ePharma Rx

More New Guidance from FDA: Brand and Generic Name Treatment

2012-01-25T15:33:00.001-06:00

Introduction
On January 24 FDA issued new, final guidance on “product name placement, size, and prominence in advertising and promotional labeling.” I can tell you up front this still isn't the long-awaited social media guidance. Instead, the document sets out to clarify FDA requirements and expectations for how and when brand names and generic names should appear in promotional advertising.

Channels/Media Addressed
The guidance applies to all channels and it specifically calls out traditional print, audio-visual, broadcast, and “electronic and computer-based” ads and “Internet promotion” such as “social media, e-mails, CD-ROMs, and DVDs.”

Types of Products to Which this Applies

It applies to prescription human drugs, including biologicals, and prescription animal drugs.
It also clarifies direction based on if the product is made up of one active ingredient [example: PRODUCT (generic ingredient)] or more than one active ingredient [example: PRODUCT (ingredient 1 and ingredient 2)].

Issues Addressed
Overall the document addresses the juxtaposition and treatment of how the generic name (“established” ) name should appear in relation to the brand (“proprietary”) name, including:

placement
size
prominence
frequency

Implications
We will be digging into it and providing more analysis soon .... Is it a big "no new news here," or is it a "holy crap, it's time to review all our promo materials pronto!"?

Meantime, if you plan on reading it, here's a helpful translation for key terms from FDA-speak to marketing-speak:

Proprietary = brand name
Established = generic name
Running text = main body copy “the body of text in a piece as distinct from headlines, taglines, logos, footnotes, graphs, or pictures”

Stay tuned!http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm070076.pdf

Piracy, Privacy, and 12 Months of Weigh-Ins Going Public

2012-01-20T08:54:00.002-06:00

It's been an interesting week in the world of Internet news. Websites such as Wikipedia protested proposed anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA, and they won. This morning it was announced that the FBI shut down one of the world's most popular file-sharing sites, Megaupload. Then hackers "Anonymous" promptly retaliated with an attack on Justice Department public websites. Quite a week for Internet drama! Apparently piracy is the new black.

This week I had some personal drama regarding another internet-related concern that starts with P: Privacy.

About a year ago I purchased a household gadget that merged technology and health: a Withings WiFi bathroom scale. I've been diligently weighing in (almost) daily and building up a database of the losses(and - over the holidays - gains) of my weight and BMI. The nifty scale automatically uploads my numbers to the website, and I can look at the charts and graphs online whenever I like. (For the record, I love it!)

But when I tried to log into my account this week, I was unsuccessful. My password worked intermittently, and when it did work, I still couldn't get to my dashboard of data. Then I noticed a small message on the login page that Withings was experiencing "a vicious attack" on their servers. They hoped that service would get back to normal very soon.

Hackers! Trying to get to the year-long history of my weight gains and losses and BMI! Whaaaaaaaaaaat?

Horrors!!!!

Sure, hackers have stolen my credit card information and bought airline tickets to Arabian countries. That little thing has all been taken care of. My bank sends me a new check card fairly regularly with a note that a database somewhere was hacked. No problem. Sure, I have a lot of personal information about myself "out there" online - probably more than most. I realize there is a certain amount of risk in submitting information on the Internet.

But a log of the past year of the ups and downs of my personal weight and BMI going public? That's a whole new level of problem.

Okay, yes, I'm being overly dramatic and there's no proof any data was actually stolen. But the concept of my weight data being stolen, held for ransom, being published online, or used for blackmail have all crossed my mind more than once this week.

I don't know much about the progress of electronic medical records. I know it's a huge task and I know its going slow. I understand the incredible benefits that having all of ones' health information in one place could bring. But this weeks' drama has also had me thinking a little more carefully about if I would want all my information "out there," in records that were supposedly private, with the chance of going public thanks to hackers and attackers.

Makes me a teensy bit nervous. Just sayin'.

How do you define DTC?

2012-01-17T15:29:00.001-06:00

This topic comes up a lot around my agency: How do you define DTC?

Of course, on the surface, DTC in the context of pharma marketing stands for "direct-to-consumer." Its roots likely go back to when FDA first appoved the marketing of prescription products to U.S.consumers in the 1980's.

John Mack's Pharma Marketing Glossary defines DTC as "The promotion of prescription drugs by pharmaceutical companies directly to consumers via broadcast and print media such as television, radio, magazines, billboards, and also the Internet." And according to a number of articles on the FDA website, FDA defines it as:

"Provided by drug companies, these ads are aimed at a general audience, and not at health care professionals such as doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. The ads are broadcast on TV and radio, and published in magazines and newspapers. They also appear online."

But still, I hear many, many marketers make "DTC" synonymous with "T.V." And I think that's an insult to all of the many other options for reaching consumers with information - and yes promotion - about pharmaceutical products.

Making DTC synonymous with TV assumes:

Other channels aren't direct
Other channels don't reach consumers
Other channels don't matter
FDA doesn't care about other channels

Of course, none of the above are true.

TV can certainly be an effective way to reach mass audiences for the right product and disease category. But in this day and age, other channels matter. And other channels reach consumers. Often, other channels are more efficient options.

DTC. It's one of many acronyms for which this industry is (in)famous. What does it mean to you?

7 Reasons Why Pharma Marketing Can Be a Thankless Job (but doesn't have to be)

2012-01-12T09:55:00.003-06:00

Pharmaceutical marketing can be a thankless job for a variety of reasons. But in 13 years in this industry, I’ve met so many wonderful people and seen so many positive patient outcomes that I refuse to give up. Here are 7 reasons why marketing pharmaceutical products can seem like a thankless job. But also why it doesn’t have to be.

1. The industry still has a horrible reputation. When I tell people what I do for a living, sometimes I feel like I have to apologize. And thanks to some well-publicized instances, the industry in many cases deserves its reputation. But the Vioxx debacle is now seven years behind us. Life expectancy and quality of life continue to rise. “I don’t get why people don’t see how valuable these products are to their lives,” one new-to-pharma colleague recently said to me. The industry needs supporters and defenders, and it needs a human face. For example, I lost some weight last year thanks, in part, as I openly tell people, to the “miracle of pharmaceutical products” (an appetite suppressant). Every day, at work and at home, what can each of us do to help bolster the perception of our industry?

2. No one WANTS your product. Understandably, there’s a general negative mindset toward taking medication. With the exception of some categories like cosmetics, it’s just not the type of product people publicly rally around or gush about. In some categories, physicians talk about the “goal of getting the patient off of medication,” furthering associated negativity. Often, a prescription medication is a product that consumers hate to have to take. They don’t want the disease, they don’t want the medication. The two go hand in hand. How can we flip this on its head and, where appropriate, help patients and healthcare providers see the positives?

3. Legal, Medical, Regulatory Review. “LMR.” It’s the arch enemy … The trifecta of doom …. The roadblock to all of your brilliant ideas. Right? Remember pharma companies have legal, regulatory, and medical reviewers for a reason: to keep patients safe and to keep the company within the law when promoting a product. While a pharma marketers’ job is to market a product, these guys keep you and the company out of trouble. (Talk about a thankless job!) The best marketing programs are born out of a mutual respect and healthy working relationship between the marketing and LMR teams. What have you done to help foster that lately?

4. “But I Want to Be Creative!” This is not an industry known for its brilliant marketing or creative advertising. I think that’s due to a variety of reasons. DTC television ads blasting side effects drive people to reach for the remote faster than you can say “oily discharge.” And sometimes the people in charge of marketing are under-qualified and don’t lean on the experts for advice. People also move around quite a bit on the client side, which hinders consistency, efficiency, and momentum. But hopefully those times are changing. And I’ve always maintained we have to be more creative with our programs due to regulatory hurdles. There are nuggets of marketing brilliance out there if you look for them. Often they are the on-the-ground, behind-the-scenes tactics not winning awards or being blogged about. We should all strive to do better, do more, and provide value.

5. There’s no rulebook. The rules aren’t written down. People new to pharma ask where the rulebook is for what can and can’t be done and said – especially when it comes to direct-to-consumer advertising in the U.S. And even when the rules are written down, as in the case of recent FDA draft guidance, they are up for interpretation. There’s no easy answer for this one. Each company must determine its own understanding and threshold for risk. And the more we watch and understand FDA mindset, the more likely we will be to stay within their (albeit nebulous) boundaries.

6. The decision-makers are many, and the reasons are complex. The reasons a prescription product is requested, prescribed, filled, and refilled are extremely complex. It goes without saying that there are many stakeholders and factors along the way. Consider the emotional, behavioral, financial, and psychographic drivers on the patient side, payer complexities, cost, coverage, physician preference, physician experience, switches at the pharmacy, and adherence barriers. The “sale” of a prescription product can feel completely out of your control and impossible to influence. Taking the time and effort to understand all of the aspects of this cycle for your particular product in your particular market will help create the formula that’s right for you. And watching and adjusting and optimizing things over time will make it even better.

7. ROI measurement is impossible. Or – at least – some people think it is. And sometimes people hide behind this statement to not make the extra effort to set KPIs and measure against them. Sure … when it comes to eCommerce, retail, consumer packaged goods, restaurants, and most other industries, less privacy barriers are in place and marketers clearly understand if their efforts are moving the needle. In pharma, it’s more difficult to understand the fruits of our labor. But with tools like Crossix, in many cases, ROI CAN be measured by tactic, channel, and creative execution. It’s not impossible. It just takes focus, planning and effort. It’s entirely possible that effort will pay for itself in the long run. We just have to have the guts to measure it.

I’d drafted this post prior to fellow (former) pharma blogger Jonathan Richman’s announcement that he was leaving the industry. His reasons I am sure are complex and many, but he does note that the pace of change is slow, and can be frustrating. And I realized that’s one of the “reasons” I missed. It’s true that change happens at a snail’s pace. I often say “big wheels turn very slowly.”

But change in pharma marketing hasn’t been completely non-existent. When I started this blog in 2008 I was most frustrated with the fact that digital marketing didn’t get any respect in the pharmaceutical industry. Online spending and focus just didn’t match up with the way consumers and professionals sought and consumed healthcare information. Today, that’s changed. Unfortunately it took a recession, a patent cliff, and an increased demand for proof of ROI to see that shift, but we’ve seen it.

Sometimes those of us in the industry get lucky enough to hear a patient say “thank you.” We see, first-hand, the difference one of our company’s products has made in the life of a person or family. Quality of life is improved. Worry is abated. Lives are saved. And it’s those moments that make it all worthwhile.

Maybe it’s time I stop apologizing for being a pharmaceutical marketer after all.

My Pollyanna View of Recent FDA Guidance

2012-01-10T11:49:00.002-06:00

Now that we’ve had time to digest it, the industry is bursting with reviews, opinions, analyses and unanswered questions stemming from FDA’s “Guidance for Industry: Responding to Unsolicited Requests for Off-Label Information About Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices,” issued Dec. 27. I weighed in with my initial “so what” analysis on the Intouch blog last week. In case you missed it, see it here.

There are many, many more reviews and analyses out there, of which Ignite’s Fabio Gratton has done a good job of curating into one handy Storify collection of more than 45 stories from other blogs, pharma companies, law firms, agencies, trade organizations and media. Wow! Talk about an industry that was hungry for some FDA news! Even Advertising Age and the Wall Street Journal Health Blog cared enough to weigh in on the topic. AstraZeneca also quickly acknowledged the release of the guidance, applauding FDA's "attention to these changing mediums."

But some of the reviews, articles, and related tweets were veiled (and not-so-veiled) complaints that FDA wasn’t more clear and that it wasn’t really social media guidance. I agree it wasn’t direct social media guidance and that plenty of questions remain. But I also believe it was important in that FDA not only acknowledged, in written guidance, that these new media exist and deserve reference, but they also provided helpful examples involving these new media. That, as far as I know, was a first.

Maybe I’m being Pollyanna and my glass is half-full on this one. Maybe if I'd taken an antognistic view, I'd garner more blog readers. Whatever. I still maintain that what we received in this document is better than what we had before. We'll take what we can get. And I hope it’s a harbinger of more clarification to come.

In case you missed them, in a nutshell, these were my six initial takeaways from my perspective:

1. Hooray for Clarity. While no doubt some questions remain, the direction is fairly specific in terms of not only what type of information can be used in responses, but also what information should and shouldn’t be provided in both public and private forums. FDA also provides an example where the use of a link to PI is appropriate. We applaud any communication from FDA that is clear (if not concise) on direction.

2. Time to Revisit Social Media Workflows. The guidance, though draft, provides enough information at this point to revisit existing social media workflows that address responawa to off-label inquiries or comments. In most cases, off-label inquiries are already routed through the appropriate channels, but FDA now lays out guidelines on how to publicly direct the queries.

3. Offline-to-Online SOPs. Since companies have been responding in a similar manner to requests for off-label information already, the document essentially acknowledges that – as many have done with social media – adapting offline processes for online application is the right way to go.

4. Let's Still Be Human. Those familiar with social media conversation norms will groan at the prospect of providing a response in a public forum in the manner in which FDA suggests. We should further assess how companies can best communicate in the manner and tone in which FDA requires without sounding like robots. Consumers won’t necessarily always welcome a terse response that redirects them to a different channel. Pharma and med device companies should work hard to craft responses that meet the requirements but still sound human!

5. Social Media Is Still an Option. FDA did not state that a company cannot respond to requests made via the Internet or social media. Indeed, the agency acknowledged that, if done correctly, pharmaceutical companies could be in a position to further the interest of public health by doing so.

6. Policing the Internet. FDA also did not state that companies are REQUIRED to respond to off-label inquiries; it’s the company’s choice. Pharma’s responsibility for policing the entire Internet was a hot topic at the 2009 hearings. This document gives us a peek into FDA’s position .

I’ll continue to noodle it and post my thoughts here. Interested in your thoughts too … am I reading too much into it with my Pollyanna perspective?

Social Media Posts that Keep Pharma Up at Night

2011-12-20T14:31:00.000-06:00

2011 was the year social media came of age in the pharmaceutical industry. Bold statement? Probably. And certainly all the discussions, efforts, and thinking that took place this year are yet to be realized in the public domain. Social media policies are being drafted, platforms are being planned, and some new social efforts are being launched.

Yet also – some social media plans are still being stalled. Why? One of the largest hurdles for a regulated company to get over is addressing the perceived risk that opens up with a social media presence. The very nature of user-generated content and lack of control can be a scary thing indeed for pharma. Some threats are obvious, and others are not. But with proper preparation, many (though not all) situations can be planned for.

We often help our clients work through these issues ahead of a launch with their legal and regulatory teams. Just as in marketing, one of the best things we can do during this process is put ourselves in the minds of our audience and understand their concerns and pain points.

What types of posts keep regulatory folks up at night?

The Adverse Event Reporter: “Hi. I took this medication for the first time yesterday, and I developed a migraine. I’d never had a migraine before. Is this from the medication or something else? What should I do?”
The Complainer/Nay-sayer: “I had some nasty side effects with this medication – wouldn’t recommend it to my worst enemy.”
The Industry Ranter: “Big Pharma is Bad News – the entire industry reeks of fraud and profiteering over patient safety. Reform is needed!“
The Antagonizer: When perusing the Nicorette Facebook site one day, I noticed the comment to this post (check out the last comment)

Charming.

Not necessarily what regulatory would be concerned about, but I can practically hear the ghosts of PR people past turning over in their graves. (And part of me wonders if the poster was John Mack just trying to stir up trouble anyway. Hmmm....)

So any of the above negative-toned posts could cause concern for a pharmaceutical company for various reasons.

