The acceleration of prescription drug cost containment by regulatory agencies, health authorities, and third-party payers, as well as the near-term drug patent lapses, dampen current restructuring and ‘efficiency’ efforts of the pharmaceutical industry. As a result, high-profile managers are facing increasing challenges such as responding to higher demand to deliver larger profits from increasingly smaller promotional budgets in the midst of a very turbulent environment. The challenge then is to develop methodological capacities to successfully build an effective strategy. In such a context, one of the key success factors that enable us to build an effective strategy is to avoid confusing medicinal product communication with medicinal brand communication. This demonstrates an understanding of the difference between a medicinal product and a medicinal brand. The paradox is that high-profile managers, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, often refer to both in a confusing manner. The current paper intends to clarify both concepts and related paradigms thanks to a thorough analysis of the available literature, combined with the authors’ experiences, and to offer a useful working hypothesis to high-profile managers.