Skip to main content

Sohail Kasmani

Sohail Kasmani. Brand and marketing strategist in London: pharma brand management at Cipla and Alembic, now marketing strategy and AI adoption at ACTAsia. MBA, Brunel University London.

Get in touch
img

Writing

Home Pharma Marketing Pharma content marketing in the UK: content that survives MLR
img

Pharma content marketing in the UK: content that survives MLR

The best content marketing for pharmaceutical brands in the UK starts with the audience split the law forces on you: promotional content for health professionals only, factual non-promotional content for the public. Then you substantiate every claim before the copy exists, certify each piece in final form under the ABPI Code, and judge it by whether HCPs and patients actually use it.

That last part is where most of us fall down. Veeva’s Pulse Field Trends Report (May 2025), built on more than 600 million HCP interactions a year from more than 80% of commercial biopharma field teams, found that nearly 80% of approved content is rarely or never used, and that field teams share materials in fewer than half of customer interactions. So the industry puts content through medical, legal and regulatory review and then leaves most of it in the library.

What are the best content marketing practices for pharmaceutical brands in the UK?

The practices that hold up are boring on paper and rare in practice. Decide who a piece is for before anyone writes a word, because in the UK that decision sets almost every other rule, then build the claims before the copy, design for the channel UK HCPs actually prefer, and put recertification dates in the plan from day one.

The audience decision matters because Clause 26.1 of the 2024 ABPI Code is blunt: “Prescription only medicines must not be advertised to the public.” Clause 26.2 adds that information about prescription medicines made available to the public must be “factual and presented in a balanced way” and must not be used to encourage people to ask their doctor for a specific medicine. I cover the rules themselves in more depth in UK pharma advertising rules; this piece is about making content that works inside them.

Content type Who it can reach Can it name your medicine? What usually trips it up
Promotional HCP content (detail aids, emails, HCP portals, paid social to HCPs) Health professionals only, targeted Yes, within the licence, with prescribing information and adverse event reporting Paid social that leaks to the public, claims that outrun the evidence
Disease awareness for the public Public No Only one or few treatments exist, so the campaign points at your product anyway
Corporate, investor and media news Investors, media, and in practice anyone With care, factual Employees reacting to it on LinkedIn, benefit claims in a financial story
Patient support materials Patients already prescribed the medicine Yes, for those patients Hosting it somewhere the general public can find it
Educational material and non-promotional items Depends on the audience Depends on the purpose Assuming “non-promotional” means “no certification needed”

The PMCPA’s own guidance on social media content types says paid-for promotion of prescription medicines on social media “must be carefully targeted to relevant health professionals only”. On the last row, Clause 8.3 lists educational material, patient organisation materials, patient support items and other non-promotional categories that must be certified too.

Why does so much approved pharma content never get read?

Partly because we build it for a channel that UK doctors like less than we assume. IQVIA’s channel preference research, written up by Toby House and Kirstie Scott in November 2025 from a survey of more than 33,000 HCPs across 38 countries, put face-to-face meetings at 40% preference across the EU4 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain), UK and US combined, but only 24% in the UK, against 45% in Italy. Email reached a new peak of 15%. The same survey found only 43% of UK HCPs were aligned, meaning their most preferred channel matched the one they received most, the lowest of the markets compared. An earlier IQVIA piece by Mohit Agarwal (November 2024) put UK alignment at 38%, the largest mismatch between preference and reality it found.

So a UK brand team that pours its budget into a beautiful rep-led detail aid is optimising for a route UK doctors rate far lower than their European peers do. Then usage is low and we blame the rep, the PI box, the therapy area, probably the weather. The Veeva data is less comfortable: content-driven engagements doubled treatment starts in its analysis, so content works when used, and most of it simply has no clear moment of use.

The other reason is that compliant writing drifts into defensive writing, where the one thing a GP wanted to know (which patients, what dose, what to watch for) ends up on page six. The Code asks for accuracy and balance, and a clear first paragraph can carry both.

Best practices for pharmaceutical content creation that survive MLR first time

My view is that most MLR pain comes from rework, and rework comes from decisions made too late, so this is the order I’d run a piece in.

