The Challenge

A biotechnology company specialized in the development of drugs for cancer treatment was having a hard time telling the story of its products.

Their Storyboard document was basically a data dump. It held lots of unnecessary information and a lack of strategic context. As the organization had several assets in their pipeline through different indications, they needed to improve their storytelling. This would help create a precise, strategic, and understandable narrative. This would then support the dossiers, filings, and other marketing documents.

Solution

After meeting the company’s leadership team, we understood that the company didn’t simply want to hire Solem’s professionals to write their Storyboard. Instead, they wanted us to support the company in changing their Storyboard process. They wanted us to tailor it according to the company’s structure and strategic vision.

The first step was to create a Storyboard working group. We invited internal team members from clinical development, medical affairs, regulatory, market access, safety, and commercial to participate. Solem then held kickoff meetings to explain the objectives of the project.

We decided we would create a new Storyboard Process and Template, as well as train the team to write Content specifics. We identified at which stage the Storyboard should start being written; who would be the owner of this document; and which functions would provide inputs. Now, the paper draft deliverables, reviews, approvals, and milestones were all defined according to the company’s product lifecycle and the team’s input.

For the template, Solem identified flow issues that did not provide any context to the reader. The amount of data included also made their previous storyboards extremely lengthy documents with no language consistency between the different chapters. Other flaws we identified included the lack of key messages, positioning, conclusion, and outlook.

They were used to working exclusively in Word, but we found the need to offer a Storyboard version in PowerPoint as well. Some topics in their table of contents were not adequate, so we proposed a more precise Storyboard template. The new template could embrace all the important information necessary to tell a great story.

Finally, during the Content meetings, Solem trained the team to focus on key messages. Messages that would condense multiple facts into a precise, clear, and coherent narrative. Changing the group’s mindset was difficult because they were not used to thinking strategically, or in alignment with the company’s vision. And aligning the different functions to “speak the same language” required a lot of training, as they came from different backgrounds.

Solem also trained them to be able to distil the value of their asset into no more than 20 sentences. This was supported by crucial evidence and data that was meaningful to the story.

Results

Solem delivered a Storyboard Lifecycle Process Flow with specifics timelines, deliverables, owners, and levels.

This enabled the company to use the exact same process for all their current and future products. We also created a Storyboard Word Template approved by the company’s leadership executives. A PowerPoint document could also be automatically generated from this Word file and adapted accordingly for presentations. And we have created a Handbook to guide team members when writing their Storyboard.

After the Content strategic training offered by our experts, this oncology biotech company was able move from a complicated 40-page Storyboard, to a 20-page story that focused on key strategic messages. This was all based on the same process and format for all their indications, and designed with the help of their own collaborators.