Hikma rebrands to create modern visual identity and common corporate culture

Hikma Pharmaceuticals has been selling generic drugs globally for 40 years. But it’s also been acquiring companies and building out capabilities, and it's amassed a bevy of brands and employees around the world.

The company recently decided to rebrand—with a new brand platform, modern logo and visual identity and a single unified name for every Hikma-owned company.

“Better Health. Within Reach. Every day.” is the new platform, while the revamped logo is a wordmark, the name of the company in bold coral non-capitalized letters with a period punctuation mark at the end.

RELATED: Former Teva generics chief Olafsson steps into CEO seat at growth-challenged Hikma

The idea behind the rebranding went further than just unifying the company under one name and mission, however. Hikma wanted to instill a common culture among all its employees, while also doing a better job of telling its story to the market and stakeholders.

“The most immediate benefit of the rebranding is being able to better articulate what is best about Hikma, our values, our dedication to quality, and to codify it and use it to create a ‘north star’ for all our employees,” Brooke Clarke, global head of corporate affairs at Hikma, said via email. “The second and also very important benefit of the rebranding is to provide our customers with an additional reason to consider us and to partner with us. When they know more clearly who we are, what we stand for and where we are going, it opens up reasons to work with us that go beyond the individual benefits of our product portfolio.”

Insights that informed the rebrand came from both from an outside healthcare consumerism study by Prophet, but were also gathered from Hikma employees in interviews and internal engagement sessions across the company, as well as from doctors, patients and pharmacists.

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Some discussions included talk about drug pricing, said Fred Geyer, senior partner at brand and marketing consultancy Prophet, which did the Hikma work. However, the stakeholders agreed that the more important issue of access was about more than just price. The value of access to needed information, help making the right treatment choice, or finding a solution that works with a particular insurance was a key insight that led to discussions with Hikma about how to do that as a generics maker.

“They’re proud to be in the generics business, so we talked about what is the real scope for innovation there. They want to become more innovative around supply chain, around digital access, around helping pharmacists be more effective especially in places like the Middle East, for instance. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to become a Bristol-Myers Squibb and be developers of first-line treatments,” he said.

Hikma does want to become more digital however, Geyer said. A new internal internet for employees, along with a revamped website and increasing level of digital services for customers, are already under way. Over the next few years, the goal will expand to broadening its social and digital presence.  

Meanwhile, the company's changing up more than just its branding. It recently brought in Teva vet Siggi Olafsson as its new CEO, a move executive chairman and former skipper Said Darwazah said would "help us achieve our ambitions for the business.”