  1. Write the audience, channel and purpose on one line before the brief goes anywhere. “UK respiratory nurses, HCP portal, how to check inhaler technique” gives the reviewer something to test against, which “awareness piece” does not.
  2. Build a claims sheet before any copy. List every claim, the exact reference and the page or table it comes from. Clause 6 of the 2024 Code says claims “must be accurate, balanced, fair, objective and unambiguous”, based on an “up-to-date evaluation of all the evidence”, and “must be capable of substantiation”. A claim that cannot survive the sheet will not survive review either.
  3. Draft only from the claims sheet. A copywriter polishing a claim into a nicer-sounding version at the last minute is a reliable way to earn a “misleading” comment.
  4. Plan the mandatory elements into the design: prescribing information, the adverse event statement, date of preparation and job code. Treating these as a sticker to add later is why so many emails end up with the PI crammed into grey six-point text.
  5. Submit in final form. Clause 8.1 requires promotional material to be certified in its final form by a UK registered medical practitioner or pharmacist who “must not be the person responsible for developing or drawing up the material”. For audio and video content, companies need a written transcript including reproductions of any graphs and tables, so write that transcript alongside the storyboard rather than after the edit.
  6. Put the review date in the content plan. Clause 8.5 says material still in use must be recertified at intervals of no more than two years, and Clause 8.6 says certificates must be kept for at least three years after final use.
  7. Decide how you will know it was used, whether that is field share rate, portal views or email click-throughs by segment. If nobody can name the metric, the piece probably has no job.

Words and habits that bounce back from review

A few come up so often they are worth a sticky note. Clause 6 of the Code says the word “safe” must not be used without qualification, that you cannot claim a product has no adverse reactions, and that “new” cannot describe a product that has been generally available in the UK for more than twelve months. Graphs and tables must not be included unless they are relevant to the claims being made, and I’d apply the same test to the stock photo of a jogging pensioner whose connection to your data is spiritual. I’d also keep an eye on superlatives and hanging comparisons (“better control”, better than what?), which I’d expect any signatory to circle on sight.

How do you write disease awareness content that isn’t promotion in disguise?

Disease awareness is where UK pharma content can be most useful to the public, and where teams talk themselves into trouble. The MHRA’s Disease Awareness Campaign Guidelines (Blue Guide Appendix 7, November 2020) are specific on the hard case: campaigns for conditions “where there is only one, one leading or few medicinal treatments potentially draw attention to one medicinal product, albeit indirectly, regardless of whether it is referred to or not.” Management options should be “presented in a balanced and fair manner”, and campaigns should say what the person needs to do and where to get advice.

The ASA’s work on weight-loss medicines shows how regulators read indirect signals. In a July 2025 update the ASA said it had captured more than 20,000 ads between February and June 2025, 10,000 of them for weight-loss treatments, and that problem ads were not only those naming Wegovy or Mounjaro: phrases like “GLP-1” and images of unbranded injection pens counted too. Those were mostly online pharmacies, but the lesson carries: if your audience can recognise the product from a silhouette, removing the logo does not make it unbranded.

What works instead is content built around the condition and the patient’s next step. For a respiratory brand, that might be a symptom checker that ends with “talk to your GP or practice nurse”, or an inhaler technique video covering devices across the category. I’d test every draft with one question: if a competitor funded this, would it still read exactly the same? If yes, you are probably fine.

What does the 2026 PMCPA social media guidance mean for content teams?

The PMCPA published revised social media guidance on 4 February 2026, developed with the MHRA, the ABPI and company representatives, with the biggest changes on investor and media news, clinical trial recruitment, misinformation, pharmacovigilance, disease awareness and influencers.

Employee engagement is dissemination. The guidance on types of activity says activity that “might alert an individual’s connections” is treated as proactive dissemination, and company policies should cover how staff interact with company posts. As Fierce Pharma reported in February 2025, a UK GSK employee clicked “celebrate” on a LinkedIn post about brain cancer trial results for niraparib (licensed for ovarian and related cancers), and the Panel found breaches for promoting an unlicensed indication and advertising a prescription medicine to the public. In a later case, CASE/0583/05/25 (completed 17 October 2025), a GSK employee liked two LinkedIn posts, and one was ruled misleading and unsubstantiated under Clauses 6.1 and 6.2 because the linked article said efimosfermin “should have benefits beyond any GLP-1 therapy patients are taking”. Your pipeline announcement is content your whole workforce can distribute with one thumb, so write it to the same claim standard as a detail aid.

LinkedIn profiles count too: the guidance says job titles naming prescription medicines are likely to be promotion, while product detail can sit in sections that need extra clicks or scrolling, such as Experience.

Hashtags need checking for whether they point indirectly at one product, especially where it is the only medicine for the condition, and on misinformation the guidance prefers contacting the account holder privately to replying in public.