And for not-so-obvious reasons, even positive comments can be a problem. May I introduce, for example:

The Miracle Worker: "This drug is so wonderful – it literally saved my son’s life. Thank you, thank you, thank you for developing this medication! It’s a MIRACLE!"
The Off-Labeler:"I know this is supposed to be prescribed for asthma but it really helped my allergies, too. Try it!"
The Cure Claimer: "My doctor said I’m cured. I’m so glad this medication is available."

Still? All of the above situations can be addressed within a moderated environment where all posts are reviewed and approved prior to going live. With the right processes and workflows in place, they can be handled swiftly, professionally, and with positive outcomes.

Consumers get a say, pharma stays safe, everyone goes home happy.

There is some healthy debate on the merits of a pre-moderation approach to social media. And I admit it is not a social-media-purist nor a perfect solution. But oftentimes in pharma, a little safety net is warranted. And moderation can be a “baby step” towards opening up discussion even further. 24/7 moderation is also a decent solution, providing the option to delete offending posts after-the-fact as long as they are caught. But that level of monitoring is not always necessary and can get expensive to manage.

So what's the right answer to dealing with the possible posts - bost positive and negative - that have pharma worryers saying "no" to social media still? Working as a team, its up to the marketing, legal, regulatory, and agency partners to decide the threshold of risk and the right approach for them.

100% Genuine

2011-10-11T09:14:00.000-05:00

Our CEO is a good guy. Recently I was reviewing a nomination that was written for him to receive some kind of award, and in the nomination was a list of adjectives Intouch associates had used to describe him. Among them was the word “genuine.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of “genuine” lately. As it applies to social media, people often use the words “authentic” and “transparent” – traits critical to effectively communicating in the social space. Honest, frank, open, unpretentious, and unaffected are words my Microsoft Word Thesaurus identifies as synonyms to genuine. Even current trends in food point to “organic” and “all-natural” … i.e., genuine. But what does “genuine” really mean, and why does it matter in today’s business environment?

I know from experience that for some people, being genuine is a difficult thing to be. I’ve had my moments over the years. But however lofty, I believe being genuine is indeed a worthwhile goal.

In an excellent book I’m currently reading, The Happiness Project, the author Gretchen Rubin challenges herself to “Be Gretchen.” The premise is that we’ll be happier if we stop trying to pretend to be someone we aren’t. Don’t apologize for who you are. Don’t be something you’re not. Don’t wish you were someone you aren’t.

I’ve seen companies (even if subconsciously) train their associates to be guarded. Why is that? If we don’t let our guard down, are we more likely to “sell” something? If we’re not guarded, might we accidentally give away some vital industry secret? Doubtful.

More likely, if we open up, we will make friends, build trust, open doors and connect with like-minded people.

Who or what is disingenuous? You see it from companies – yes, often, pharma companies – who communicate behind a veil of public relations fluff. You see it in agencies posturing to prove who's smarter than whom. You see it in bloggers who write with the sole purpose of being controversial to build readership – even if they may not always really believe what they write.

I’ve also seen and experienced in myself – and witnessed in others – that the more business experience and knowledge one obtains, the more confidence is built. And with more confidence in your own opinions and one’s self comes a diminishing need for faking it.

Are the disiplines of sales and marketing naturally disingenuous? They don't have to be.

So let’s hear it for aspiring to be ourselves. For being - simply - who we are. For letting down the guard. For being bold enough to be genuine.

What if Every Marketer Had the Disease?

2011-09-19T15:03:00.004-05:00

I've been thinking about something lately. It's actually been knocking around in my head for months. I've hesitated more than once to share it here. But I think it's compelling and important enough to do so. And being here at the 2011 ePatient Connections conference, the thought is both salient and timely:

What if the prerequisite for being a pharma product manager was to have a chronic disease, the very condition which the marketed product treated?

What if all their marketing partners also lived with the condition?

These questions first came to me earlier this year at the DTC National Conference. The conference wasn’t focused on patients, per se, the way this week’s ePatient Connections conference is. But several speakers at DTC told their own “patient” stories at DTC:

Myrtle Potter, former President and CEO of Genentech, shared her near-death experience of hospitalization, insisting on answers, and a self-diagnosis that led to recovery. Patient empowerment likely saved her life.
Jerry Levin of AOL and Time, Inc. fame spoke at DTC about the social graph. But he made sure to share his story as a patient as well: he's been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.

We see this often. Speakers make the point that they, too, have been a patient in order to establish credibility and speak from perspective. Many of us have heard the always-insightful WeGo Health Activists provide advice to pharma (I heard them this year at the Social Media for Pharma conference and then again at Digital Pharma West.)

They are all powerful testimonies, straight from the heart. And straight from somebody who "has been there." Who has lived the struggles. Who understands what it's like to be "a patient" in today's healthcare environment. These stories are played out every day ... by our friends, family, neighbors, colleagues ... and customers who take our products. In thousands of forums and blogs online.

What if everyone that made decisions on how to market a product to consumers
actually had the disease?

How different would pharma marketing be?

Especially with the current buzz (and hopefully true trend) towards pharma having a more customer-centric approach (see more on that here), it is an interesting question to ponder. (Though let me make it clear I do not wish a health malady on anyone … even those few unkind clients from my early agency years ...really ... not even them ...)

Are pharma marketers who live with a chronic condition more likely to be better marketers? Are they more compassionate? Can they better communicate with patients because they are “one of them?” Do they approach things differently? Do they have more empathy? Do they truly look at things with a patient-centric viewpoint? Would they be more inclined to fight for things like two-way dialogue, for more meaningful connections? For providing value instead of sending out broadcast messages?

Perhaps. I've met some of these marketers along the way. They are out there, scattered across the pharma sphere. I’ve worked alongside some, and there does seem to be an added passion. But I’ve also worked with many compassionate, brilliant marketers whose only connection to the condition is their position at the company.

Does a personal connection to the condition create an unwanted bias?

If a product manager lives with the condition day in and day out, it certainly gives new meaning to understanding the audience. It certainly goes beyond focus groups, surveys, advisory boards, and social media monitoring.

Perhaps with the tools currently at our disposal, and with emerging disciplines like health psychology, as pharma marketers we will not only keep doing what we're doing, we'll aim to do better. We’ll strive to understand and respect each individual story. We will spend the effort, budget, and resources to understand our consumer audiences and understand them more as “people” and less as nameless “patients.”

And we won’t need to live with the condition to do an exceptional job of understanding perspective and provide value.

Author and patient advocate Dave deBronkart (@ePatientDave) tweeted today that “pts are the most underutilized resource in healthcare.”

I tend to agree. Do you?

In the end, it’s not possible, practical, and perhaps not even a good idea that every product manager have the condition for which he or she is entrenched. But the least we can do is to continue to learn as much as we can from – and listen carefully to – those that have been there by no choice of their own.

Test and Learn

2011-08-31T08:47:00.001-05:00

I’ve blogged in the past about the myriad of reasons why pharma marketers don't measure their marketing results. Several years and a full recession later, it still floors me how many marketers don’t review website analytics, email open rates, and the like. Or they might glance at a report, but not even pretend to act on the findings. Forget about actually tying program results to prescription data.

We had a planning meeting with a client yesterday and we talked a lot about optimizing the website. Let’s be honest -- these conversations aren’t sexy or exciting to most people. Discussions around improving registration forms for higher conversion rates or A/B testing of home page designs make many marketers’ eyes glaze over. Clients are often more likely to pay attention to the dog-and-pony presentations with The Big Idea. And that’s a shame.

Learn more about the "3 P's of Web Optimization and Testing"

With all the talk of social media, the absence of DDMAC Intranet guidelines, and the emergence of mobile, it’s easy to forget there are still a plethora of digital basics that can be safely deployed and shrewdly optimized for extremely cost-efficient results.

So you’ve recently launched your website, email campaign, online advertising, mobile app, or other digital initiative. Hooray for you! After all that work and likely many rounds of legal, medical, and regulatory review, you and your team are exhausted. Time to move on to the next project, right? Not exactly ...

"Don’t believe anyone that launches your digital program and tells you it’s the best it can be."

Don’t believe anyone that launches your digital program and tells you it’s the best it can be. No website is ever the best it can be at launch. There are too many unknowns. Every situation, every disease state, every product, every audience, every initiative is vastly different from the others, and with infinite variables.

Are you testing different creative executions? Reviewing and adjusting your SEO and pay-per-click campaigns? Analyzing pathways? Actively striving for optimal user experience? Comparing ROI?

If a consumer or healthcare professional reaches your website to actively learn about what it is you have to offer, don’t you want that experience to be the best it can be?

Life is a series of lessons. Don’t miss out on the ones your digital initiatives can teach you.

The Many Perspectives of Customer-Centric Marketing

2011-06-30T19:00:00.002-05:00

This week I attended the first-ever Customer Centric Marketing for Pharma conference hosted by EyeForPharma in Philadelphia. Here’s alittle background on the conference and why I’m involved, and a recap from my colleague Joey Barnes.
This was the inaugural event of a new conference with a unique slant:

"How can the pharmaceutical industry

truly put the CUSTOMER in the middle

of its sales and marketing efforts?"

My blog analytics tell me conference recaps are some of the most popular posts – so I figured it’d be very “customer-centric” of me to once again provide a review of key points and highlights from the conference!

Many Perspectives

Honestly, I went into the conference wondering how we could spend two days talking about customer centricity and just how much could be said about it. These days, there are few related public pharma case studies and it seems the theme is really just now catching on in this industry. But the speakers were actually quite diverse and provided a wide spectrum of perspectives. Here’s a sampling:

Jacquelyn Nowik, Senior Product Manager, Takeda
Jacquelyn Nowik, Senior Product Manager, Takeda kicked things off on day one with a lively presentation, reminding us “80% of the business comes from 20% of the customers.” But somewhere along the way, pharmaceutical companies forgot this. And marketers don’t talk about it because they’re not willing to give up anything. She offered these three guiding principles to Customer Centric Marketing:

1. Acquire new customers that have the best potential to become long term customers/partners.

2. Identify, develop, and allocate resources early on to these customers that have the greatest potential to evolve into high value.

3. Interact with your high value customers as if they are high value.

I liked her point, “It’s okay to speak to just 10 people if they are the right 10 people.”

How many pharma marketers are comfortable with that approach? (In my experience, not many.)

She also urged pharma to ASK its customers: “Do you like what we’re doing? What do you want us to be doing?” Most pharmas aren’t asking – and you don’t even need market researchers to find the answers.

Eric Dube, Vice President, Oncology, GSK
Eric emphasized his points with the pharma sins of the past: “We’ve operated in a ‘tell and sell’ mentality with an army of sales reps. We’ve worked to outshout competition and payers. And we’ve had the same approach with DTC. It was all about volume, and our incentives were aligned that way. Things are fundamentally different now. No wonder only 1 in 9 people see pharma as trustworthy and honest -- because we’ve always been on our own agenda.” (paraphrased)

He then went on to explain that customer-centric marketing in pharma starts with (re-)building trust. And recognizing that customers (rightly so) expect a lot.

He gave a nice example of one simple way GSK is getting better at this: GSK’s Call Center was receives calls from patients who use GSK’s respiratory medication. They noticed a trend in patients who felt the product wasn’t working because they thought the device wasn’t dispensing the product. Call Center reps figured out the answer was to ask the patients to get a dark piece of paper and tap the device on it. Then, the patient would see the white powder on the paper, and call center reps would explain the powder is the medicine, and that you don’t need very much of it. Patients were satisfied with the answer, became more compliant as a result (so HCPs were happier, too), and GSK discovered ways to further this message outside Call Center conversations for even greater impact.

He also referenced GSK's new model for measuring sales force effectiveness as an example of incentivizing customer-centricity in novel ways.

There’s a perceived paradox between driving value for shareholders and customers, he said. But these can be aligned.

Joanna Colvin, Vice President of Social Media, Citibank

Another refreshing perspective was that from Joanna Colvin, Citibank. Not surprisingly, there are many parallels between the highly regulated pharmaceutical and financial industries, and her presentation further underscored that. She explained her “Bermuda Triangle” of engaging in social media in the financial sector:

1. Information security

2. Legal

3. Compliance

Sound familiar?

Joanna started doing social media for Citibank at the tail-end of the financial crisis, so monitoring revealed quite a bit of negative sentiment. To open up the lines of communication, her team cross-trained Citi customer service employees to handle the @AskCiti Twitter handle. There, they engaged with people online and worked to answer their questions and concerns. Today, the program which started small is now a 24/7 operation and is being scaled to more than 20 countries.

She also shared a few good tips about working with Legal:

· The thing about working with Legal is, they’re just doing their job. And you’re just doing yours.

· Her team hired their own digital lawyers, and this “was a good move.” This way, they had a dedicated resource, a digital expert, and a single point of contact for direction and decisions.

A few more favorite nuggets of advice from her presentation included:

· “To do this job, you have to be good at communications, have people skills, and understand everyone is just doing their job. And you have to get really good at doing workflows.”

· “I tend to not ‘launch’ anything. Ever. Calling it a pilot or test or soft-launch is a lot less scary, and a lot more comfortable for all involved. Go live – but don’t call it a launch. Language makes a huge difference.”

You can follow Jackie at @jocolv (personal) or @citi (corporate) to see their model in action.

Pamela Alexa, Vice President, Marketing, Pfizer
Pamela said more than once during her presentation that she has the “best job in the industry.” She leads the marketing efforts for Pfizer’s pediatric vaccines, and one of these products has no competition. She pointed out that, with no competition, they could certainly afford to behave in a non-customer-centric approach. But part of Pfizer’s vision is to be “customer-obsessed,” and she gave a nice example of how they recently brought that vision to life:

After the American Academy of Pediatrics urged vaccine manufactures for more eco-friendly product packaging, Pfizer had the idea on their radar screen. And when a key physician customer sent a letter to the Pfizer CEO calling for the same, they “had a motivated CEO” to look into it further.

But – she pointed out – really, why should they care about eco-friendly packaging? The products required cold-chain shipping; if anything went wrong it could disrupt supply and cost a lot of money. They didn’t have any competition. Changing packaging wouldn’t save them any money. And it wouldn’t sell more products.

Why did they care? They decided that – because it was the right thing to do, and their customers were asking for it – they should at least take a closer look. And in the end, they decided it was worth doing. In a few weeks, they’ll be rolling out the new green packaging which will save two Burj buildings' full of landfill space. And, they discovered, they can actually re-sell the Styrofoam packaging and make it a revenue source. They redesigned their packaging ahead of legislation and ahead of other vaccine manufactures. And their customers were delighted.

My Perspective

I did notice that despite the variety of perspectives, the majority of conference speakers interpreted the “customer” as the physician. I certainly recognize and understand the physician -- and increasingly, P.A.’s and N.P’s – are the gatekeepers of the prescription. But if we ignore the product end-user – the consumer – as the customer, is that truly being customer-centric? As Pamela Alexa from Pfizer pointed out,

Marketers must “understand all your customers – but also how all customers interact. … A brand needs a customer but a customer may not need a brand. Ask yourself: What are you doing to provide value? Consider the total experience.”

While it wasn’t the best conference I’ve ever been to by any stretch, the fact that there IS a conference on customer-centric marketing for pharma is certainly a step in the right direction.

It was a good start. I hope the industry keeps the theme going -- in both theory and practice.

