Cobalt Communications
Providing Strategic Services for Science-Driven Companies

Working within the life sciences industry comes with many challenges — the demand for innovation chief among them — but one challenge that many may not anticipate is the complexity of communicating about the products or services being offered.

“People who live and breathe life sciences speak their own language, and fortunately, it’s a language we understand well,” says Bill Harris, founder, VP, and creative director of Cobalt Communications. “That’s critical when you need to translate complex value propositions and competitive differentiation into effective marketing materials.”

Cobalt Communications is a versatile strategic communications agency well-versed in the intricate dynamics of the life science industry. Its comprehensive suite of interconnected services, including writing, editing, graphic design, branding, and strategic planning, is the cornerstone of impactful strategic communications specialized for life science businesses.

“Beyond our ability to quickly grasp the science, we have a wellhoned understanding of the diverse internal and external audiences that life science companies target through communications,” explains Leslie Harris, President and Director of Strategy. “That’s how Cobalt creates a different experience for our clients.”

The collaborative, highly skilled team at Cobalt has a collective background in creative agency work, as well as tenure within communications departments at large life science companies.

Cobalt’s writers and designers provide clients with a sense of relief — allowing them to delegate with confidence — and that has fostered some long-lasting partnerships. The company maintains consistently low customer turnover, with 75 percent of clients extending their relationship with Cobalt to more than 5 years.

In the initial stages of a new engagement, Cobalt recommends a discovery session that includes connecting with multiple stakeholders. “It’s more than just comprehending business priorities and marketing objectives — it’s understanding the complexity of the organization,” says Bill. “We learn what we can do early on to set the project up for success.”

Cobalt enjoys working with small companies like themselves, as well as start-ups, but it is not unusual for the strategy and creative teams to work as an extension of a communications or marketing department in global organizations. In both cases, their long-term relationships deliver significant benefits. “We basically become a knowledge archive for our clients — that’s when it gets really exciting,” says Leslie, “You know their brand, culture and products and can help respond to both fire drills and support long-term strategic planning.”

This knowledge, combined with knowledge of life science audiences, leads to highly successful campaigns. Cobalt showcased this while working with a materials company with a pharmaceutical division. The challenge for a new product was potential customers were reluctant to switch suppliers because the validation process for the product was seen as onerous. The client engaged Cobalt for a marketing campaign with a specific goal of 25 to 30 sample requests — an early step in exploring the validation process — for the new product over four months.

Cobalt developed creative that was humorous in a way that would appeal to scientists and engineers, without pushing the comfort zone of the corporate brand. The subsequent integrated campaign delivered on the creative across various digital platforms, including Google Ads, LinkedIn advertising, LinkedIn Mail and other life science industry publications and emails. With a dedicated landing page, they were able to gauge leading indicators that showed the audience response, and the sample orders soon followed. Ultimately, it significantly exceeded expectations, generating significant interest and traffic to the landing page and more than doubled sample requests than the initial target.

As Cobalt approaches its 20-year milestone in 2025, it plans to continue honing its environmental, social and governance (ESG) and sustainability communications expertise to support clients looking to capitalize on the imminent opportunities