Third parties are your content. The law firm Morgan Lewis, in a February 2026 summary by Jackie Mulryne and Jasmeen Bahous, notes that companies answer for agencies, paid influencers and digital opinion leaders acting for them, and that open comments need community guidelines and a workable monitoring framework. The PMCPA guidance also expects companies to monitor social media for adverse events and report them to the MHRA. If your content plan has a community manager but no adverse event process, you have planned the fun half.

Effective strategies in pharma marketing UK: making compliant content people read

Write for a clinician’s ninety seconds

Lead with the clinical question the piece answers, put the answer in the first screen, and move the supporting data underneath. A nurse checking dosing between patients does not want the brand story first. It also makes review easier, because each claim sits next to its reference.

Build modular content around moments of use

The Veeva finding suggests the library is big enough already. Rather than one 20-page detail aid, build smaller approved modules that answer specific questions (switching, a side effect, a patient group) that reps, medical science liaisons and email journeys can each pull from. Each module still needs certifying in its final form, so this changes the planning rather than getting round Clause 8. For a wider view of how HCPs are reached across channels in the UK, see how pharma engages HCPs digitally in the UK.

Earn trust in search, because health content is judged harder

For public-facing disease content, Google’s guidance on creating helpful, reliable content (updated December 2025) says its systems give “even more weight” to content with strong experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness on topics that could significantly affect people’s health, and that “trust is most important”. In practice that means named clinical reviewers, visible review dates, clear sponsorship statements and followable references, most of which the ABPI Code already pushes you towards.

Where does AI fit in pharma content creation and MLR?

AI is useful before review and useless as a replacement for it. The PMCPA’s Q&A on AI in Code compliance (revised June 2025) says using AI “does not absolve a company of any of its responsibilities under the Code”, that certification “cannot be fulfilled solely by the use of AI”, and that in a complaint the Panel will look at the company’s processes and governance around AI. Veeva’s report estimates generative AI can cut content creation costs by 30-50%, but cheaper content that still sits unused is just a cheaper museum.

Where I’d use it is the dull, checkable work that causes rework, such as pulling claims out of a draft and matching them to the claims sheet. At ACTAsia, where I lead AI adoption in marketing, the same principle applies outside pharma: AI drafts and checks, a named human decides. Two prompts I’d use with an assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT, on an enterprise account your company has approved:

You are a pre-review checker for UK pharmaceutical content under the
2024 ABPI Code. From the draft below, list every factual or comparative
claim as a numbered table: claim text, whether it needs a reference,
and the reference from the attached claims sheet that supports it.
Flag any claim with no matching reference. Flag the words "safe",
"new", "no side effects" and any superlative or unfinished comparison.
Do not rewrite the draft. Do not judge compliance; list issues only.
Read this disease awareness draft for a UK public audience. List any
sentence, image description or call to action that could lead a reader
towards one specific prescription medicine, including by naming only
one treatment type, using product colours or device imagery, or
emphasising the need for treatment over advice. Suggest a neutral
alternative for each.

The author works through the list before submission. For wiring steps like this into a team process, see how to build an AI marketing workflow.

If you want one thing to try this quarter, pull the usage data on your approved library, find the ten pieces nobody has shared in six months, and ask which of them would have been used if they had been built as a two-minute answer to a specific question. What would you retire first?

FAQs

Can UK pharma companies do content marketing to the public?

Yes, but not promotion of prescription-only medicines. Under Clause 26 of the 2024 ABPI Code, companies can share factual, balanced information and run disease awareness content that encourages people to see a health professional. That content must not name or point towards a specific prescription medicine, and the MHRA’s disease awareness guidelines say extra care is needed where only one or a few treatments exist.

Does pharma social media content need certification in the UK?

Promotional material must be certified in its final form under Clause 8.1 of the ABPI Code, by a UK registered doctor or pharmacist who did not create it. The PMCPA’s social media guidance says disease awareness posts also need certification under Clause 8.3 and must be recertified every two years or removed. Employee likes and shares can count as dissemination too.

How often does pharma content need recertifying?

Clause 8.5 of the 2024 ABPI Code says material still in use must be recertified at intervals of no more than two years. Clause 8.6 requires companies to keep certificates for at least three years after the material was last used. Building these dates into the content calendar from the start avoids old material staying live on websites, portals and social channels without a current certificate.

Can AI be used in pharma MLR review?

AI can support review, for example by extracting claims or checking for missing mandatory elements, but it cannot replace certification. The PMCPA’s June 2025 Q&A says AI use does not absolve a company of its responsibilities, that Clause 8 certification cannot be fulfilled solely by AI, and that the Panel will examine a company’s AI governance if a complaint arises.