PharmaWall Lets Pharma and Facebook Still be Friends

2011-06-20T10:13:00.008-05:00

As most people in pharma marketing circles know by now, Facebook officially announced changes to their commenting policies on Facebook Pages with the following communication:

Previously, pharmaceutical brands could submit a request through their Facebook Sales Representative to disable commenting on their Facebook Page. Starting today, Facebook will no longer allow admins of new pharma Pages to disable commenting on the content their Page shares with people on Facebook. Pages that currently have commenting disabled will no longer have this entitlement after August 15th. Subject to Facebook's approval, branded Pages solely dedicated to a prescription drug may (continue to) have commenting functionality removed. (this is a portion of the full communication; reprinted with permission)

Pharma companies -- especially those in the U.S. -- relied on this option to disable comments as a way to engage on Facebook in a more controlled manner. It was one of the few ways companies could have a presence, yet remain mindful of the risks of two-way, open dialogue in this highly regulated space.

[NOTE: If you’re new to this issue or need a refresher, see my previous ePharmaRx blog post and the original post from Jim Dayton on intouchsol.com. It’s also been written up by ClickZ, Dose of Digital, MMandM, Advertising Age, InsideFacebook, and many others.]

In a Perfect World …
Where does this leave the product managers, communications managers, and the agencies that support them that have – or have in progress – pharma Facebook pages? Well, in a perfect world …

In a perfect world, a pharma brand wouldn’t approach Facebook or social media any differently than other industries.
In a perfect world, pharma would embrace social media as a way to connect at a personal level with a patient population that often sees Big Bad Pharma as a faceless, inhuman, profiteering enemy.
In a perfect world, pharma would embrace Facebook as a place to provide help, hope, and support on products and conditions where millions of people dwell every day.
In a perfect world, consumers would understand FDA/DDMAC rules and regulations and would not post anything off-label – whether positive or negative – on a pharma Facebook page.

Obviously our world is far from perfect. And the wrath of FDA is very real. There are many people whose job is to keep their pharma company from getting a warning letter. And to those people … open, unmoderated discussions in a forum such as Facebook often just simply are not worth the risk.

What’s the Big Deal?
I live and market in the U.S. where the industry is heavily regulated by a warning-letter-happy FDA. Pharma legal and regulatory folks’ concern around open forums like Facebook are many, and they are valid. They worry that users will mention off-label uses for the product, make unsubstantiated positive (“this drug cured me!”) or negative (“this drug sucks!”) claims, attack or harass the company, talk about unrelated symptoms, mention side effects, or provide misinformation via their Facebook Page. With commenting enabled on all Facebook Pages, users can now openly engage in this activity. It is probably unlikely, but even a 1% likelihood is what keeps the regulatory and legal folks up at night. And thanks to FDA’s lack of guidance on the subject, it’s unclear whether a pharma company is liable for this user-generated content or not.

Remaining Options
There are a number of options available for pharma companies still interested in engaging on Facebook. And I’d maintain that if they were interested in Facebook before the policy change, these options or a combination of these options will absolutely still allow them to safely maintain a Facebook presence. Jim Dayton did a great review of options for pharma companies wishing to use Facebook, and I’d recommend you read his post. Among them,

1. Moderation applications - a solid option for some; more on this in a bit ...
2. 24/7 monitoring and moderation - also a great option if you have the resources. Around-the-clock moderation allows for the best of both worlds: real-time conversations and well-trained eyes watching for violative content. However, few pharma companies are setup or are dedicated enough to do this
3. Branded Facebook pages - there aren't many of these now, and some might ask, "what's the point" if dialogue isn't allowed
4. Personal representation - similar to a trained media spokesperson, some have had success with this model
5. Advertising - though not truly "social," it's a controlled way for pharma to have a presence and get the word out where they need to. (No, Facebook didn’t pay me to say that.)

Page owners can also create a list of words that Facebook will block if contained within a comment. For example, on an unbranded page, if someone mentions the product name or the word “cure,” you can set up Facebook so that it automatically holds these comments for later review. But this feature in Facebook can’t detect sarcasm, can’t interpret tone, and can’t always account for “mis$pelling$ and other trix” people use to post what they want. If they’re determined, they will find a way to get past your filter. And if they are successful, their post will go live immediately and you’ve exposed yourself to risk. In our experience this feature helps a little, but it’s far from foolproof. And it’s not failsafe enough for the folks responsible for keeping their company from getting a warning letter.

PharmaWall’s Pharma-Friendly Features
But back to the first option: moderation applications. For pharma companies that choose this option, my agency, Intouch Solutions, has a Facebook monitoring and moderation tool called PharmaWall. Here’s how it works:

1. A user submits a post or comment (“content”) to the Facebook page. Expectations are then set with the user that their post or comment is being sent for review.
2. PharmaWall detects the content and notifies a designated administrator.
3. The administrator reviews the content in the queue and decides whether it will be approved, revised or declined.
4. If the content is approved, it publishes to the Facebook page.
5. Copies of all content—as well as decisions to approve, revise or decline—are documented for later review.

People can still “like,” post, and comment on your Facebook content. Their “likes” and comments are shared with their friends, too. PharmaWall also still allows the display of messages in the news feeds of all Facebook members who have “liked” the page, keeping them up-to-date on your latest news and information. There’s just an added safety net for pharma’s peace of mind.

We’ve mentioned PharmaWall in a few places before today. We’ve had the app live on several Facebook Pages for some time. But knowing that the August 15 deadline is looming and companies and their agencies are clamoring for options on what to do, we wanted to get the word out about PharmaWall as an option.

So we we launched a little website about the product, www.thepharmawall.com, including a video that takes you through the functionality. And we built an unbranded demo on Facebook for a fake condition called "LowEnergy." Give it a “Like” and take it for a spin. If you want to see the Admin side, you can request a demo. If you’re interested in speaking with someone about PharmaWall or our monitoring/moderation services, just let me know.

Love it or hate it, the combination of the current environments of both Facebook and FDA make apps like PharmaWall a viable option for pharmas that want to meet in the middle between regulation and engagement.

It’s (Almost) August 15 – Do you Have a Plan?
Pharma marketing/advertising development and review cycles are kind of like dog years. What one might expect should take weeks to develop/approve can take months. This makes Facebook’s August 15 deadline even closer. Do you have a Facebook Page live or in development? And if you do … does your Facebook Page have a plan?

Whether you decide a moderation application, 24/7 monitoring, creating a 'blocklist' or a combination of solutions is right for you, wheels should be set in motion now.

A new concept in pharma marketing?

2011-06-15T17:00:00.000-05:00

Lilly announced a new initiative today for consumers. According to the press release,

lillyforbetterhealth.com

"Lilly for Better Health™, a program of Lilly USA, LLC, (NYSE: LLY) that helps Americans live healthier, more active lives, launches an enhanced multi-channel platform designed to reach patients where they like to receive health information. The platform includes an array of patient education materials, Lilly programs and partnerships that help patients manage their health, a dynamic website – lillyforbetterhealth.com – and, coming soon, the Lilly Health Channel on YouTube."

There was speculation on Twitter about what this all meant. Industry blogger and consultant Michele Petersen (@shelleypetersen) expected the initiative to eventually link to electronic health records (which could make sense on some levels). And the editor of Med Ad News, Christiane Truelove (@ChristianeTrue) speculated, “#Lilly-branded health and wellness services? That would be the most logical way to go.”

I hadn’t been aware of this initiative, but it caught my eye, and reminded me of what sanofi-aventis [client] has publicly stated of its vision:

"Our goal is to become a total partner in diabetes care,” said Dennis Urbaniak, “an organization aimed at health, not just treatment. And as a partner, we must truly understand the diabetes community and their needs – and then try to fulfill those."

I think these are excellent developments in pharmaceutical DTC marketing and communications. Why? Because the companies are providing something of value “beyond the pill” to its customers. They are looking at the bigger picture. They are approaching things with their customers’ needs first, and their own needs second. They’re practicing what many today are preaching: the need for customer centric marketing.

A new concept? No. Gaining momentum in the pharma world? Definitely.

In December of last year, a representative from EyeForPharma contacted me about a new concept for a pharma marketing conference. Yes – there are many digital and social and mobile marketing conferences and you can debate the differences, similarities, and value – or lack thereof – of these conferences. (Generally, I do see their value.) But I was especially excited to hear is idea for this new conference focus: “customer centric solutions for pharma.”

The conference organizer had seen this past post – Pharma, it’s not about you anymore – and wanted to talk more.

So guess what? EyeForPharma will hold its 1st annual “Customer Centric Marketing for Pharma” conference in Philadelphia in a few weeks – June 27-28. Details here.

Because they're planning 6-9 months or more in advance, conference organizers must stay on top of – if not ahead of – what’s going on in the industry. If the theme of customer centricity wasn’t a hot topic across the industry, they wouldn’t be dedicating two days to it.

Are you interested in attending? I ended up agreeing to speak at the conference and then also decided that – because we really believe in the theme – Intouch Solutions could help sponsor it. The good news for you is that translates to big savings if you’re interested in attending. Register on their website and use code ITS2011 for $400 off or 2 for 1 passes.

So the idea of customer centric marketing really is gaining steam among the pharma marketing world as evidenced in recent “Big Pharma” initiatives as well as a new conference focus.

And that makes this pharma marketer a customer centric happy camper.

Why'd they do it? What does it mean? More Facebook Questions Answered

2011-05-20T10:02:00.003-05:00

At several industry conferences this spring (DTC National and SM for Pharma and likely others) and all across the blogosphere the pharma marketing industry has been abuzz with rumors about a change Facebook would be making to its pages.

The issue at hand was that Facebook would no longer allow pharma companies to turn "off" the commenting functionality on their Facebook pages. Pharma had found this a convenient option in Facebook as a way to still have a Facebook presence, yet maintain complete control over the conversation in order to avoid perceived regulatory risks.

Facebook made an official announcement this week, setting the record straight:

Facebook will no longer allow admins of new pharma Pages to disable commenting on the content their Page shares with people on Facebook. Pages that currently have commenting disabled will no longer have this entitlement after August 15th. Subject to Facebook's approval, branded Pages solely dedicated to a prescription drug may (continue to) have commenting functionality removed.

It's kind of confusing. It took me a while to understand the key issue was really between the ability to POST and the ability to COMMENT on existing posts. For a more in-depth explanation and helpful visuals, I recommend:

Jim Dayton's point-of-view document. Jim is our Sr Director, Emerging Media. He has had multiple conversations with Facebook on this and received permission to reprint the original Facebook email sent to key contacts.
Jonathan Richman's thorough review here at Dose of Digital, titled "Pharma Facebook Commenting Changes: The Final Story." Also with helpful visuals.
Novartis' Brad Pendergraph also had the cool idea to setup a wiki to aggregate info on the topic, but it needs updating per the new information.

What’s the change mean?
Jim and Jon both outline several options around how pharma can still participate in Facebook. If you have or are planning to have a Facebook page for your pharma brand, franchise, corporate presence, etc. you need to read these because the rules have definitely changed. Animal health, medical device, and other similary regulated healthcare industries should pay attention as well.

What does it not mean?

The change does not mean a huge step backward for pharmaceutical companies to participate in social media.

Somewhere along the way, the words “social” and “Facebook” became synonomous. It's true Facebook is where the masses are – and Facebook is likely the most familiar example of social media to many marketers and legal/medical/regulatory folks. But Facebook is not the be-all, end-all of social opportunities. And its not even right for every – perhaps not even right for most – pharmaceutical products’ social presence. Take a cue from companies like sanofi-aventis (client), Roche, and AstraZeneca to learn about some more integrated approaches to participating in social media in a much broader context.

Why’d they do it?

Honestly, sometimes we have no idea why Facebook does the things they do. And some might interpret the news as anti-pharma and imply that Facebook doesn’t want pharma advertising dollars.

Facebook points out, "Facebook Pages are a free product for organizations, public figures, businesses, and brands to express themselves and have an authentic, engaging, two-way dialog with people on Facebook."

Note the mention of “authentic” several times in their email. Our guess as to why they made the decision is that they want Facebook to be used as Facebook was intended – for true “two-way dialogue.” Facebook wants their users’ experience to be consistent from page to page, and to be interactive. "Dis-allowing" commenting goes away from that vision.

In recent months, Facebook has made a more concerted effort to work with the industry and agencies like us to understand implications and communicate changes in advance. Some may disagree with that statement, but remember Facebook doesn’t owe this industry anything. It's a free service. I imagine they have a lot less ad dollars to lose than Google or Yahoo! did, who tweaked their own ad models to accommodate industry regulatory challenges

Is this the final word from Facebook?

I liked how Jon Richman stayed out of the fray until the official word was out from Facebook, and his analysis is a good one. I also thought it brave for Jon to title his blog post "The Final Story." Because in our experience -- in all things social media and especially with Facebook -- things are in constant flux. They keep us all on our toes. More than once I've seen our Emerging Media team raise their fists in the air, faces red and twisted, emitting their primal, gutteral yell "Zuckerberggggg!" It's actually pretty crazy how often things change with Facebook, especially behind the scenes.

So no, it's likely that this is the final word, but just a chapter in a never-ending novel. And this is just a really good example of why it takes a village to manage a social media presence. Someone always needs to be watching out for these things, analyzing the implications, and troubleshooting solutions.

Perhaps, in the long run, this will be a good thing for pharma: To use social media as social media was intended - for authentic conversations and true two-way dialogue with patients.

Happy Birthday, Bad Ad! “Paging Dr. Nark” Program Bearing Fruit

2011-05-11T11:45:00.001-05:00

In case you didn’t notice, FDA has been busy rolling out “results” of its BadAd program.

FDA launched the BadAd program exactly one year ago -- May 11, 2010 -- encouraging physicians to report pharma marketing and sales shenanigans to FDA. Here’s the FDA letter to healthcare professionals inviting them to participate in the program some have likened to hiring government spies. Here, also, is a presentation from FDA in April 2011 providing an explanation and update on the program. The program, by the way, was created by two former sales representatives with 11 years combined selling experience.

For awhile, we hadn’t seen the BadAd program bear any “fruit.” However, over the past several months, FDA has issued four letters to pharmaceutical companies, making it clear each time that these specific admonitions were a result of BadAd.

Here’s a quick recap and some commentary on the letters, issued to Hill Pharmaceuticals (for a website), Three Rivers (Dear HCP letter), Forest (sales rep verbal statement), and Warner Chilcott (YouTube video) ...

1. Hill Pharmaceuticals – Derma-Smoothe (website)
Dec. 2010 – In this inaugural BadAd letter, FDA cited Hill Pharmaceuticals for violative content on its Derma-Smoothe website. They said several pages on the site were false and misleading “because they omit and minimize the risks associated with the use of Derma-Smoothe Body Oil, overstate its efficacy, present unsubstantiated superiority claims, broaden and inadequately communicate the indication, and present unsubstantiated claims for the drug product.”

It seemed an extreme example. FDA shared images of Hill's website (below), and if you haven't seen them, now you understand why FDA and anyone else would have an issue with it from both a regulatory and aesthetic viewpoint ...

John Mack features a quote from the president of Hill, and a survey on his blog.

I’d seen this news, but at the time I didn’t think much of BadAd. Then I saw the letters kept coming ...

2. Three Rivers – Infergen (HCP letter)

March 2011 - Kadmon’s Three Rivers Pharmaceuticals received a BadAd letter addressing a company “STATgram” communication for Infergen, a hepatitis C treatment. Infergen’s label carries a black-box warning. The violations included the usual suspects - risk was information minimized or omitted, claims were inflated, and the indication was broadened. These are the typical violations that pharma knows it shouldn’t do, and the letter didn’t particularly stand out as out of the ordinary.

3. Forest Laboratories – Savella (verbal statement)

May 2011 - Forest Labs received a letter last week for misleading claims about its fibromyalgia drug Savella. The letter stated Forest was promoting unapproved uses for the drug, making unsubstantiated superiority and mechanism of action claims and minimizing serious risks associated with Savella. The channel? Words out of a sales reps’ mouth.

