PATENT CLIFF 2.0. IT’S UNWELCOME. IT’S UNDETERRED.
By Steve Lee, Associate Director, Engagement Strategy
Our world is different to others.
The blockbuster brands which drive our industries are not safe in perpetuity, like categories such as fashion, tech or media. There’s a tremendous tension between innovation and access, where patients can benefit from a rising tide in cheaper treatments as they lose exclusivity, while the businesses that invented those treatments, need to claw back costs and create new brands, to appease shareholders and maintain success.
Patent Cliff 2.0 is aberrant. Near £300 billion in lost revenue¹. 190 blockbuster treatments². It’s an issue, but for all of its threat and doom, we cannot call this a shock.
All brands are on a slow burn towards loss of exclusivity (LOE), with a series of calendar dates and deadlines etched into its revenue model. And while absolute in its countdown, brand leads can often feel overwhelmed with the harsh realities of LOE, from the sometimes-sudden decline in budgets to the speed of new entrants, with near immediate shifts in market share.
Those realities mean that brands need to surf the decline in sales, towards a new norm in LOE-realistic revenue. A successful decline vs not, is seldom known due to the volatility of LOE dynamics, while brand leads resort to a series of known initiatives and levers to limit costs. One of which, is to reduce the role of the field force, and redirect those assets towards the newer brands who are in need of their efforts.
It’s smart. It’s effective.
Of course, what remains is a hole, between the needs of the once vital customer, and the LOE brand itself. When combined with the new entrants of generics and biosimilars, and the associated erosion of cost, the freshly formed chasm between customer and brand can act as an exacerbation in the decline of sales.
If Patent Cliff 2.0 is an overdue bill for pharma organisations, we need a counter, built from the fresh opportunities of modern marketing, with a dose of rebelliousness to boot. Let’s call it LOE 2.0.
Between Patent Cliff 2.0 and AI, mature brands can arise from the chaos
There has been a shift. Not from brands, but in how information is summarised and accessed, outside of the traditional PESO mix. For decades, those behaviours occurred within controlled environments, owned channels and strict narratives, but LLMs do not care about control, it’s about the outcome.
What started as traditional search behaviours via Google and SERPs has since evolved into something more immediate and robust, with systems which can surface, contextualise, and resolve information within seconds.
73% of HCPs say information from generative AI influences their treatment decisions³
We have moved from access to answers, and now towards the dawn of a new HCP expectation: that the right information should be available at the moment it is needed. This is GEO, Generative Engine Optimisation.
GEO reflects how information is now discovered and trusted. Queries are less brand‑led and more outcome‑driven. And crucially, GEO does not reward volume, or shortcuts. It rewards credentials and confidence.
Why GEO changes the game for mature brands
This is where mature brands come back into their own. Because while newer brands chase reach, awareness and attention, mature brands can own the floor with substance and trust, distinct from the norms and befit from the investments made into the brand over its lifetime. Years of clinical use. RWE. Case studies. It’s the new must-have in AI excellence, where LLMs must surface the most credible and relevant information, to meet their CEPs, in what is now a six-horse race between Open AI, Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, Perplexity and Meta.
As such, GEO is a conceivable, literal win for mature brands, in how they can embed themselves into the behavioural trends which will soon define new norms in omnichannel, no matter the life cycle.
When I consider the foundations for GEO and mature brands, I summarise it into four Cs: CUSTOMER, CONTENT, CITATION and CATEGORY. Together, they act as a checklist for focusing and leveraging the assets attached to the brand.
1) CUSTOMER: Built for resolutions, not journeys
GEO starts with a defined need and an action from an HCP. And much like traditional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), how we define the customer in an LLM environment is driven via queries (or prompts) which are specific and contextual.
Prompt behaviour: In traditional SEO, it would have been considered ‘long-tail’ but LLM prompts are longer, more clinical, and decision‑focused
Prompt mapping: Consider the real-world language, terminologies and trends within LLMs, rather than relying on brand or campaign language
2) CONTENT: Built for interpretation, not consumption
GEO shifts the role of content, from direct, 1-2-1 ideals, to how the brand can be extracted, summarised and combined with other assets within LLM summaries.
Structured for retrieval: With clear hierarchies of information and content, which can be surfaced with ease
Modular for reuse: Anchored with H1s, H2s and connected with semantic ‘themes’, which allow for combined summarisations and results
Technical enablement: Schemas, metadata and even emerging opportunities in LLM‑direct txt. files to influence how bots access and define content
Whilst mature brands can leverage its work to date, new content should be considered to maintain ‘activity’ and relevance, for both LLM retrieval and fresh HCP behaviours.
3) CITATION: A new standard in LLM confidence
LLMs need to showcase the most credible, confident content, none more so than in regulated industries such as pharma. And when it comes to that moment of trust, citation is a near immediate win for both LLMs, and for the mature brands which would have accumulated them over its lifetime.
Reoccurrence and volume of citations will be the new backlinks for GEO
Citations from scientific institutions will boast weight and ‘juice’ for contested topics
Yes, SEO and GEO share similar terms and ideas, but the results are less one-dimensional.
4) CATEGORY: Beyond the brand
Whilst LLMs will reference brand level information, mature brands can leverage their influence and role within the treatment category itself. Here, it can elevate its SoLLM (share of LLM) across extended discussions such as therapy area, pathways and patients, as well as how the brand is framed with its direct and non-direct competitors. This level of ‘entity strength’ considers more than a keyword, and instead values the wider contexts and associations, of which mature brands can benefit.
The bottom line: It’s not brand awareness, nor PR, nor MOF (middle-of-funnel). It’s inclusion and reference, and in a GEO-driven environment, it's more durable than recall.
Governance, risk and the realities of innovation in pharma
As with most shifts in our world, innovation comes with tension. In GEO, information is summarised, abstracted and surfaced via the LLMs, on behalf of the brand, for the HCP. Which means that those actions need to be understood and where feasible monitored, particularly in regulated markets.
For both GEO-committed brands and non, it demands a new level of governance across its business functions.
And at the same time, we are at the dawn of new norms. LLMs are not matured in their function, and nor is the process in how our information is retrieved and cited. The industry will adapt as it always has but for now, GEO sits in that familiar space: imperfect, advancing, and impossible to ignore.
LOE 2.0: From decline to presence
For mature brands, it isn’t all about LOE. It’s a recalibration in behaviour, channel and investment. Because aside from Patent Cliff 2.0, mature brands are in a different class from the normal channel mix. They are not here to create demand. They are here to service and retain it. To support decisions. To provide clarity. To reinforce confidence.
8 out 10, ‘satisfied or very satisfied’ with the answers they received for clinical queries³
And that connects to the fundamentals of GEO:
Retention over acquisition: Committed to customers, who need trust, confidence and context, when they need it most
Service over promotion: With clear, immediate, practical results rather than ‘pithy’ campaign narratives
These are not new behaviours for mature brands, but in a GEO-driven environment, they can take centre stage. And as HCP behaviours evolve with more search, more AI-assists, whilst more constrained in time, the reliance on stable, credible, accessible information will become the new standard.
Welcome to GEO for mature brands, a notable revolution in user need, innovation and brand leverage.
Sources
Medicines for Europe (2025), Generics Market Review: Key Findings, https://www.medicinesforeurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/GENERIC-MEDICINES-MARKET-REVIEW-2025-Key-findings.pdf
DrugPatentWatch (2026), Drug Patent Expiry and Drug Price Erosion, https://www.drugpatentwatch.com/blog/the-impact-of-patent-expiry-on-drug-prices-a-systematic-literature-review/
Remedy Edge (2026), AI Usage in Clinical Decisions.