What channels do UK doctors prefer for pharma content?

IQVIA’s 2025 survey of more than 33,000 HCPs across 38 countries found UK HCPs have one of the lowest preferences for face-to-face meetings, at 24%, against 40% across the EU4, UK and US combined. Email preference reached 15%. Only 43% of UK HCPs were mainly reached through their preferred channel, the lowest alignment of the markets IQVIA compared.

Sources

  1. Veeva Systems, “Veeva Pulse Report Finds Content-Driven Engagement Lags Despite Proven Boost to Treatment Adoption”, 29 May 2025. https://www.veeva.com/resources/veeva-pulse-report-finds-content-driven-engagement-lags-despite-proven-boost-to-treatment-adoption/
  2. PMCPA, “Clause 26 Relations with the public, including patients and journalists”, 2024 ABPI Code of Practice (interactive). https://www.pmcpa.org.uk/the-code/2024-interactive-abpi-code-of-practice/clause-26-relations-with-the-public-including-patients-and-journalists/
  3. PMCPA, “Clause 8 Certification and Examination”, 2024 ABPI Code of Practice (interactive). https://www.pmcpa.org.uk/the-code/2024-interactive-abpi-code-of-practice/clause-8-certification-and-examination/
  4. ABPI / PMCPA, “Code of Practice for the Pharmaceutical Industry 2024” (PDF). https://www.pmcpa.org.uk/media/r0anf5ya/2024-abpi-code.pdf
  5. MHRA, “Appendix 7: Disease Awareness Campaign Guidelines”, Blue Guide, November 2020. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/407290/Appendix_7_-_Blue_Guide.pdf
  6. PMCPA, “Types of content”, PMCPA social media guidance, 2026. https://www.pmcpa.org.uk/guidance-and-qas/types-of-content/
  7. PMCPA, “Types of activity”, PMCPA social media guidance, 2026. https://www.pmcpa.org.uk/guidance-and-qas/types-of-activity/
  8. PMCPA, “Revised social media guidance published”, 4 February 2026. https://www.pmcpa.org.uk/about-us/media/news/revised-social-media-guidance-published/
  9. Morgan Lewis (Jackie Mulryne and Jasmeen Bahous), “UK PMCPA Refreshes Social Media Guidance: What In-House Teams Should Know”, As Prescribed blog, 19 February 2026. https://www.morganlewis.com/blogs/asprescribed/2026/02/uk-pmcpa-refreshes-social-media-guidance-what-in-house-teams-should-know
  10. Fierce Pharma (Nick Paul Taylor), “PMCPA brings the buzzkill to LinkedIn celebration, laying into GSK over employee’s clicks”, 21 February 2025. https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/pmcpa-brings-buzzkill-linkedin-celebration-laying-gsk-over-employees-actions
  11. PMCPA, “CASE/0583/05/25 Complainant/Chief Executive v GSK”, completed 17 October 2025. https://www.pmcpa.org.uk/cases/completed-cases/case05830525-complainantchief-executive-v-gsk/
  12. ASA, “How we’re trimming down problem ads for weight-loss prescription-only medicines”, 9 July 2025. https://www.asa.org.uk/news/how-we-re-trimming-down-problem-ads-for-weight-loss-prescription-only-medicines.html
  13. IQVIA (Toby House and Kirstie Scott), “From Preference To Practice: Understanding The Evolving Channel Preferences of Healthcare Professionals”, 17 November 2025. https://www.iqvia.com/locations/emea/blogs/2025/11/from-preference-to-practice
  14. IQVIA (Mohit Agarwal), “Tuning in: Understanding Healthcare Professionals’ Changing Channel Preferences to Build Better Engagement”, 11 November 2024. https://www.iqvia.com/locations/emea/blogs/2024/11/understanding-healthcare-professionals-changing-channel-preferences-to-build-better-engagement
  15. Google Search Central, “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content”, updated 10 December 2025. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
  16. PMCPA, “Can the PMCPA give companies any guidance about using artificial intelligence (AI) to assist in the review of promotional materials and activities covered by the ABPI Code?”, revised June 2025. https://www.pmcpa.org.uk/guidance-and-qas/qas-by-topic-or-clause/can-the-pmcpa-give-companies-any-guidance-about-using-artificial-intelligence-ai-to-assist-in-the-review-of-promotional-materials-and-activities-covered-by-the-abpi-code/