This one was the most interesting to me. A physician reported to FDA that what a sales rep said verbally was in violation.

This is actually precisely where BadAd makes a lot sense for FDA, because FDA reviewers certainly cannot monitor every conversation that every sales rep has with a physician. But it does raise a situation of “he said, she said,” doesn’t it? I am not implying the reporting physician is lying. (In my opinion/experience, there’s a pretty good chance the rep was in violation and the physician was just reporting what he/she heard.) But it does raise the question ... Did the rep get a chance to address the situation before the letter was issued publicly? Was something the rep said possibly misinterpreted?

Forest certainly has its own issues with our federal government, including an attempt by FDA to oust their CEO. But I’d be concerned if we see more of these “he said/she said” types of letters. Where will it end?

How does FDA prove there was misbehavior in cases like this? John Mack listened to a recent FDA webinar on BadAd and quoted FDA's response to a similar question:

"We have a very high level of evidence that we require that often includes an affidavit ... and verification as well. So, we do have a very high ... standard of evidence that we require before taking enforcement action." No further details were given.

4. Warner Chilcott – Atelvia (YouTube video)
Announced just this week, Warner Chilcott got the long arm and heavy hand of the BadAd program in yet another example of sales reps behaving badly (BadAdly?). This one involved a short video on Altevia (their osteoporosis drug) that was posted on YouTube. The video had violations all over the place, including superiority claims, omission of risk and safety, overstatement of efficacy, etc. The kicker? The letter states that the video was "posted by the sales representative on the website YouTube.com under the direction of a Warner Chilcott District Manager."

It looks like FDA caught their first example of bad “home-made promotional materials not submitted to FDA, as they stated was a goal.

Some will see this letter and think it was about YouTube. (FYI, this isn’t the first time FDA issued warnings for YouTube videos.)

This wasn’t about YouTube. It was about rogue reps and district managers making poor choices.

What’s actually most interesting to me about this letter is the physician must have been searching on YouTube for information about Atelvia.

Too bad WC didn’t instead have an approved YouTube page to provide responsible, compliant information in place of the rep’s home-baked video. And perhaps, if they’d had a YouTube presence, company officials would have been aware of the rogue rep video, (that's assuming they weren’t aware until FDA brought it to their attention).

* * *

So that’s four letters in a year. Not bad, BadAd. Not bad. We’ll keep watching and waiting for what the next year may hold.

FDA to Research Branded Websites on the Interwebz

2011-05-04T21:15:00.001-05:00

Last week, FDA announced it would conduct research to better understand how DTC information is presented on branded websites and how it influences consumers' perception and understanding.

They're sponsoring three studies to examine how these website elements influence consumer understanding of product benefits and risks:

Risk information on branded sites - including how scrolling of risk information affects comprehension, and the differences when info is presented via paragraph, bulleted list, checklist, highlighted box, or animated spokesperson
Features such as personal testimonial videos and interactive visuals
Links to and citations from external organizations referenced on the homepage

Pharmalot and EyeOnFDA already weighed in on the topic, and here's the more-than-you-probably-really-want-to-know version of the proposal on the Federal Register.

A colleague asked me what I thought about it, and I thought I'd share my thoughts here as well.

• In case you missed it, DDMAC just delivered results from a TV DTC study at the DTC National conference last month (my wrap-up here). Amie O’Donoghue, Social Science Analyst, DDMAC, presented findings from a four-year study that began in 2007 (yeah – you read that right - it took four years) on the impact and effectiveness of distractions such as supers in DTC TV ads. At the time, I was surprised they weren't presenting findings from digital studies (now we know - plans were underway). You can peruse those TV findings online here.

• FDA/DDMAC is very data-driven. Surrounding the Nov. 2009 hearing, they invited industry to share any market research on digital/social channels to better understand the medium. And my guess is, industry probably didn't choose to open that door, and/or they don't have the data FDA sought. So FDA felt it need to (spend our tax dollars to) do their own studies.

• I actually very much welcome FDA to study the digital medium. I've always been a big advocate of data-driven decisions. And if they study it closely, perhaps then they’ll (hopefully) understand it better. Perhaps they will see that the forced interpretation of their own (non)rules is causing MORE confusion around health information – not the clarity that they seek on behalf of patient safety. Perhaps they will see it's not as easy as one thinks to decide if a scrolling box vs. a bulleted list vs. a paragraph in a box has more impact. And that it does take time, money, and resources to carefully and thoroughly evaluate these things.

• Perhaps the outcomes will provide much-needed clarity. For example, the FDA has issued warning letters for patient testimonial videos in the past (here's one for Abbott and another for Wyeth/Pfizer). Immediately after these letters were issued, there was a ripple effect of patient testimonial videos being pulled off pharma websites across the industry. Perhaps DDMAC's new studies will show that, if the videos are done a certain way, then they are fair and balanced and acceptable.

• Some industry observers have predicted this will further delay social media guidance. I’m not qualifed to predict if it will or won't and I certainly don't have an FDA crystal ball. But it does seem like they should have been doing these studies well in advance of the FDA hearing on the Internet and social media, or at least kicked them off sooner so that the results would help drive guidance.

• As Mark Senak so eloquently pointed out, we're nearly 15 years into the Internet and these studies seem a bit late to the party. My question is, where are plans for similar studies into communications via social and mobile channels?

Yes, I'll be interested to see these results and the impact they have on the way we approach digital DTC. But suffice it to say that I wouldn’t expect any outcomes from this one very soon, despite their stated timeline of completion "anywhere between late 2011 and early 2013."

When will they learn to stop giving themselves deadlines?

More from DTC National: Days 2-3

2011-04-15T15:33:00.007-05:00

This is the second post of a two-part series reviewing highlights of the three days of the DTC National Conference in Boston April 6-8 2011. First, a few notes:

Here's my DTC National Day One roundup.
I also recommend these great insights from Ellen Hoenig Carlson
Speaker presentations are posted online here

Day Two at the DTC National

Day two of the DTC National kicked things into high gear and featured a star lineup of speakers – including pseudo-celeb beautiful people Dr. Lisa Masterson and Dr. Jim Sears, practicing physicians and co-hosts of the 2010 Emmy-winning daytime syndicated talk show The Doctors and columnists for USA Weekend.

We also heard from Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer, and co-author of “How to Make Money with Social Media.” I enjoyed Tara Parker-Pope, Consumer Health columnist for The New York Times and blogger for health blog, “Well,” on NYTimes.com. She offered a peek behind the curtain at a major national health blog read by millions, and was a strong and charming speaker.

In fact all of these speakers were strong, entertaining, and effectively held the audience’s attention. But to be honest - I struggled to find the relevance to my and my clients’ day-to-day challenges.

There were, however, two panels that day I particularly enjoyed:

WEGO Health CEO Jack Barrette moderated a panel with others as he presented findings from the WEGO Health survey of Health Activists and their views on pharma’s involvement in social media. This was the same survey WEGO presented so eloquently at the 2009 FDA Hearing, but was updated for 2011.

Jack is always great with the sound bites and the one that resonated to me this time was “Health activists still want pharma to participate in social media. But that sentiment has shifted from a welcome mat to ‘get here fast.’ The presentation and survey findings are posted on Slideshare here.

There were three breakout sessions from which to choose in the afternoon. I attended “The Great DTC Debate – Evaluating Program Success,” which addressed the evolution of measurement tools to keep pace with measuring DTC success. Panelists included Meryl Weinreb, President of Somerset Lake Consulting, Inc.; Asaf Evenhaim, CEO, Crossix; Kathleen Onieal, Consultant, The Monitor Group; and Scott Reese, CEO, Wool Labs.

With the rise of digital marketing, the amount of data to measure, evaluate, and optimize has exploded. I am a big fan of analytics and I’ve blogged in the past on my feelings of why some pharma marketers don’t bother to measure their programs. [see Ignoring Analytics: Ignorance, Arrogance, or Fear?] This session provided meaningful direction on why that reticence to measure can and should change.

Using tools like Crossix, marketers can use prescription-level data to effectively plan and determine which campaigns, channels, and tactics are getting results. These articles from Crossix in the DTC Perspectives magazine provide a strong sense of how powerful this information can be. Asaf Evenhaim, CEO of Crossix, reviewed this data during the session:

Are your savings offers effectively reaching the right audience? When it comes to the types of patients free offers impact, the channel of distribution matters. The Crossix data demonstrated that the majority of "free trial offer" savings distributed via in-office were redeemed by existing patients, while offers garnered through DTC were most often redeemed by new patients. Whether your goals are new Rx's or retention, this is powerful data that could save marketers a lot of money over the long term.
How long does it take for consumers to convert to your brand? It's probably not surprising that the conversion curve for Rx medications depends on at least the product, the category, the tactic and the execution/creative. But even with all of these variables, there are averages and norms that can be derived from Rx-based analyses. These norms run across these variables and can guide brand managers to plan and execute more effective DTC campaigns by using relevant benchmarks along the way.

Also we heard that, using services such as Wool Labs (I'd never heard of them before), marketers can now test campaigns en masse and quickly using the volume and immediacy of social media.

Overall, there was lots of engagement from the standing-room-only audience, and even the Yahoo! reps behind me were gushing that this was the best session of the conference.

Day Three of the DTC National
For me, the highlights on day three were DDMAC (surprise!) and Jim Davidson, Chair, Public Policy Group, Polsinelli Shughart PC (a familiar-to-many pro-pharma face, right). I understand why Jim speaks at many of these conferences – he has an elegant way of presenting dry, complicated political information in an easy-to-digest format. I learned a few things about the status of pharma on the Hill and the impact of healthcare reform on our industry.

I had not ever heard these two DDMAC speakers before – Mike Sauers, Team Leader DTC Group 1, DDMAC and Amie O’Donoghue, Social Science Analyst, DDMAC.

Amie presented findings from a four-year study that began in 2007 (yeah – you read that right - it took four years) on the impact and effectiveness of distractions such as supers in DTC TV ads. I don't do TV, and was a little surprised they weren't doing similar studies in the digital realm. You can peruse their findings here. Really for me the highlight of her talk was when she showed the low-budget DTC TV ad that DDMAC had actually produced themselves to advertise a fake drug to study participants. (She was gracious as we giggled, and acknowledged the industry does a much better job of creating DTC ads.) Mike took us through a couple of recent warning letters ("what not to do") and the Bad Ad program.

To their credit, these DDMAC folks actually took extended Q&A at the end … though it was via index card (not live) and they didn’t provide much new information. (Someone is training these speakers very well!) One tiny new nugget that did emerge from Mike was that DDMAC did not plan to address social sharing specifically. (My caveat: There still certainly could be implications for social sharing in whatever guidance is issued. Whenver it may be issued. No new info on that either) ...

In short, while they didn't say much of anything new, they were brave to be there. And they were even likeable! DDMAC is smart to be reaching out to industry like this and putting a face and even a personality on their presence.

The Final Word

Maybe it's because I usually spend more time at digital and emerging media conferences, but this seemed to me a very media-focused and traditional DTC (as in TV/print)-centric event. Congrats to all the winners of the DTC Marketing Awards and Top Marketers! And it was great to see many familiar faces. Perhaps I'll go again next year? Or perhaps it would make more sense for our Media Director to do so ...

Musings from DTC National 2011

2011-04-11T10:05:00.001-05:00

Didn’t attend DTC Perspectives’ big DTC National conference in Boston this year?

No worries. I spent three days there last week (my first time). Several of us tweeted the highlights using hashtag #DTCN2011, so you can view all the tweets by searching the hashtag on Twitter. You can still view the conference agenda online.

I tweeted. A lot. But one can only say so much in 140 characters or less. So beyond the tweets, I wanted to provide a more in-depth review. Below is the first in a series of blog posts with key observations by day:

DTC National: Day One

Day one of the conference kicked off with a small pre-conference workshop in the morning. Pharma folks gathered for a series of small panel discussions, moderated by Bob Ehrlich, on the following topics:

- Optimizing The Brand Web Site
- The Use of Search
- Advertising on the Web/mobile
- Point-of-care
- Direct Mail and Direct Response
- Multicultural

I was surprised there wasn’t a social media panel, but perhaps everyone’s sick of talking about that for now. How much more can we say about FDA still not delivering guidance anyway?

The panels were lively and informative, focusing in depth on these areas more than – as I learned in later days – the main conference itself. The audience asked questions and there were healthy discussions. I always like the smaller group settings better at these things. A few highlights:

• I laughed during the “Optimizing the Brand Web Site” session when conference chairman and moderator Bob Ehrlich asked the panel to stop talking about mobile (because there was a separate upcoming panel on mobile). What was left unsaid was that the Web and mobile are so intertwined that the two cannot be separated. I saw a tweet last week rom the iStrategy conference (source unknown) that over 50% of Web activity occurs on a mobile device! But wait … I’m not supposed to be talking about mobile here … so moving on …

• I spoke on the panel on which I thought was going to be about online and mobile media – “Advertising on the Web/mobile” - but which turned out to be all about mobile. We talked about optimizing sites and the plethora of healthcare apps available today. And we all agreed that there is a lot more for pharma to be doing in this channel. It struck me, too, that there’s so much more to mobile than just apps or mobile sites … there’s mobile media, mobile search, and optimizing emails for mobile viewing. At what point will pharma pay attention to these on a regular basis? I fear we’re a long ways off.

• I particularly enjoyed the “Use of Search” panel where Yahoo!, Google, and Bing representatives (among others) all gathered to discuss character limitations and potential implications of coming DDMAC guidance. To their credit, they were certainly mindful of the issues the industry faces. And the question was asked … who says there have to be character limitations? Not FDA .... Google, Yahoo! and Bing decide! I was pleased to see so many search reps at the conference and their industry’s openness to working with the pharma industry's – shall we call them – "special circumstances."

• The multicultural panel was hosted by several multicultural marketing agencies who made the very valid case for pharma to be reaching out to minorities, especially in relevant conditions such as diabetes and hypertension that disproportionally affect African-Americans and Hispanics. I have the hunch multicultural marketing is to pharma now as social media marketing was to pharma a few years ago: Marketers have an inkling they need to be doing it, but they don’t know much about it so they avoid it altogether.

While Bob’s panel moderation style came across a bit condescending - as if he didn’t believe people went on the Web or used mobile phones to do anything but talk - it also provided healthy perspective. We in the marketing and digital worlds drink our own Kool-Aid every day. Bob’s right – some of the consumers we’re trying to reach are just not as technically savvy as most of you reading this blog. It’s a good reminder of the importance of understanding your audience’s online behaviors to drive your digital strategy.

Day One – Afternoon

As the full general session got started, we heard from several speakers on the impact of healthcare reform on the pharma industry. The pending government shutdown was a hot topic. Former Presidential candidate and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Gov. Tommy Thompson loaded us up with information on healthcare reform, the current state of Washington, and how pharma can "learn from past and prepare for the future."

Myrtle Potter, former pharma industry leader-turned-consultant-and-author, told us about her near-death experience when in the hospital with a shoulder injury. What turned out to be an allergy to the sulfa drugs she was taking for her shoulder caused her total organ failure. Turns out she was the one pushing for the test that ultimately diagnosed the problem. Her message? Empowered, educated patients have a better chance of survival, and the pharma industry has an opportunity to increase health literacy.

