9 Things Pharma Should Learn About Social Media from Dennis Urbaniak

If you didn’t get a chance to listen in on John Mack’s interview with VP U.S. Diabetes at sanofi-aventis Dennis Urbaniak yesterday, that’s too bad. It was one of the more interesting, enlightening and helpful conversations around pharma social media that I’ve heard in awhile.

The title was “What sanofi-aventis Learned from its Facebook Experience and What the Experts Recommend It Do Now.” But it was much more than that.

John – thanks so much for organizing and hosting.
Dennis – thanks for sharing your wisdom.

You can listen to the full podcast here. Also several people were live-tweeting the interview; just search by @durbaniak or #socpharm on Twitter to see the highlights. And Eileen O’Brien will be hosting the #socpharm tweetchat tonight at 8 pm EST and this will be a topic.

If you’re not familiar with the sanofi-aventis Facebook situation, there are many other resources where you can become familiar, so I’ll skip that part. Plus, sanofi-aventis is a long-time client of Intouch Solutions (my agency), so I’ve steered clear of blogging about it up to this point.

But I did want to share what was said yesterday – because it’s already public. And because it’s important.

Below are what I felt were the summary 9 key points of the podcast. It’s important to point out that Dennis was careful to say several times that his statements were his own opinions and not necessarily those of his company’s. Many of these tenets rang true to me and are things we’ve been discussing with many of our clients and counseling them on. And I'll say that these are from my own notes and are in my own words from listening to the podcast, but again, if you are interested, you can always hear the full podcast here. So here are the highlights as I see them:

9 Things Pharma Should Learn from Dennis Urbaniak About Social Media


1. Don’t execute a tactic without first having a strategy. This may seem elementary, but sanofi’aventis’ current Facebook predicament may be a good example of what happens when you have a tactic (“Let’s do Facebook”) without putting some thought and preparation into it first. Jumping in too quickly can lead to being forced into a reactionary position.

2. Don’t chase a particular channel. Don’t think about social media as in “I want a Twitter site” or “I want a YouTube channel.” Instead, think carefully about why you want to be involved in social media … who you want to listen to, learn from, and talk with. Think less about the channel itself and more about the dialogue you want to have. “Be platform agnostic.”

3. There’s a lot to learn before you jump in. Think about how to engage, how to respond. Learn about the different technologies and platforms such as Facebook, how they work, and their limitations.

4. Before engaging elsewhere, establish a credible presence of your own first. (Pharma, pay attention! This was a key learning that Dennis repeated several times.) This could come in the form of a corporate blog or disease state presence, for example. Your own credible presence will give you a platform for contributing to the community, and a place to go in times of need. It’s a place of your own to contribute to the conversation 24 hours a day, versus traditional channels. This will also give you a place to redirect to when comments are happening on sites not in your own control (such as rogue/hijacked presences).

5. Once you’re out there, you’re out there. You need to be clear about your intent and be prepared for both the positive and the negative conversations. State your terms and conditions. And have a plan in place for providing responses.

6. The more people that are creating personalities and relationships on your behalf, the better. The ability to speak well in the social media space will be a new competency that is much sought-after. Having multiple spokespeople allows your company to have a broader voice and persona, vs. just one person speaking on your behalf. This also provides coverage in case someone moves on.

7. Using social media to talk about your product is not the first thing you should be thinking of. There are many other opportunities and can be lots of different types of participants. A brand.com-type focus goes against being a contributing member of the community.

8. Social media is not a campaign. Marketers and communicators are used to thinking about their communications in terms of campaigns. But social media involvement needs to be a sustainable, long-term goal and commitment.

9. Pharma companies can still be involved in social media ahead of FDA social media guidance. We all know there is FDA guidance already in place that companies should follow (re: fair balance, safety, adverse events, etc.). Companies need to be responsible and follow those, as well as their own set of guidelines around objectives, who should participate, and the rules of the road. Creating these guidelines is critical, and takes collaboration across a number of disciplines and departments.
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Dennis closed with the idea that there is “lots of progress we need to make” as an industry. He made the choice to share his company’s learnings with other pharmaceutical companies – encouraging others to push – because he believes at his core that social media is a critical area for pharma.

I heard it loud and clear. My personal hope is that the other companies were listening too.

Thanks again to fellow pharma blogger John Mack for hosting the event, and to Dennis Urbaniak for sharing such valuable learnings within our own pharma marketing community.