learn. One thing is already clear: the industry is beginning to ask better questions. 

The brands that will lead are not necessarily those with the largest budgets or the most sophisticated technology. They will be the organizations that integrate science, strategy, data, and execution into a continuous commercial system. That integration will enable a deeper understanding of customer intent – what stakeholders believe, what holds them back, and what will move them forward. 

The question is no longer what to do. It is how to do it with precision, consistency, and at the speed today’s market demands.

About BGBx

BGBx is an independent commercial solutions partner for pharmaceutical and life science companies and their brands, combining consulting, communications, science, creativity, data, technology, innovation, and digital capabilities to deliver breakthrough results. Through BGBx Consulting and BGBx Communications, the company helps clients set strategy early, stay aligned throughout the product lifecycle, and execute through marketing and communications programs that drive impact. BGBx is Built for Breakthrough. bgbx.com