Dr. Carl Elliott, University of Minnesota bioethics professor and author of White Coat Black Hat painted a grim picture of the allegedly corrupt state of clinical trials in the U.S. It was depressing, one-sided, and no solutions were offered up. Layered on top of his talk was an apparently disgruntled brother of Dr. Elliott’s who was heckling Dr. Elliott on the Twitter backchannel with tweets such as:

Carl is my brother, and also plagiarizing bully
Carl Elliott and Col. Ghadafi: Separated at birth? #DTCN2011 #suckitcarl
Dr. BFD spoke at #DTCN2011. Rumor has it he was crushed like a bug. Hardworking patriots 1, Carl 0. #suckitcarl

(See this website for more on the backstory.) Maybe the brother should speak at the conference next year to share his perspective?

Amusing Twitter distractions aside, by the end of the day we were ready for cocktails. It felt like we’d just been told that everything is broken – our government, our healthcare system, and the clinical trials side of the industry. But few solutions were offered on how to fix it.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like that feeling.

(Stay tuned for more from DTC National ... Day Two and Day Three still to come!)

Did the Chrysler F-Bomber Deserve Termination or Empathy?

2011-03-18T09:18:00.001-05:00

If you aren't on Twitter you probably didn't catch a recent Tweetstorm about how an agency for Chrysler accidentally tweeted the following on the ChryslerAutos Twitter account:

Obviously the tweet was meant to go out on this guys' private account. The tweet was deleted quickly. But the damage was done. The Tweeter was fired by the agency, New Media Strategies, and the agency was fired by Chrysler. Chrysler made this statement on their blog.

There's been ongoing debates about which was worse:

The F-bomb? ... Or the message itself, which runs completely counter to the new Chrysler ad campaign embracing Detroit? (See AdFreak)
The F-bomb tweet? ... Or the language/culture of Eminem, who is currently featured in said Chrysler commercial?

There's also an interesting debate going on today over at this blog, which talks more about the human side of the tweeter (Scott Bartosiewicz) and whether or not he should have been fired.http://bit.ly/eAgLuY .

Here's a tweet he probably won't be sending out again:

There are lots of good comments on the blog, but I tend to agree with these from Carri Bugbee the most:

"The agency showed very poor judgement in assigning a global brand to a complete Twitter newbie (did you look at his personal Twitter account?!) who also appears to be young and probably not steeped in the ways of business. ... You need to make mistakes (everybody does) on your OWN account -- not your employer's or your client's ... there's no excuse for a big agency or a big brand to be that clueless (or that cheap) in 2011."

I would add to that:

When you're working in a regulated industry such as Pharma, it's even more important that you have experienced, knowledgable, professionals doing the tweeting, whether on the agency or the client side.
I'm sorry, but few true professionals I know (no matter what age) would tweet an angry F-bomb-laden statement on their private account in the first place. The statement alone says a lot about this guys' character and judgement about what he puts out into the world about his own personal brand.
I do think it's fine for agencies to tweet on behalf of their clients, in certain situations. Keep in mind the "accidental tweet" mistake could have happened just as easily on the client side. In fact, it happened to the Red Cross recently, and they handled it with grace.
Still, I don't subscribe to the idea that this particular situation could have happened to anybody. We all make mistakes. But this was collossal.

What do you think ... did the Chrysler Twitter F-Bomber deserve what he got, or does he deserve a little more empathy because, after all, he's only human?

The Fundamental DTC Question: Why Do People Do What They Do?

2011-03-10T14:19:00.002-06:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about the psychology behind why people behave the way they do when it comes to healthcare, and how that intersects with what pharmaceutical marketers are trying to achieve.

Rich Meyer wrote a blog recently titled It’s not your imagination; marketing really has gotten harder. He has some good points about the social shift, how customer expectations have changed and how the drug industry is (or isn't) evolving with the times.

Pharma Marketing Has Always Had It's Challenges
The idea that "marketing has gotten harder" is an interesting one to me. And I would go further to say that effective pharmaceutical marketing has always been harder. (Here's a blog I wrote on the topic of What's So Different About Consumer Pharma Marketing? Let Me Count the Ways ...)

But the difficulty of pharma marketing goes beyond the tough regulations we face every day. To me, it goes deeper into the psychology of healthcare. One would think one's HEALTH would be the ultimate motivator to take action. Get a diagnosis, get a prescription, be compliant with that medication, and hopefully things will be better, right?

But the challenge is, pharmas are faced with marketing products that patients DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO USE. Being put on a long-term treatment for high cholesterol or diabetes is considered by many to be a failure. Getting a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis and then having to give yourself a self-injection isn't good news. It's devastating. People don't think "oh goodie I get to pop this little pill every morning" or "Yay, I get to take this injection every week." They tie the disease to the drug. Very few people ever think "thank goodness the pharma company spent years in research and millions of dollars to develop this product that helps me live my life better every day." (One exception may be cosmetics. Perhaps because those treatments are elective?)

And depending on the disease category, sometimes the goal is to work to get OFF the medication. If your doctor told you that you should have a goal to quit using Tide detergent, would you think favorably of Tide?

Admit it - even those of us in the industry can be resistant to getting on treatment for whatever ails us, and we often don't follow our prescribed regimen (I know I don't).

Why Don't We Look at Medications Like We Do Consumer Packaged Goods?
There's a lot wrapped up into the answer to that question. And amazingly, in 15+ years of pharma marketing, I've never seen good research that gets to the root of it. To complicate matters, it's different for every disease category, and every person within those disease categories.

Recently I met with a health psychologist (follow her on Twitter at @drhealthpsych) to learn more about her discipline. Her job is to integrate the science of behavior change with marketing intelligence. She's looking to help companies increase brand retention, create brand advocates, and strengthen loyalty among patients, caregivers, and providers ... all while promoting positive health outcomes. In her words, "You win. Patients win."

To me, it's fascinating.

As an industry, we need to work harder to better understand the motivators behind patient behavior. Why are they resistant to committing to a medication proven to help improve symptoms? Why won't they go to the doctor, why won't they fill the prescription, why won't they take the med that will enhance quality of life, and may even save their life or, at least, add years to it? Why don't they take their medication as prescribed?

As an industry, we need to work towards a better understanding of patients (i.e. people), their needs and wants, and their motivators.

Not to be better able to "sell" them something.

But to improve health outcomes overall.

Healthy Weight via WiFi?

2011-02-19T12:11:00.000-06:00

At the ePharma Summit conference a few weeks ago, I saw for the second time a product held up as a great example of the convergence of health and technology: the Withings WiFi bathroom scale.

The Withings scale uses a WiFi connection to store weight, BMI, and body fat data online or on your iPhone. According to the product description, "with the Withings WiFi Body Scale, you can track your progress and motivate yourself to maintain a healthy weight."

I asked my husband for a Withings scale for Valentine's Day (because we're romantic like that ... I got him a Nike Fit).

I was like a little girl when it arrived today. I quickly hooked it up to my home wifi, setup my account, and weighed myself (in clothes, of course, so I'll look skinnier next time I weigh). The instructrions, hookup, and overall user interface were all incredibly easy.

The Withings scale has a "share" option to tweet your weight every time you step on it, similar to Nike Fit's report of your morning run. Will I tweet my weight every day ? I think not. But our little family is happy to be participating in the eHealth revolution!

Thoughts from ePharma Summit 2011

2011-02-09T00:20:00.001-06:00

What’s an ePharma Summit 2011?
Today I attended the ePharma Summit 2011 in New York City. It’s a huge conference with more than 500 people attending from industry, agencies, and various vendors interested in the broad topic of digital pharma marketing. The agenda can be found online. The conference continues through the end of the day tomorrow. You can follow the Twitter stream at #epharma.

As a sidenote, it's interesting to look back at my past reviews of this conference and compare:
7 Things I Learned at ePharma Summit 2010, Some Early Nuggets from epharma Summit (2009) and More 2009 epharma Summit Observations

Anyway ... this year, there are lots of great people tweeting and we’re all trying to provide coverage between bad wifi and dying laptop/iPad/phone batteries (due to lack of power strips). Ah, technology! I was able to attend most of the conference except for when concurrent programs were running. I was able to tweet, except when my laptop battery died. So here, I wanted to provide a brief recap of what I saw as highlights of the day:

Key Takeaways

Paul Ivans of Evolution Road chaired the event. A comfortable and knowledgeable presenter, Paul did a nice job kicking things off and moderating the entire day. One of my favorite quotes from him: “The rep arms race is over; we need alternatives to replace the sales gap.” This was also one of the most re-tweeted tweets of the entire day. In other words? It resonated.
Standout presentations of the morning included several thought-provoking, futuristic talks from Thomas Goetz (Wired Magazine) and Bob Harrell (Shire Pharmaceuticals). Who knew someone created a creepy robotic dog that can right itself when pushed over? Innovation is inspiring, and their examples were good reminders that we need to never be satisfied with the status quo when it comes to health technology.
Tom Abrams from FDA spoke. I’m not sure if attendees were expecting little hints, valuable nuggets, or all-out social media DDMAC guidance. But whatever they expected, they were disappointed. I’ll let friend and blogger Steve Woodruff explain why in his rant here.
I stepped away from the big ballroom to engage in three “unconference” round-table sessions after lunch covering the following topics:

Encouraging patient-physician engagement. The question was asked if pharma should even have a role in this, if they should try to intersect that conversation. I say yes, as long as there is value for all parties.
Unbranded vs. branded marketing. What’s the value of unbranded? In what situations should pharma be engaging in unbranded marketing? (For some thoughts on that, see these past blog posts)
Marketing to niche and rare disease categories online. The opportunity for social media to reach these groups was discussed, as well as the importance of partnerships between pharma and academia.

The surprisingly engaging keynote that wrapped up the day was Survivor Africa star – and cancer survivor star – Ethan Zohn. Proving out his credo “never let a crisis go to waste,” Ethan shared less about Survivor Afrrica and more about Survivor Ethan and his scary bout with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at age 35. He “survived,” and he’s paying it forward by funding several charitable endeavors with his winnings. Inspiring! Read more about Ethan’s story here at People.com, including his videos, and also read about his charity, Grassroot Soccer.

There were several other good presentations and panels but there's only so much time and room to cover the conference. It’s always great to re-connect with past friends and faces and meet new ones too. That, to me, is the real value of these gatherings. And I look forward to more engagement, greetings and meetings tomorrow.

Stay tuned! And send power strips ...

Quotable Quotes from #SM4Rx

2011-01-27T13:40:00.000-06:00

Last week, I attended (and my agency sponsored) the Social Media for Pharma conference in Washington, D.C. I blogged on our new Intouch blog (see: SM4Rx: A True Unconference Conference) about what I thought was different about the conference. I also recently posted a few key takeaways there that I wanted to share.

Today, I wanted to further augment the discussion with what I felt were some "quotable quotes" from the conference. Thanks to the speakers for providing great sound bites and content, and for getting my brain churning on some new ideas...

On the shift in CRM, thanks to social media:
“Before, we had fancy segment names for people. Now we have true context. And that changes everything.”
~ John Vieira, Daichi Sankyo

On establishing a Community Manager role in pharma:
“There is a lot to learn before you dive in (internal and external). Make sure you are ready to engage in dialogue.”
~ Laura Kolodjeski, sanofi-aventis [client]

On deciding on where the “rules” fall when it comes to social media:
“Each company has to decide where their line is – it’s not written anywhere.”
~ Mark Gaydos, sanofi-aventis [client]

On gut-checking your social media initiatives:
“Is the effort part of a marketing campaign? Does it have an end and a beginning? If so - danger!”
~ Rob Muller, Roche Diagnostics

On having a good content strategy and a sensible social presence:

“We want to be an arrow pointing TO good diabetes resources, not competing with them … Social media is by the people, for the people. It’s not about you.”
~ Rob Muller, Roche Diagnostics

“Build your social media initiatives with your audience’s objectives in mind.”
~ Gil Ben-Dov, ResMed

On the importance of keeping your company’s social media policy simple:
“If your social media policy needs its own FAQs, your social media policy has a problem.”
~ Karen Lowney, Cephalon

On determining your pilot social media strategy and approach:
“Don’t think about social media in terms of the marketing funnel. Don’t think about ROI. Yet.”
~ Gil Ben-Dov, ResMed

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We see sound bites and quotes on Twitter all the time. What's your favorite social media quote?

An all-new intouchsol and a brand-new Intouch Soul

2011-01-17T17:23:00.002-06:00

If there is anything I’ve learned by launching this blog over two years ago and being outspoken in the ePharma community, it’s that there are a lot of amazing people that care about pharma marketing, and they care for the right reasons. I was recently reminded again of that by attending a Social Media for Pharma conference in D.C. last week, where I saw several familiar faces and met many new interesting ones as well.

But the other thing about this ePharma community is that — in many ways — we are similar to the patients with which we’re trying to connect: We are voracious information seekers online. We are constantly reading, linking, tweeting, blogging, meeting, connecting, debating, discussing, and learning. And the amount of resources through which to do these things is growing and ever-evolving.

I’ve had a lot to say on ePharma Rx over the past few years, and I hope some of it has been of value to you, my readers. But ePharma Rx is not just about me. In the past I’ve featured guest bloggers, and often I quote my colleagues. I learn from them daily, and their intellect goes deep. They offer different perspectives; many are experts in their own fields. Often it was them who inspired the posts that appeared here on ePharma Rx over the years.

A New Intouch Soul
So I’m happy to announce a new outlet for my colleagues' own thoughts, opinions and contributions and a new resource for you information seekers — our new agency blog — Intouch Soul.

With Intouch Soul, we're giving other voices a place to be heard ... They are the "soul" of our agency, each with a unique voice. And they are filled with inspiring, innovative ideas that I expect will steer the future of this industry. Whether discussing marketing or the pharma industry — or something completely off-topic, as they'll do now and then — you'll find them there discussing what inspires them, drives them, and fuels their creativity.

A New IntouchSol
When you visit Intouch Soul you’ll see it's housed within our larger (shiny! new!) agency website, http://www.intouchsol.com/. Our approach with the redesigned intouchsol.com was to create a showpiece for what the agency offers. User-centric design? Check. Innovative technologies? Check. Deep content, and the latest in emerging media? Check. Check.

The website focuses on sharing the knowledge and insights Intouch has gained from more than a decade of leadership in pharmaceutical and health care marketing.

With both the Intouch Soul blog and the website, we had a lot of fun doing all the things many of our regulated clients cannot.

And yes - it's mobile optimized! >>>>

Sorry - you're still stuck with me and ePharma Rx. You’ll still see me blogging here, but you’ll see me over there, too, along with a variety of new faces and voices I can't wait for you to meet.

When you have a minute, check out the new blog and the new website, plus these additional resources:
> Website press release
> Blog welcome post

Thanks for caring and endulging me this bit of propagada. And, as always,we're excited to hear your feedback!

Pharma Could Learn a Bit from FDA's use of Social Media

2011-01-06T06:59:00.002-06:00

Rohit Bhargava recently wrote good post on his blog that he could have titled "What to Expect When You're Expecting," .... expecting social media guidance from FDA, that is.

The post is a solid interpretation of the FDA's recently-released “Strategic Priorities: 2011 - 2015″ document, i.e., what the FDA is communicating as its top priorities among its ever-increasing challenges and scope.

One of Rohit's statements particularly caught my eye:
He points out that FDA has ...

already launched several forward thinking social media initiatives including tweeting about FDA Recalls and creating a dedicated YouTube Channel. A few smart people have already noted the irony of this fact, but in the coming year it is likely to continue unchanged.

It's always interesting to me when people complain and point out the irony of FDA's increasing use of social media.

Frustrating? Definitely. Ironic? A little. To me, the bigger irony is that FDA is not regulated by their own rules. Which is, of course, why the organization can use social media openly and to their hearts' content. They're not promoting pharmaceutical products. They're promoting consumer safety. And these days, they are taking their job very seriously.

