Opinion #5: The Purpose of Branding in Science
Branding is the exercise of summarizing an organization’s culture to attract a particular type of employee, collaborator, or funder
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This article is contributed by guest writer Jonathan Thon, here he shares his personal views on the importance of branding in science 🚀
Like it or not, branding and self-promotion are an integral part of science. Our training might focus primarily on how to do science, but that isn’t enough; we also need to promote ourselves and our findings in order to persuade others to fund and collaborate on our research, and to highlight the value of our discoveries so we can broaden their reach.
It’s always been this way. The financial support of scientific discovery was historically provided by wealthy patrons who typically backed an individual or a handful of scientists who had to market themselves to get attention (The financial cost of doing science). These days, the role of individual patron has been assumed by diverse government, philanthropic, and private sources of grant funding, and it’s our peers who we have to impress, via the peer review process.
Brand: A person’s perception of a product, service, experience, or organization.
Culture: A set of shared values, goals, attitudes and practices that characterize an organization.
Fit: Alignment. Lack of mismatch.
What do peer reviewers look for when evaluating a funding proposal? Different programs have different criteria, but almost all focus on the applicant’s publication record. It therefore follows that scientific publications, by definition, are a form of advertisement, typically paid for by the authoring investigator/institution to promote their work. And why shouldn’t this be the case? The broad communication of research is critical to realizing the social value it can create, and scientists rely on the impact of their work, measured by the profile and reach of their publications, to value their own scientific contributions and those of others. Our industry relies on name recognition (author, institution, journal), which has become both a currency and the primary metric for promotion and tenure today.
It’s curious, then, that many scientists should be so resistant to the idea of branding, which is almost a dirty word in some parts of academic research. I suspect this is because many of us associate self-promotion and marketing with a lack of substance, and because we’ve never been explicitly taught how the two can and do co-exist as independent attributes in science.
Of course, publications represent just one facet of the overall theme of self-promotion and branding. While scientists often discuss branding-related topics such as the accurate representation of scientific advancements beyond academic publishing, and the attention individual discoveries have warranted or received, we have a tendency to ignore the forest for the trees. There is a more immediate and impactful purpose for branding in the sciences that is less talked about and that warrants more consideration, and that is in recruitment and team-building.
Science is performed by people, and the people we choose to recruit, collaborate with, and let fund our work define the science we do together. Entire fields of research are often closely associated with specific prominent individuals in that field, their idiosyncrasies, and values. People bring unique perspectives and approaches to scientific questions and will advance research in different nuanced (and not so nuanced) ways depending on their character. Just like how the same song will sound completely different when interpreted and performed by different artists, each research program is unique to the principal investigator and their team, inclusive of collaborators and funders. Also like a song, some research programs require a unique complement of personalities and skillsets to pull off, and every research program is different. Each decade also sees different research fields grow to take a more prominent position socially or recede from the public eye as different personalities enter and exit a field.
Whether or not a research program is getting the attention it may or may not deserve, the primary focus and the art of branding is to attract the kind of people you want to work with while giving the program the best possible chance of success. In industry the term we use is “fit” and it describes how well an individual matches an organizational culture. When the fit is right, organizations can get more out of their employees, and the employees can be more productive because they enjoy the environment and work. Branding is the exercise of summarizing an organization’s culture (the composite of personalities, communication style, expectations, surroundings, and feel that make up a working environment) to attract a particular type of employee, collaborator, or funder. It begins with one person, whose personality defines the entirety of the culture at first, and evolves as each subsequent person is brought in. How much a new recruit will contribute to the team’s brand will depend on how much of their personality is injected into the cultural mix, but there is no person, no matter how limited their role, whose personality won’t move the culture.
“The art of branding is firstly to attract the kind of people you want to work with.”
– Jonathan Thon
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About the Author: Jonathan Thon, PhD
Jonathan Thon is a serial biotech entrepreneur & recognized leader in human cell culture.
He excels at translating scientific advances into clinically relevant programs, having made major contributions to the production of functional human platelets from stem cells & the invention of bioreactor platforms to scale cell culture. Jonathan currently serves as Founder & CEO of STRM.BIO, a pre-clinical, VC-backed biotechnology company that is leveraging extracellular vesicles (EVs) to deliver gene therapies in vivo. Before STRM.BIO, Jonathan founded & served as CEO / CSO of PlateletBio where he helped develop next-generation allogeneic cell therapies for the treatment of human diseases. He was also a Professor at Harvard Medical School, where he combined novel concepts in bone marrow physiology with cutting-edge technical advances in tissue engineering to develop safer and scalable therapies to hematological diseases.
Jonathan takes great pride in having helped guide dozens of students toward rewarding careers in medicine & biopharma, and is a sought-after speaker for keynote addresses, presentations, panels and media appearances. Jonathan holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from the University of British Columbia & completed his postdoctoral research fellowship in Hematology at Harvard Medical School.
Alix Ventures, by way of BIOS Community, is providing this content for general information purposes only. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, or its affiliates. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Views and opinions expressed by Alix Ventures employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, affiliates, and content sponsors.
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