By Davide Salvi and Jonathan Edwards
As a biotech firm, building visibility and credibility should begin long before your first major milestone – not just when data or financing announcements are ready. While many early-stage healthcare companies naturally focus their communications on these concrete achievements, thoughtful media engagement helps shape how a company is perceived well in advance of results or transactions.
Build perception before performance
In early biotech, perception often forms before performance – but how intentionally is that perception being shaped? Long before the first patient is dosed or a Series A is closed, investors, partners and prospective hires are already forming impressions of a company’s credibility and direction. The strategic question for company leaders is whether those impressions have been actively curated or passively inherited. The stories that surface, and those that do not, quietly influence how this early (and sticky) reputation takes shape.
This is not to tout publicity for its own sake. Rather, leaders of early-stage entities must make deliberate decisions around what they want their company to be known for – and why – before other actors less inclined to consider long-term success fill in the gaps.
A robust body of research links corporate reputation directly to business performance, from marketing efficiency to long-term value creation. Ipsos’ 2023 global study on reputation, for example, demonstrates a clear correlation between strong corporate reputation and superior business efficiency and ROI. Harvard Business Review has similarly explored for nearly two decades how reputation functions as both a strategic asset and a material business risk.
Companies that manage reputation intentionally from the outset enter key moments already viewed as credible, confident and investable. And when challenges inevitably arise, a foundation of transparency and consistency helps the market interpret them as part of progress, not crisis. This is because reputation, once established, compounds and drives resilience.
Early perception-building also creates resilience.
Earn credibility early
At what point does waiting for tangible news to emerge become a strategic risk rather than a prudent choice?
We regularly see leadership teams underestimate just how early credibility can be cemented among external stakeholders. The best time to communicate and engage is when a company’s growth trajectory is still taking shape. Those quieter periods allow for genuine conversations with journalists who matter to your field.
Begin by helping reporters understand your science, your leadership and your goals. Give them insight into your decision-making process and what motivates your company. When news eventually breaks, that context ensures accurate, balanced coverage and a more human perspective on your story. A company that is familiar, trusted and coherent will always be better represented. This is where working with communications professionals with sophisticated acumen in the underlying science becomes critical to ensuring complex innovation is communicated accurately and compellingly to the market.
The process of communicating externally has the added benefit of strengthening internal clarity. Explaining your platform or pipeline to an outside audience forces teams to articulate what makes these aspects of your firm different and why it matters – which translates directly into employee retention and recruitment, initiative prioritization, and even a leadership team’s own sense of purpose-driven momentum. In this way, media engagement and external reputation management becomes an extension of strategy, rather than a task at the end of it.
Why credibility matters to investors
Investors and journalists may not move in the same circles, but they do respond to the same signals: clarity, conviction and consistency. How a company positions for independent, external validation of its narrative plays a material role in shaping perceived credibility. It signals whether third parties have found the company worthy of the time investment required to understand its story. When visibility is fragmented or inconsistent, even strong propositions can become harder for external audiences to interpret and properly assess.
The more competitive leaders in healthcare integrate their approach to investor and non-investor stakeholder management. What used to be a siloed approach to investor relations under a CFO and public relations under a CCO or CEO is now better managed as an ongoing joint priority across the full C-Suite: driving a coherent narrative that spans stakeholders and channels, investor-targeted and otherwise, that builds confidence across all stakeholder groups for the long term.
After fundraising or milestone announcements, evidence of this steady, consistent messaging across earned media, owned content, investor updates and presentations reinforces that a company is executing against a coherent plan. Over time, that discipline builds a reputation for reliability and professionalism.
Build relationships, not transactions
So what does it actually take for media relationships to mature into vehicles for long-term good will rather than short-term exposure? Good media work develops over time, relying on trust rather than immediacy, and on authenticity rather than polish.
Offering background briefings, sharing technical insights or simply being available to clarify developments might not result in coverage today, but steps like these build the kind of long-term understanding that matters when scrutiny intensifies. Empirical research consistently shows that corporate reputation and transparency are not abstract virtues but practical risk mitigators, linked to greater organizational resilience and lower exposure to external shocks. In highly regulated sectors such as healthcare, a willingness to discuss the full picture – progress and challenges alike – signals maturity and credibility, and increases the likelihood of fair, balanced coverage when it counts.
Maintaining visibility between major announcements is also beneficial. Providing perspective on wider sector trends or regulatory developments keeps your voice present and positions leadership as knowledgeable contributors to the conversation. Over time, this approach builds familiarity and trust.
Strategically time and coordinate communications
How tightly aligned are a company’s media, investor and corporate communications when scrutiny intensifies?
Coordinating these efforts ensures that each milestone amplifies the others. Announcements linked to financings, regulatory filings or major market moments gain more attention when the surrounding narrative is already established and understood.
Consistency across audiences is essential. What you tell journalists should align with what you tell investors, partners and employees. When messages are coherent, every channel reinforces the same strategic story.
Take the long view on building credibility
What distinguishes healthcare companies that merely generate coverage from those that build lasting strategic credibility over time?
Early engagement establishes trust, familiarity and context that pays dividends later. When pivotal moments arrive, journalists who already understand the company can tell its story with depth and accuracy.
Building media relationships in parallel with scientific development allows credibility to compound over time. The most effective engagement begins long before it is required. In healthcare, perception does not simply follow reality. It plays a role in determining it.
Reach out to our team to discuss how your early-stage company can build credibility systematically and position you for success in both the media and the markets ahead of pivotal moments.
Contact Davide Salvi or Jonathan Edwards to discuss how your early-stage biotech company can build credibility systematically and position for success ahead of pivotal moments.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Davide Salvi is a Senior Associate Partner with ICR Healthcare, specializing in strategic communications for healthcare companies in various stages of development. With over a decade of experience spanning journalism and public relations, he previously covered healthcare M&A for Mergermarket and European business news for CNBC. Davide holds an MA in International Journalism from Cardiff University and a BA in Political Science from the University of Milan.
Jonathan Edwards is an Associate Partner with ICR Healthcare, bringing more than a decade of experience in strategic communications and investor relations across healthcare, life sciences and consumer sectors. He has advised senior management teams from both agency and in-house positions, including roles within regulated environments and UK-listed public companies. Jonathan holds a BA in Business Studies from the University of Liverpool and maintains IMC and CIR certifications.