But let's look at the irony in another way.

Maybe pharma could actually learn a bit from the way FDA uses social media.

Maybe pharma should take FDA's queue on the use of social media to "promote transparency in operations, activities, processes, and decision making," and use social media to "make information available in user-friendly formats," all while still "protecting confidential and proprietary information."

In other words, instead of using social media to blast branded messages and broadcast promotional noise ...

Use it for spreading the word - broadly - about recalls and other safety concerns.
Use it to explain and help interpret some of the more clinical information that can be difficult for some consumers to absorb.
Use it as a customer service channel to connect patients to clinical and financial support and resources.

Whatever the guidelines are whenever (and if?) they are ever issued ... surely FDA woudn't have a problem with that?

FDA Outlines Plans, Timing for Social Media Guidances

2010-12-22T08:50:00.001-06:00

Yesterday eyeonfda broke the news that FDA had made an announcement regarding draft guidance for the Internet and social media for pharma promotional activities (Backstory here)

Or, as Steve Woodruff pointed out, perhaps we should call it a non-announcement.

Essentially, FDA announced which topics they would be focusing on, and that they hoped to issue draft guidance that addresses at least one of these topics during the first quarter of 2011. According to @eyeonfda, the topics include:

Responding to unsolicited requests
Fulfilling regulatory requirements when using tools with space limitations (think Twitter, search, texts)
Fulfilling post-marketing submission requirements
For which online communications manufacturers, packers, or distributors are accountable
Use of links
Correcting misinformation

This morning I also ran across this article on the topic - FDA Outlines Plans for Social Media Guidances

The article states:

In an e-mail exchange Dec. 21, Ayse Yeaton with the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) stated that the center’s promotional watchdog — the Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications (DDMAC) — has been researching six cyberspace issues for potential guidances and plans to release one of these sometime in the first three months of 2011.

So now we know the topics, and we know it's going to be a little longer than we'd expected, since FDA had been quoted several times that they would issue guidance by the end of 2010.

So I have a couple of questions:
1. Are we more clear - or more confused - than before FDA released this information? ... and,
2. Did they really use the word "cyberspace" in their email???

.

Which Social Media Animal Is Your Pharma Company?

2010-12-16T20:11:00.001-06:00

The other day, I wrote about the many levels of self-awareness of pharma companies when it comes to how risk-averse or risk-friendly they may be. (BTW, these days, few are “risk-friendly!”)

Why does it matter? When we as an agency are working on (or pitching for) social media strategies for our clients, this is an important thing for us to understand up-front. We want to make sure that the strategies we propose are implementable. Before going too far down the path, we need to understand what barriers may be in the way, and if they are surmountable.

Often, we’d just rather not implement a social media program if we’re not going to be able to do it the “right way.” A watered down social media effort -- for example, a whole program that was supposed to allow two-way dialogue but instead becomes a broadcast message on Twitter -- is a waste of everyone’s’ time and our clients’ money.

We’ve developed a scale to help clients self-identify their level of comfort with social media.

Not really. But maybe we should. And if we did, it might look something like this:

Which Social Media Animal is Your Pharma?

The Ostrich. The Ostrich pharmaco is in denial, with its proverbial head in the sand. “Social media? What social media? Social media doesn’t exist.” Also applies if the attitude is:
> Okay, okay. Social media does exist, it’s just something my kids do, and likely a passing fad.
> Social media exists. But it’s not valuable and we just can’t go there – especially not before guidelines are issued. So let’s just pretend it doesn’t exist.

The Gazelle. The Gazelle pharma thinks social media has potential. But this is a very anxious species. They prefer to do a lot of social media pilots and tests. The timid gazelle pharma operates with the idea, “We’re dipping our toes in the water a little bit. But we’re still very frightened by the crocodiles that may be lurking there.”

The Liger. (Pretty much my favorite animal) Made famous by Napoleon Dynamite, the liger is a hybrid cross between a male lion and a tigress. When it comes to pharma social media, the fierce liger company is the one that has two competing factions: the marketers and communicators that believe in the value and potential of social media, and the senior management, legal, and regulatory teams that refuse to consider it a viable channel. It’s a beast.

The Bat. Bats can be social animals. Bats also, as you know, are deaf. But if you could hear their ultrasonic cries they’d sure make a lot of noise and it probably wouldn’t sound very pleasant. Bat pharma companies are guilty of using social media platforms as a broadcast channel, but not engaging in back and forth dialogue. It ends up being just freaky noise that few hear, and only the bat himself cares about.

The Dolphin. The elusive dolphin pharma company is a sight to behold. Establishing strong social bonds with its communities, these companies are highly intelligent and self-actualized. They communicate extensively (back and forth) and are even an altruistic species: Dolphins will actually stay with injured or ill individuals, even helping them to breathe by bringing them to the surface if needed. Imagine if every species did the same!

* * * * *

Do your company’s social media efforts sometimes feel like a National Geographic special? Which animal are you? Which animal is your boss? Your company? Your agency?

I'd love to hear it, and also to hear abuot any animals out there I may have missed! (Hybrids allowed)

How Conservative is Your Pharma Company?

2010-12-15T12:36:00.001-06:00

I’ve worked with a lot of pharma companies over the years. Long before there was social media, there were discussions around how conservative or risk-averse each company viewed itself to be. I’ve heard clients joke that they must be the most conservative company that we’ve ever dealt with. In some cases, they’re right. Many, however, are far more forward thinking than they realize.

Others believe themselves to be enlightened and aggressive, but when it comes time to execute, the opposite may be the truth.

Working at a pharma marketing agency, it’s fun to have this unique viewpoint to be able to compare and contrast the comfort levels with seemingly “risky” behavior like revising product messaging, choosing provocative creative, allowing user-generated content, social media in general, or even – gasp – the open text box field !

In reality, it’s not fair to say a company is one thing or the other. Most often, it’s the individuals in control that drive the approach – not an official corporate mantra.

It matters, though, especially when it comes to looking at "new" media such as social and mobile. And it matters when a company labels itself as innovative. Innovative and conservative often can't go hand-in-hand. (More on that here).

What's your take? Are most pharma companies pretty self-aware of how conservative they are in comparison to others? Is this driven by corporate? By the C-suite? Or does each individuals' personal perspective and experiences drive the ultimate approach at the strategic and project level?

Innovation: It's More than Just a Buzzword

2010-12-06T07:02:00.006-06:00

A colleague recently forwarded this article ("Merck New CEO Frazier Vows Innovation, Wider Markets") about the new Merck CEO and his focus on innovation.

The same colleague, (she's smart! Find her on Twitter as @lauraN546), pointed out that it seems innovation is at risk of becoming “just another buzzword with subjective meaning.”

That statement rang very true to me – but also very disappointing. Does the word “innovation” risk losing credibility due to its overuse?

Merck had a reputation for being risk averse – so is this new focus on innovation just a public relations message, or a real cultural shift for the company? Time will tell. But there is a widespread, much-discussed focus on innovation in the industry right now – or at least on innovation being inserted into corporate messaging.

Pipelines have dried, industry reputation is in the dirt, and customers are harder than ever to reach. Pharma product development, distribution, marketing, and sales all require an overhaul. And that requires innovation.

But what does innovation require? In my opinion and from observation, innovation does not (necessarily) involve technology. Innovation requires:

A cognitive, stated choice to do things differently and a readiness for change
A different way of looking at things – be it technology, products, approaches, services, or processes
The ability to challenge the status quo
Motivated, visionary leadership
A broad and deep understanding of the issue you're attempting to resolve
A risk-taking mentality, a high tolerance for experimentation, and acceptance of failure
Energy and drive – at the organizational as well as personal levels
Strong communication and change management skills
Flexibility and nimbleness
Passion, inspiration, imagination

(By the way, Stefan Lindegaard (@lindegaard) maintains an excellent blog on innovation, 15inno)

As you’ve probably realized by now, most people wouldn’t put the bulleted list above and the words “pharma industry” in the same bucket.

By its very nature, innovation risks the creation of cultural cognitive dissonance. In fact, to be considered innovative, I’d say some level of cognitive dissonance is downright required.

Are you, your team, or your company innovative? Or are you just using it as a messaging buzzword?

Mobile Stat of the Day

2010-12-03T07:44:00.000-06:00

Our Manager of Mobile Strategy, Jason, (see his excellent Twitter feed at @Zero7KC) is great about sending our teams facts and figures on the latest in mobile marketing. I'm a sucker for statistics, so I wanted to share one he sent today:

According to StatCounter, mobile web use only made up 1.77% of total Internet usage in the US in November, 2009.

In November 2010, mobile web made up 5.82% of total Internet usage in the US.

By the way, as he pointed out, that’s roughly a 330% increase over the last year!

So mobile viewing hasn't exactly overtaken desktop viewing, but there's no denying it's on a dramatic rise. All of the stats I've seen support this trend -- that mobile viewing of websites will continue to increase rapidly as more and more consumers obtain smartphones.

Are your websites optimized for mobile viewing? Will they be by, say, November 2011? Where will this number be by then? By 2012?

With the long timelines it takes pharma companies to get assets updated, reviewed, and live (it's not pretty but it's our reality) ... my advice is to make sure your 2011 plans have mobile optimization in the budgets. Then you just might be ready by November 2012.

It's Just Noise

2010-12-01T11:33:00.001-06:00

I've been thinking a lot lately -- and we've been talking a lot here at the agency lately -- about the over-abundance of information and noise in our lives.

I get so many unsolicited sales calls I barely answer my deskphone anymore. Email spam is at an all time high and its a real chore to get through my (personal and professional) email in-boxes on a daily basis. Occasionally I get spammer text messages on my phone. I haven't had too much trouble with Twitter spammers, although I know plenty of tweeps have. They're certainly out there. And at least Facebook lets me "ignore" the random guy from Singapore trying to befriend me for reasons which must certainly be surreptitious.

Social media seems like one of the few places still (more or less) safe from spammers these days.

But is it inevitable that salespeople and spammers will infiltrate social media as well? Maybe that depends on how you define spam.

Some may define it as any message that is unsolicited and/or irrelevant.

Which is a good reminder why anyone using social media marketing should make sure their timing, channel, and messages are welcome and wanted.

Otherwise it's just noise.

Top Pharma Tweeters: Tracking Pharma’s Use of Twitter in Real-Time

2010-11-02T13:46:00.009-05:00

About a year ago, I published a chart that looked like the one to the right in a post titled "Pharma Finds its Voice on Twitter."

This functional but not-so-pretty graphic featured known pharma companies actively tweeting, their Twitter handle, the date they joined, and the number of following, followers, and updates.

The pharma community response was positive, and everyone seemed to appreciate having a central resource for this type of info. The problem was, of course, that as soon as we compiled the data, it was outdated. Things change quickly in the Twitterverse!

In addition to that static chart from days of yore, other bloggers have evaluated pharma’s use of Twitter …

Most recently, Tweeter Extraordinaire Shwen Gwee presented “Twitterama II” at the Digital Pharma East conference. See this post for some tips and takeaways.
Referenced in Shwen's presentation was Silja Chouquet's (of WhyDotPharma) amazingly thorough analysis of how pharma co’s use Twitter.
Fabio Gratton of Ignite Health and #FDASM fame had created this snapshot of 20 pharma Twitter feeds http://bit.ly/ez1dA
Pixels and Pills’ HealthTweeder is an elegant, creative, dynamic view of the broader healthcare dialog as it relates to disease categories.
And Jonathan Richman’s healthcare social media wiki is a popular resource for a broad list of pharma/healthcare companies using Twitter.

In short, there continues to be a ton of interest from the industry in what pharma is doing with Twitter. Maybe that’s because it seems Twitter is the most active social channel for pharma for the time being – especially at the corporate communications level. It’s a quick and easy way to connect with a company's many different audiences online, and keeping things unbranded keeps it low-risk.

So we thought we’d take our original static list one step further. (Keep reading … this is where it gets exciting!)

Today we’re introducing the world to what we’ve lovingly dubbed “Tweetpharm.” Tweetpharm is an interactive infographic that tracks pharmaceutical companies’ use of Twitter in real time. Tweetpharm aggregates data from pharma Twitter accounts, and serves it up two ways: (1) as an easy-to-read, sort-able dashboard and (2) as an interactive “visualizer.”

(View the press release online here, or if you’re already intrigued enough to dive right into Tweetpharm and start playing, go for it.)

If you're still with me, here are a few screen captures to give you a taste of some of Tweetpharm's features ...

Number of Followers

The dashboard can be sorted alphabetically (its default) and also by the number of Followers, low to high or high to low. In this example, when this screen capture was taken (11/1/10), the five pharma companies with the largest number of followers were @Pfizer_news, @Novartis, @Roche_com, @GSKUS, and @GEHealthcare:

Number Following

The Tweetpharm Dashboard also can be sorted by the number of accounts followed, from low to high or high to low. @GEHealthcare is following the most accounts currently.

Highlighting pharma's reticence to follow ("does that constitute an endorsement???"), there are ten pharma companies in the list that follow less than ten accounts.

Volume of Tweets

In addition, you can view who's sent out the most tweets. This "top five" reads a little differently, with @JNJComm reaching the top with its 1,140 tweets.

And while you're reading and sorting all this data, you can always roll over any account for its latest tweet:

The Tweetpharm Visualizer
So the dashboard is a great way to view and sort data. But the visualizer is where the data comes to life in a fun bubble-like infographic. Using the same data, you can view the lead tweeters, following, and followers in a dynamic new way that looks like this (this example highlights the largest number of tweets in the biggest bubbles):

Sort-able, Scalable, Useful

So the next time you're wondering who is leading the pack in following, followers, or number of tweets ... or who is lagging sadly behind ... or if you just want to tickle your fancy with the bubbles a bit ... visit Tweetpharm for the quick answer to those questions and a lot more. We hope it becomes a valuable resource for you, especially if you are:

A pharma or similarly-regulated company looking to launch a Twitter account
Developing or evolving your own Twitter engagement strategy
Someone who already tweets on behalf of pharma ... track your rank and understand how others approach the channel
Looking to see if companies follow others, and how many they follow
A legal or regulatory reviewer, a blogger or other industry observer needing a quick reference of pharma Twitter accounts
Bored and/or curious about how pharma companies are using Twitter - especially at the corporate level (Okay, if you're not from pharma and you've read this post this far, you must REALLY be bored

Criteria for Inclusion
We made every effort to make Tweetpharm a comprehensive list of the main English-language U.S. and global Twitter presences of major pharma/biotech and some medical device companies. With the recent explosion of pharma Twitter accounts we had to stop somewhere, so we chose to feature only corporate accounts at this time. For this phase, we also eliminated accounts if they had zero tweets (there are suprisingly many!), or if they represented a specific brand, campaign, or disease category niche. Finally, we chose not to include accounts tweeting about jobs or patient assistance as we just felt it wouldn't be an apples-to-apples comparison until we built in more functionality.

If there are any accounts that, based on the above inclusion and exclusion criteria, should have been included, please drop me a line here (using Comments) and accept our apologies. Our goal is to keep Tweetpharm relevant and accurate for the long-haul.

Beyond the Numbers
We understand Twitter and Tweetpharm are more than just numbers; there's a tremendous story to tell behind this data. And we have a lot of ideas on how to make it bigger, better, broader, and more useful over time. We could expand the list. We could show trends. We could show engagement and influence scores. We could show connections. The possibilities for Tweetpharm are truly endless. (If you’re at a company or agency that is driven by innovation, you’ll understand why we feel our work is never done ... there are always ways to make things better and more exciting!)

