Product communications aren’t one-size-fits-all. Whether you’re launching a hospital-based treatment for a rare condition or a patient activated therapy with high name recognition, understanding when and how to communicate directly with patients versus providers is critical.
We recently sat down with Tara DiFlumeri, Head, Early Stage and Specialty Pharmaceuticals and Natalia Forsyth, Head, Digital Strategy to unpack how they approach product communications through a lens looking at products from B2B (business-to-business) vs. B2C (business-to-consumer) and where the line between the two often blurs.
1. What’s the distinction between B2B and B2C in a healthcare setting?
Tara: “B2B is typically when a pharma or biotech company is targeting healthcare providers or institutions directly, especially for complex or rare conditions, or when the drug is administered in a hospital setting. These are scenarios where specialty physicians drive decision making, and trusted, peer-to-peer education is key. In these cases, patients don’t always ask for products by name; they receive them based on clinical judgment. B2C, on the other hand, is anything designed to reach patients or caregivers directly, usually for products where consumer choice plays a larger role.”
Natalia: “We’ve worked on several true B2B examples, like medications primarily accessed in a public health or clinic setting. It’s about meeting HCPs or institutions, where they are not trying to drive patient demand.”
2. How does this change your strategy in practice? Are there examples of campaigns that evolved over time?
Tara: “It absolutely changes our strategy. One good example is an established product we work on used across multiple autoimmune conditions, for which we recently helped launch a self-injection device. This meant educating physicians on safety and convenience, while also preparing direct-to-patient education for people with dexterity issues due to multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis. So, we ran a parallel track of provider trust and patient empowerment, both necessary to drive adoption.”
Natalia: “I once worked on a low libido treatment for women. We initially focused only on provider outreach, especially sexual health specialists, but faced major skepticism. When we switched to a bold, patient-first direct-to-consumer campaign encouraging women to advocate for what they deserved, it finally resonated.”
3. When do you want patients to know your product by name? How does that work in a regulated environment like healthcare?
Natalia: “Consumer driven spaces like GLP-1s, contraception, migraines, or hormone therapy—you absolutely want patients walking into offices asking for the product by name. Millennials especially are now both patients and caregivers, and they expect to be part of the conversation. They’re digital natives, and the way they access healthcare is changing fast.”
Tara: “But for some medications, particularly in acute care and hospital settings, patients might never even hear the name, let alone remember it. In those cases, all communications energy should go toward educating HCPs and institutions, not patient awareness.”
4. How do you bring digital and the patient voice into your strategy and when?
Natalia: “The gold standard is to involve patients and advocacy groups early, co-creating campaigns that feel true to lived experience. It’s not always possible, but when it is, the difference in sentiment and uptake is clear. And even later on, we use social listening and AI to surface real-world feedback often preferring organic, user generated content over polished testimonial videos.”
Tara: “It can get tricky with consumer facing digital. Clients might want to use influencers or push the envelope creatively, but healthcare comms comes with serious regulatory considerations. We have to build review and monitoring systems that account for those risks, especially when real people are talking about real products in real time.”
5. Where do teams go wrong in mapping out B2B and B2C strategies?
Tara: “Sometimes people use ‘B2B’ to mean any healthcare provider communication, when it could also mean institution-to-institution, or pharma-to-pharma, depending on your objectives. Green Room looks at ‘B2B’ as anything that touches audiences who are not patient-facing. I find it more helpful to think in terms of your actual audiences: HCPs, advocacy groups, patients, caregivers. Not just which bucket they fall into.”
Natalia: “And sometimes teams chase name recognition even when it doesn’t matter. If your product is hospital based or only prescribed in rare situations, patients don’t need to know the brand. The right play is to educate the right gatekeepers and stop trying to make every drug a household name.”
The TL;DR?
Product communications in healthcare can’t be treated as plug-and-play. Every therapy has its own context, timeline, and audience whether you’re educating a specialist, informing a caregiver or empowering a patient to speak up at their next appointment. At Green Room, we start with the same question every time: Who needs to hear this first?