The numbers don't lie—and right now, they're telling an uncomfortable story.
Roughly two-thirds of new drug launches miss their first-year sales forecasts, and a meaningful share of those products never recover commercial momentum. First-year sales performance has declined across the board, regardless of therapeutic innovation or disease area. Uptake curves are shallower, adoption is slower, and payer restrictions are more aggressive than at any prior point in recent history.
So what separates the brands that break through from those that quietly fade into commercial disappointment? The answer isn't better science alone. It isn't a bigger promotional budget. It's the quality and rigor of the strategic planning process that happens before a single sales call is ever made.
That's exactly where Woven Health Collective operates—and where we believe we can fundamentally change the trajectory of your brand.
~67% of new drug launches miss first-year sales forecasts—and many never recover commercial momentum.
Consider what Deloitte found when they analyzed 284 U.S. drug launches between 2012 and 2021 in their Rethinking Market Access report: 57% of failures were attributed to limited market access. But that headline number deserves important context. When broken down by therapeutic archetype, market access as a failure driver drops dramatically in competitive specialty categories—in oncology, for example, weak clinical differentiation and inadequate understanding of market drivers are the dominant culprits, with market access ranking a distant fourth. The truth is that payer acceptance is rarely an independent variable. It is a downstream consequence of the strategic planning decisions made long before a formulary conversation ever happens. Solve the differentiation problem first, and access tends to follow. These are not science failures — they are strategic planning failures. And they are entirely preventable.
The classic approach to Annual Operating Plans (AOPs) tends to recycle last year's assumptions, lean on surface-level ATU (Awareness, Trial, Usage) data, and produce a marketing mix that feels more inherited than earned. The result? Strategies that look great in a boardroom deck but quietly underdeliver in the market.
"Brilliant science without strategic planning rigor is squandered opportunity. The brands that win own both."
Take the cautionary tale of Zaltrap (aflibercept), a colorectal cancer therapy that launched with legitimate clinical credentials only to be demolished commercially—not because the drug didn't work, but because the commercial strategy failed to quantify its differentiation in a way that moved payers and physicians. A drug earning ten percent of forecast revenue generates ten percent of forecast patent value, regardless of its legal exclusivity duration.
Or consider the CAR-T pioneer Kymriah: a therapy that changed what medicine could do, yet underperformed analyst expectations not due to lack of efficacy, but because its complex manufacturing and administration process required a major shift in provider practice. The science was revolutionary. The brand planning didn't adequately account for the behavioral and logistical realities of the market it was entering.
These are exactly the kinds of gaps that a rigorous, matrix-driven planning process is designed to close.
Woven Health Collective is a unified, full-service organization that blends science, strategy, creative, and technology—with a singular mission: to deliver objectified strategic conclusions proven to maximize brand market share capture across all phases of the product lifecycle, from Phase 2 through maturity.
Our senior consulting experts bring deep scientific and marketing expertise earned through years of real P&L responsibility running brands and portfolios in high-stakes therapeutic areas at organizations including BMS, Novo Nordisk, and Novartis. This isn't academic. We've sat in the chair you're sitting in, made the calls you're being asked to make, and carried the numbers you're being held to.
Our approach is built on a foundational conviction: fulfillment of important clinical differentiators is what anchors brand positioning—and long-term commercial success flows directly from that foundation. From there, we overlay what most planning processes miss entirely.
Most brand teams rely on attribute tracking studies that measure what physicians think about a brand's characteristics. That's useful—but it's table stakes. It tells you where you are, not where the market needs to go.
Woven's methodology goes significantly further through what we call Market-Level Driver Analysis—a quantified framework that maps the specific clinical and market drivers actually moving prescribing behavior at the category level, not just the brand level. This is a critical distinction. Market-level drivers reveal the structural forces shaping the entire competitive landscape. Brand-level data alone can't see them.
This approach allows us to force-prioritize the clinical differentiators that will genuinely shift share—and it provides the evidentiary backbone to justify every element of the marketing mix. In a world where pharma brands that can use real-world insights to inform strategy and demonstrate sustainable value will be better positioned to win in the market, this kind of analytical precision isn't a luxury. It's a survival requirement.
The downstream effect is equally important: by reducing uncertainty in strategic prioritization, we materially reduce the beta factors in P&L forecasting—giving your finance and brand leadership teams confidence that the plan on paper will actually perform in the field.
"Market-level drivers reveal the structural forces shaping an entire competitive landscape. Brand-level data alone can't see them."
AOPs typically run April through September, which means the window to build a plan with real analytical rigor is narrower than most teams want to admit. Here's what Woven brings to that process:
P&L Fluency from Day One: Our team brings a deep bench of cross-functional pharma marketing experience across multiple therapeutic areas—from early launch through mature brand management—grounded in real P&L responsibility at some of the industry's most demanding organizations.
Science Before Strategy: Every engagement starts with a deep build on the compound's clinical profile. We don't overlay messaging on top of a poorly understood asset. We build outward from the science.
Market-Level vs Brand-Level Driver Quantification: We force-prioritize the clinical differentiators that move markets—not just attributes that score well in surveys. This is the engine of our Strategic Imperative framework.
A Matrix Model That Objectifies Conclusions: Our proprietary model maps outcomes across multiple strategic variables simultaneously, producing prioritized strategic imperatives that are defensible, data-backed, and implementation-ready.
Tactical Prioritization Tied to Strategic Imperatives: We don't hand you a list of tactics. We hand you a justified, historically-informed marketing mix—personal and non-personal promotion—that is directly traceable to strategic imperatives and calibrated against historical ROI.
Forecast Optimization Through Marketing Mix Clarity: The result is a brand forecast that is not just ambitious, but achievable—because every cost line is supported by a logical chain of evidence from science through market dynamics through tactical execution.
The moment is now
The life sciences industry is expecting more than 400 new product launches and microlaunches in the next five years. Competition for physician attention, formulary position, and patient access has never been more intense. The brands that win won't necessarily be the ones with the best molecules—they'll be the ones with the most rigorous, science-anchored, analytically-driven plans behind them.
Woven Health Collective exists to make sure your brand is one of them.
We'd welcome the opportunity to walk you through the Woven methodology and show you how our approach to strategic planning could change the trajectory of your portfolio. Reach out at your earliest convenience—AOP season waits for no one.
Stephen Mitchell
EVP, Strategic Consulting, Woven Health Collective
stephen.mitchell@wovenhc.com