Anyway ... we hope to roll out some new features soon.

Meantime, we’d love for you to use Tweetpharm to your heart’s content. Tell your friends. Tell the folks that manage (or want to manage) your Twitter presence. And for goodness' sake, please tell us your feedback and ideas!

Thanks for reading.

Tweetpharm away!

More Sound Bites from Digital Pharma East 2010

2010-11-01T12:56:00.002-05:00

I thought I'd provide more "nuggets and soundbites" from select presentations at Digital Pharma East 2010. This post includes some practical, valuable advice from a couple of industry-side presenters, Shwen Gwee from Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Melissa Bojorquez from Boehringer Ingelheim.

For the first installment, see "Nuggets, Snippets, and Salient Sound Bites from Digital Pharma East 2010."

For additional roundups and reviews, see below.
_________________

Shwen Gwee, Digital Strategy and Social Media Lead, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Conference Co-Chair (Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010)

Considered by many to be the ultimate pharma TwitterMaster, Shwen presented a helpful update titled, "Pharma Twitterama II". It was a speedy yet thorough review of all things Twitter and pharma-Twitter related. Key takeaways included:

• Handy Twitter-related apps and sites Shwen recommended include:

    o CoTweet and Hootsuite for enterprise tweet management and multiple accounts
    o Awe.sm – Offers URL shorteners and data tracking thru paid service
    o What the hashtag helps find the hashtag you need
    o Paper.li and Flipboard (iPad) offer aggregators that re-package your feeds into what look more like newspapers or magazines. (how retro!)
    o OneForty.com is the “app store” for Twitter – a directory of apps related to Twitter.
    o Klout– measurew Twitter reach, amplication, network score, classification, influencers and influences
• Shwen also quickly reviewed the different types of twitter feeds currently coming out of pharma, such as speedlinking, news updates, engaging, live tweeting from events, and super-specialized accounts such as @AZHelps. He reviewed an updated analysis from Silja Chouquet - see her excellent review on her blog, WhyDotPharma.
• Final thoughts and twips: It’s not about why, but how and what. Experiment with tools like Yammer (kind of an internal Twitter) and Socialcast.
• Develop guidelines before jumping into Twitter, and have a follow/follower strategy.
• Develop workflow and an engagement plan.
• Toe-dipping is permitted. Launch a pilot and get internal buy-in. Then go!
_________________

Melissa Bojorquez, eChannel Marketing, Boehringer Ingelheim (Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010)

Melissa has the unique position of coordinating eChannel marketing across all brands at Boehringer Ingelheim. She shared some solid advice for pharma marketers and agencies looking to further integrate social media and emarketing into their mix.

• We are in “the relationship era” … its no longer acceptable to do push marketing. But with health dialogue, there is an in-between area.
• The efficiency, speed, and volume from social media communications easily outdoes TV, print, Internet, PR … the combination of those is where the real impact is.
• Great pharma social media has the 3 C's: It’s Customer centric, Collaborative, and Contributes to marketing objectives.
• Platforms don’t matter. “How will actions drive behavior?” … that’s what senior management is interested in. how to drive launch success, increase adoption, etc. We must make sure our social media ideas ladder up to business objectives and priorities.
• A customer-centric approach: (a) Is developed through deep insights (b) Asks the questions: what is the objective? What is the right channel? What is the customer info flow?
• If you find out that patients want to connect, think about what channels they want to connect through.
• Physicians want to connect via mobile. For reaching physicians, don’t bother doing it if you’re not doing mobile.
• Develop a crisis management process for your social media. PR people understand this, and it’s a good place to breakdown silos.
• When it comes to social media policies and processes, you don’t have to start from scratch. Pick up a process and tweak for social media.
• Partner with an agency that can help you stay on top of who does what, and what changes over time.
• Community cultivation is a big missed opportunity. Find agencies that bring the best minds together. They must understand social networking and how/why people engage.
• Building a community and not funding cultivation is like building a website and not funding search.
• What we all do impacts the rest of us. When one of us does well, we all win.

__________________________

"When one of us does well, we all win." I like that!

Thanks again to conference organizers and speakers for creating a forum for the positive exchange of ideas.

For additional roundups and reviews, see these posts from:

@DoctorAnonymous, who produced a nice video essay
Pixels and Pills have made a name for themselves with their conference videos
Steve Woodruff/Impactiviti did a nice wrap-up
@Jaesell, who provides a nice summary and key takeaways
Roundups and follow-ups from the Digital Pharma organizers
Notable takeaways from academic Kevin Clauson, typed with two thumbs on the plane!

New ePharma Rx Blog Roll

2010-10-27T13:16:00.002-05:00

We're making some adjustments behind the scenes here at ePharma Rx. Stay tuned for more on that later.

Meantime, I wanted to point out that I've added a blog roll to ePharma Rx. Just scroll down the righthand column to see the list of blogs I read on a regular or somewhat-regular basis. I've listed them because I find them useful, I'd recommend them, and in many cases, I have met the person that imparts the wisdom behind them. It's an ecclectic mix of marketing, social, digital, public relations/communications, and mostly pharma-specific resources.

Since I started this blog in Sept. 2008, many new pharma-marketing-related blogs have launched. They all have their own personality and angle, I enjoy watching them evolve, and I always learn from them.

Thanks to all of those that already list ePharma Rx in their blog rolls.

Creating blogs for our pharma clients can be a real challenge due to the regulated environment ... so at least we have our own, right?!

Nuggets, Snippets, and Salient Sound Bites from Digital Pharma East 2010

2010-10-21T01:45:00.000-05:00

I spent the last couple of days (Oct. 19-20) in Philadelphia at the Digital Pharma East conference [you can find the agenda here]. I always like to do conference wrap-ups on this blog when I can, because it provides a service to readers that weren’t able to attend (and it’s a nice review for me).

But the idea of a comprehensive wrap-up can been daunting. With the volume of presentations I attended, its difficult to give every presenter the credit they deserve. Facing 27 pages of typed notes and an infinite number of tweets to review, (not to mention expectations of several other excellent conference wrap-ups from other bloggers), I wanted to do something different.

There were many sessions and streams from which to choose, and sometimes I didn’t choose wisely. But I did pick up some salient sound bites and nuggets. So instead of writing a full blog post, I’m posting a series of what I’m calling “nuggets, snippets, and salient sound bites” to tell the Digital Pharma East 2010 story. This first post features the first three.

Speakers and presentations are listed with my favorite snippets. I sincerely hope the series helps capture what I felt was generally a good conference and informational exchange.
_____________________________________________

Ian Talmage, SVP Marketing, Bayer Schering Pharma

“Lessons from My Journey: From Marketer to Patient and Back Again”

As the “Patient as Marketer” keynote, Ian Talmage shared some powerful lessons learned when he was a marketer diagnosed with colon cancer and survived to share his story.

“Coming out the other side, I came out different -- and better. … It forever changed the way I think as a communicator.”
“Today, a pharma brand managers’ diverse strategic arena is impacted by many distractions (channels, politics, regulations, etc.) that take them away from their primary role. … Diversity and distractions are not always a good thing.”
As he reached out to talk to people online, Talmage gathered information and feedback. He heard from MDs, friends, and patient organizations. These resources gave him an anchor again. The only avenue that never answered was pharma.
“When people are ill, it’s not a transaction. We must create much more of a relationship, build trust, and be part of the solution.”
"People, even if they work for pharma, are more trustworthy than anonymous ads.”

Talmage went on to offer more digital/social advice, but I found his patient story to be infinitely more interesting and unique. As a "patient as marketer," Talmage offered an honest, thoughtful perspective of a cancer survivor that is also a pharma “market-teer” (as I learned they say in the UK). Well done.
_____________________________________________
Doc Searls, Co-Author, The Cluetrain Manifesto

To be honest. I didn’t know a whole lot about the Cluetrain Manifesto before I heard Doc speak, and I hadn’t ever read it. That probably automatically boots me out of any techy-geek cult or club I might have otherwise been a member of. But now I know the story – and I’m an enlightened person as a result.

The manifesto consisted of 95 theses (John Mack touched on a few of them on his blog last week.)
The name came from the comment: “The clue train stopped there four times a day for ten years, but they never took delivery”
Google Books reports that 5,220 books mention Cluetrain, and that number goes up every day.
"Markets are conversations. Conversations are fire. Marketing is arson.”
Here’s the interesting thing: The Cluetrain Manifesto wasn’t about marketing. It was about markets. It spoke in the voice of the customer, not of the seller.
Customers are not “seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. They are human beings.”
“Social media unlocks the awesome potential of behavioral disorders.” ADHD, narcissism ... so true. Not Doc’s idea, but I loved this statement and accompanying graphic and am even more thrilled to learn I can purchase the T-shirt!
The goal is to try to break down the walls of the web so it answers to consumers, not corporations

His parting advice to pharma marketers in social media? “Come from yourselves, not from the organization.”

____________________________________________

Bryan Vartabedian, MD, Pediatric Gastroenterologist, Texas Children's Hospital and Assistant Professor, Baylor College of Medicine

An avid blogger (http://www.33charts.com/) and all-around proponent of physicians using social media, “Dr. V” aka @Doctor_V presented “Twitter MD – What You Need to Know about Doctors and Social Media.”

“Patients used to search for information online, then they searched for each other online. Now, information is searching for – and finding – them.”
What are Drs doing in social? We don’t really know. He warned us to not pay too much attention to privately generated stats. But there is some work afoot to quantify this in a peer-reviewed way, which will give us some good data in the next year or two. (Interesting! Will be tough to wait that long)
What are the reasons Drs don’t use SM? Late adopters, time/impatience, social needs passion, issues w/ privacy, liability, image.
The best drug reps are the ones that spend a long time getting to know him. The relationships are the most powerful connections.
See Dr. V’s review of Doximity on his blog. With it’s LinkedIn-like profiles, encrypted text messaging, and ability to connect long-lost med school buddies, he felt it’s a site “worth keeping an eye on.”
Marc Monseau (of @JNJComm fame) knows Doctor V – “that’s his job and should be yours too.” Monseau brought them all to Vegas and sponsored the Blogworld expo. “Building relationships – that’s what its about.”
A look into the future: How will things be diff. in 10 years? Platforms will be different but conversation is conversation. The doctors will be here. Mobile will ultimately rule.
The integration of EMR and social communication is coming. EMR & social dashboards will be side by side on physicians’ screen at point-of-care.
Doctor V’s favorite sources for content? MedPage Today, ePocrates, and the “incredible content” on the NEJM app.

_____________________________________________
Joan Mikardos, Senior Director, Business Innovation, Sanofi-Aventis

Joan Mikardos (@jmikardos) heads up Sanofi Aventis' social media practice on their corporate innovation team. As a sit-in for colleague Dennis Urbaniak (@durbaniak), Joan wanted to share with us something that was “fresh and different than what everyone else is saying.” So she shared the story of her mission to understand how “pharma companies can use social media meaningfully.”

The mission was to understand social media and how a pharma co. can use it meaningfully and participate. “We’re chipping away with baby steps – is it worth it?”
They started with education and immersion. They educated legal, regulatory, marketing, medical with basic 101s and were actually even doing basic digital 101s.
While participation is important for social media … Listen first, and never stop listening. (We definitely heard this a lot over the several days of the conference.)
Once they were educated and listening, they setup internal experiences with a yammer feed (twitter in a closed network = safer). They have an acronym wiki and other internal wikis too.
They also opened up access to external social media and started some internal blogs.
Roadmap to a strategy: immersion, customer landscape/map, identify business objectives, define voice/reason for being, strategic framework/scorecard and implementation, evaluation and refinement.
She admitted they’d come a long way since “the moratorium that they couldn’t listen.”
Social media can go a long way beyond marketing. Lots of opportunity: customer service, organizational, sales, R&D, procurement.
There is a new role at SA: A Community Business Manager who is listening and bringing back feedback to the team. So who at SA has the “keys to the car” to speak in social media? She reported there are a handful of people. They are designated and get trained to participate on behalf of the company.
Everything you do should be grounded in insight. What are the gaps and what can you do to fill them?
Principles: Social media efforts are not campaigns. Ground efforts in customer insights. Be committed (if nothing else, be committed to figuring it out). Be transparent. Be nimble. Listen. Learn. Refine.

"The path is not easy or straight, but the opportunity to foster meaningful dialogue to improve patient outcomes is great." Well said, Joan!

_____________________________________________

Stay tuned for more snippets and sound bites from #digpharm soon!

Pharma's Pipeline Isn't Dry After All

2010-10-11T08:15:00.000-05:00

Happy Monday morning! So it turns out the pharma industry's pipeline isn't dry after all. Just take a look at all these amazing new drugs currently in late-stage clinical trials ... (courtesy of my own mother via an email forward... so it must be true, right?)

DAMNITOL

Take 2 and the rest of the world can go to hell for up to 8 full hours.

EMPTYNESTROGEN

Suppository that eliminates melancholy and loneliness by reminding you of how awful they were as teenagers and how you couldn't wait till they moved out!

ST. MOMMA'S WORT

Plant extract that treats mom's depression by rendering preschoolers unconscious for up to two days.

PEPTOBIMBO

Liquid silicone drink for single women. Two full cups swallowed before an evening out increases breast size, decreases intelligence, and prevents conception.

DUMBEROL

When taken with Peptobimbo, can cause dangerously low IQ, resulting in enjoyment of country music and pickup trucks.

FLIPITOR

Increases life expectancy of commuters by controlling road rage and the urge to flip off other drivers.

MENICILLIN

Potent anti-boy-otic for older women. Increases resistance to such lethal lines as, 'You make me want to be a better person. '

BUYAGRA

Injectable stimulant taken prior to shopping. Increases potency, duration, and credit limit of spending spree.

ANTI-TALKSIDENT

A spray carried in a purse or wallet to be used on anyone too eager to share their life stories with total strangers in elevators or on airplanes.

_________________

Thanks for providing the content, Mom, and whoever started the email string! If you're in the pharma industry and therefore in need of a laugh from more pharma humor (and who isn't?), see these past ePharma Rx posts.

The Social Media Playground: What if FDA Says Pharma Can't Play?

2010-10-07T14:03:00.002-05:00

The industry is waiting with bated breath for guidance from FDA on the use of the Internet and social media for promotion of pharmaceutical products. When can we expect it and what will it mean?

When Can We Expect It?
As recently as June, FDA was quoted in print as saying they were "still on track" to have guidelines issued by end of 2010. In an exclusive report issued in September, Reuters reported the same timeline. But last month, fellow pharma blogger Mark Senak attended the Food and Drug Law Institute Advertising and Promotion Conference held in Washington, D.C., and sat through several presentations from DDMAC. Mark subsequently blogged "FDA could not say for sure that it would happen by the end of the year, but that was the goal. They also stated that while they were planning more than one guidance document, they couldn't say how many." Then the BioJobBlog took it all one step further with the headline "FDA Guidance on the Use of Social Media May Not Be Complete Until 2012!"

So? It's anybody's best guess as to when they will be issued. (Should we start a Vegas pool and place bets? Who's in?!) I don't think FDA even knows when they will be done. Maybe by end of 2010 (I'd be surprised) ... maybe sometime in 2011 (more likely) ... maybe not until 2012 (a possibility). So where does that leave the industry?

What if Pharma Can't Play?
What if FDA says pharma can’t "play in the social media playground?" It's a scary thought, but it's possible that guidance could be so restrictive for brand promotion that it makes no sense at all to participate in what should be a two-way conversation.

Then we'd pretty much be in the same place as where we are now, wouldn't we?

What We Do Know - Our Baseline:

They're Online. We know patients and professionals are online and using mobile devices seeking information, talking to others about health and medicine.
Space Limitations. We know there are (and likely always will be) real limitations around the use of fair balance in space-limited channels such as Twitter, search ads, text messaging, and sharing tools.
Content Control. FDA will always hold pharma responsible for content that it controls. What's somewhat debatable is whether pharma is also held responsible for content that is out of its control. (For example, what search engines display in organic results, content that is shared and then edited by the user, and that gray area of comments posted on a pharma-sponsored Facebook or YouTube channel.) But we know for what pharma controls, pharma is held accountable, as noted in the recent FDA letter concerning Facebook social sharing.
AE Reporting. Pharma is still responsible for reporting AEs - that, too, will never change. This week FDA reminded us all of this by issuing a warning letter to Actelion concerning its failure to follow postmarketing AE reporting requirements for three of its drugs.
With our Without. We know, also, that there are still ways we can reach patients and professionals, with or without social media. Read on ...

What We Can Still Do - With or Without Guidance:

Listen In. Everyone says it but it's worth saying again ... social "listening" is always a great place to start, and FDA surely can't have a problem with it as long as AEs are monitored and reported and other existing SOPs are followed. Monitoring social media provides information, insights, and a wealth of information not found anywhere else. I'm still amazed at how many pharma companies aren't doing this in an organized manner yet. Of course, the trick is to integrate human analysis with automated ones so that the information you glean is actually helpful and actionable.
Corporate Approach. What seems the safest, most widespread, and perhaps most appropriate use of social media is at the corporate level. Corporate initiatives support the company brand and reputation – not a product. See this (now one year old, but still useful) graph on who's tweeting from a corporate perspective.
Customer Service. There's an opportunity to look at customer service and even medical information providers in a new way. Product specialists could reach out to help answer online queries in channels not owned by the pharma company. Nurses could seek out patients with questions and concerns and help them. Perhaps the conversations would need to be taken offline or one-on-one, but this could be explained, and the effort would be appreciated. (These days, that's practically an expectation from consumers)
Unbranded Approach. Unbranded product promotion, though recently under new fire from FDA, is still safer ground than branded promotion. The industry is in a position to be able to provide disease support, tools, and education that others can't. Recently, sanofi-aventis' launched a new diabetes Facebook page. The effort received accolades from blogger Rich Meyer, who isn't shy about telling it like he sees it when it comes to critiques. Read his review to see what he liked about it. [Full disclosure: this was my agency's project and sanofi-aventis is our client]
Back to Basics. I expect that FDA isn't going to outright ban certain means of outreach such as search engine marketing, banner advertising, email, or good old fashioned Web sites. These are all still viable, proven means of reaching professionals and patients online. Social media could certainly extend and enhance these efforts, but honestly if we must, we can do without it.
True Transparency. Why not help explain to customers, in clear language, the difficulties pharma faces in speaking with them in an open forum? Maybe something like this. I got a sense from most of the "ePatients" at the ePatient Connections Conference last week that they at least have a basic understanding of the challenges the industry faces when trying to communicate with them. I think they witnessed that there are people in the industry who are trying like heck to be able to do more, for the right reasons. It might help for others to better understand that as well.

The Moral of the Story?
What if FDA says pharma can’t play in the social media playground, or can do so in only a very restricted manner? I guess the moral of the story is not to fret too much about FDA guidance on social media. Nobody has a crystal ball on when guidances will come and what they will be. Meanwhile it shouldn't prevent the industry from trying new things within the confines of what we currently know. And it won't be the end of the world if guidance ends up being one of those "geez, I wish we hadn't asked for it" results.

I use the word playground for fun – but I don't mean to imply that pharma should treat social media as a playground, as John Mack pointed out in this post with the social media crisis management maxim, "Social media: not your children's playground anymore."

If social media is the playground and FDA is the playground monitor, we still must sit and wait for playground rules. But even without those rules, we know we can't throw rocks ... and that we must play well with others!

Four Questions to Ask About Your Social Sharing Tool

2010-09-29T18:17:00.004-05:00

I enjoyed hearing many new ideas and seeing friends old and new at the ePatient Connections Conference this week. Kudos to @KevinKruse for another great event! Unfortunately I came down with a nasty cold the second day and missed many of the presentations. Overall I understand it was a successful event, and I did appreciate hearing different perspectives, including those from patients and also those from others outside the pharma industry.

I was also pleased to present information on our new pharma-friendly social sharing widget, share»send»save. A few useful links:

I just posted the presentation on slideshare here.
Read the background here regarding the recent DDMAC letter concerning social sharing
See our original announcement launching share»send»save last week.

The announcement of the widget prompted many good discussions at the conference and back at the office about the risks and rewards of social sharing for pharma. It prompted us to come up with this list:

4 Things You Should Ask About Your Social Sharing Tool

1. How free is “free?”
When it comes to social sharing, there's still no such thing as a free lunch. Prior to the release of share»send»save, pharma company's only options for social sharing widgets were the free tools such as ShareThis. (ShareThis was the tool cited in the DDMAC letter) But at Intouch, we realized some time ago these third-party tools could pose some threats and unknowns for our pharma clients, which is what prompted us to build share»send»save earlier this year.

What happens when these free widgets run out of VC money and look to add advertising as a business model? (Their terms leave this an open possibility) What happens if, one day, a product manager visits their own brand.com site and clicks the "Share" button only to find an ad for a competitor, an ad for an herbal remedy, an ad for a Canadian pharmacy, or some other ad that would make a regulatory reviewers' heads explode?

We've priced share»send»save so that it can be implemented for a very nominal fee, depending on the size of the site. We believe it's a very small price to pay for peace of mind ... and for a guarantee of no third-party advertising - ever.

2. What is your vendor’s history with regulated industries?
Friends and family outside the pharma industry often ask me "what's so different about pharmaceutical marketing that you specialize in it?" (I've blogged on that topic in the past) If you've been in the industry a while, you understand the answer to that question is complex, complicated, sometimes comical, and often frustrating.

If you're a product manager, you likely work with partners, people, and agencies that specialize in this industry to avoid a steep learning curve and headaches at review time. It's important to ask the question of all of your partners, "what is your history of working within a highly regulated industry such as pharmaceuticals?" Working with partners and products that understand this industry will help you stay safe and compliant in the long run.

Intouch Solutions and share»send»save = pharma-friendly

Third-party free tools = no stake in - and little history with - the pharma industry

3. How does your vendor’s tool help your brand control what is shared? There's been a lot of talk about the metatags that drive both search engine optimization and content shared through social sharing tools. That's really just the tip of the iceberg. Largely, third-party tools decide themselves what gets shared and how it looks when its shared. With share»send»save, the site owner is able to decide what content, links, and images are shared and through which channels (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) the user can choose to share. And it helps ensure that the content that is shared is the same in each channel.

Third-party free tools reserve the right to change how the widget looks, works, and behaves on your site. I believe if most brand managers and regulatory review teams truly understood this, there would be a lot fewer free tools featured on pharma sites.

In this case, being able to fully and carefully control the widget and the shared message is a very good thing for pharma and helps keeps sharing activity compliant, responsible, and transparent.

4. How does your vendor intend to use the data collected by their tool? Ask the question of your social sharing tool vendor - do they intend to publish any of the data from your sites? Do they guarantee they will not sell any data or private information collected via their sharing tool? Will they show how many "shares" your product.com site achieved versus the competitors' site? Will they guarantee this will never happen?

It's a question worth asking because typically, free tools own the data and determine what happens to it - you don't. With share»send»save, it's the opposite.

I was excited about the response I received from both other agencies and pharma company representatives interested in the potential for share»send»save. Keep an eye out for the widget, coming soon to a brand.com site near you ...

Pharma-Friendly Social Sharing Widget Now Available

2010-09-21T11:55:00.000-05:00

I'm excited to announce a new initiative from my agency that I hope will help pharmaceutical companies take a new look at social sharing. It's called share»send»save, and its the industry's first "pharma-friendly" social sharing widget.

The share»send»save widget enables content sharing through social networks, links via e-mail, and by saving or bookmarking information to Web browsers. It's similar to free widgets currently available like ShareThis, but with one key difference: it's designed especially for the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry, so it offers added control over how content is shared.

You can view the press release here, or visit the share»send»save website for more information and to see it in action. (Blogger doesn't support share»send»save for individual content like this post, so visit share»send»save website to experience how it works.)

How It Came About
We started working on share»send»save some time ago when we noticed currently existing free social sharing tools posed certain risks to our clients, such as the possibility of added advertising and the unauthorized sharing of user and site data.

We actually soft-launched a beta version of share»send»save earlier this year. Then, when FDA issued its letter to Novartis concerning its social sharing widget, we dug even deeper into the challenge. While working short-term with our pharma, medical device, and animal health clients to review and update any sites that were in violation, we were working on a long-term solution as well. We were able to make some updates to share»send»save that helped address DDMAC's new concerns outlined in the letter. For more background on that situation, see our point-of-view on implications and recommendations here.

How It's Different
Our goal with share»send»save was to enable pharma companies (and other similarly regulated industries) to empower site users to share content while minimizing risk. It does that through some unique features that provide added control, such as:
◦ Only specified content and images are shared across channels. You can calibrate share»send»save so that you define what message and image (if any) is shared. Then, the same message is sent by the widget to be shared on the channels of choice.
◦ It uses special share-friendly social tags and keeps standard metadata intact. So sites can be optimized for search engines as well as social sharing at the same time - you don't have to choose between search and social.
◦ Shared URLs can be shortened to save space and also prevent product names or conditions from appearing in the URL if inappropriate. If you want the full URL to show, that's an option as well.
◦ This widget offers enhanced tracking and analytics. Detailed data around social sharing behavior on the site is available to site owners (in other words, that data is not owned by a random freebie sharing tool). The share»send»save data also can be incorporated into existing analytics packages such as Omniture, Google Analytics, and Webtrends.
◦ The widget offers some flexible customization options. We developed the product - but more so - we developed it for our clients' websites. The look-and-feel of the widget can be customized (color, etc.) to match site branding.
◦ When users choose the "send" option to send an email to a friend, the secure e-mail can include detailed important safety information and other customized info to help ensure the messages shared via email are in compliance.
◦ It provides the option of an interstitial “you are leaving this site” disclaimer. This was included for added peace of mind for the same legal and regulatory folks that require disclaimers like this for external links.
◦ Allows site owners to choose what channels (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) are active. Don't want people to "digg" your content for whatever reason? Turn off that channel, and they won't have the option. New social sharing destinations emerging? We'll be adding those too.

Share Responsibily
Social sharing isn't for every company, brand or website. Unbranded websites and non-black-boxed product sites are still the safest environment for pharma social sharing. Above all, site owners should really be working extra-hard to offer content that is share-worthy to begin with.

Learn More
I'll be speaking more about this at ePatient Connections Conference next week, walking through a short demo and answering questions about social sharing. (Haven't signed up for the conference yet? Use discount code "Intouch300" to save $300. Sources tell me there are only 18 seats left as of this morning.) If you're already planning on being there, please say hi!

Tell Us What You Think
What do you think? I'm counting on the vocal pharma social media community to provide honest feedback and reviews. Does this solve a problem? Are there things we missed and ways we could improve the product? Does it matter? Is pharma waiting silently for DDMAC guidance until they make any big social sharing moves? Do people really want to share pharma's content anyway? Thanks in advance for your feedback!

IMHO, the vast Intouch team that worked on share»send»save did a great job, and I think it's a nice example of where creative minds, pharma knowledge, and technology know-how came together to solve a problem.

The pharma industry has enough problems, and if we can help solve just one, that makes me happy.

If SMEs Ruled the World

2010-09-15T10:43:00.000-05:00

Time and again over the past few weeks, I've seen something that is so very true, and I am sure something that all marketers and agencies struggle with when developing digital assets. For this exercise, let’s pretend we’re building a Web site.

If any one department or practice

had complete control

over designing and building a Web site,

it would be

AN ABOMINATION.

Here’s what I mean:

• If User Experience had complete control over the site, it would be easy to find information, it would be extremely easy to use, there would be no confusion. It would be an overall excellent experience for the user. But it might be ugly, it might leave out some critical marketing goals. And it might look like this.
• If Designers had complete control over the site, it would be gorgeous, elegant, unique. It may also be difficult to read (tiny gray type, anyone?), and made entirely of flash. So search engines wouldn’t see it, and mobile/iPad viewers wouldn’t stand a chance of getting what they needed out of it.
• If Search Engine Marketers had complete control over the site, the site would be content-rich. It would be packed with the right keywords and phrases and links, the site architecture and metatags would be sweet candy to the Googles and Yahoo’s of the world. It might even rank number one in search engine results for certain keywords. But the copy wouldn’t be readable to a normal human being, it might be cluttered and unwieldy, and there’s a chance it would end up like this.
• If Developers had complete control over the site, the code would be clean. It would be architected brilliantly. It might have some interesting technical bells and whistles that only a true techie could appreciate behind the scenes. But search engine optimization, user experience, design would likely not be part of that equation.
• If the Client – and perhaps Account Services – had complete control over the site, it would be all about the product. It would clearly communicate the right marketing messages and calls to action. It would collect user data and likely tie back to sales. It might even feature the clients' favorite color. But would it resemble anything that best served the user - whether that be the patient, caregiver, or healthcare professional? Maybe. Maybe not.

I could go on … If CRM experts had complete control over the site … If Copywriters had complete control over the site ... If SOCIAL MEDIA experts had control over the site … You get the picture. I could even step outside the agency setting and talk about "If REGULATORY had complete control over the site" or if "Patients had complete control over the site ..."

But I think you can fill in those blanks on your own.

I say all this with a smile and a bit of humor, with respect and apologies to the experts I mention above. These are, of course, extreme statements and extreme examples.

But be honest – do they ring true, even a little bit?

The best subject matter experts – whether they are Search Engine Optimization, Copywriting, Design, User Experience, Social Media, or someone else – realize their role is a piece of the big picture. Sometimes their role is critical to a project, sometimes it just isn’t. The best end-result represents the best examples of the sum of its parts. The best work must – first and foremost – meet its original objectives.

It’s important to have specialists and subject matter experts that bring all of these critical practices to the project. It’s also important to have perspective, find the middle ground, and keep your main objectives in sight.

More Insights on Upcoming FDA Guidance

2010-09-07T11:32:00.002-05:00

On Friday, Reuters published a "Special Report" on FDA's increased enfocement on drug advertising.

I tweeted about this a few times over the past few days, but if you don't follow Twitter you may not have seen it. And since I've highlighted a lot of FDA social media and DDMAC enforcement topics on this blog in the past, I felt it was pretty important to link to the story here as well. The below link has the story laid out in a nice color PDF "report":

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6821PN20100903

I recommend you read the report, since its full of insights about DDMAC's approach and activity in regulatory enforcement, gleaned from an apparent interview with DDMAC Director Tom Abrams. But if you're short on time, here are a few of my key takeaways:

FDA is reporting it is still on track to issue guidance on the Internet and social media in 2010.
According to DDMAC Director Tom Abrams, FDA will develop "separate guidance that are issue-specific and can apply to the various mediums used on the Internet."

Reuters explained that FDA will advise companies how to respond when consumers make an unprompted request for information on a drug.

FDA is behind in a number of ways: keeping guidance and processes on par with advances in technology, as well as being short on resources. As the article and FiercePharma point out, FDA has only 57 staff to review 75,000 promotional pieces. They can't get to them all, so they have to prioritize.

Considering, according to the article, FDA has "insufficient staff and antiquated technology systems," their existing reviewers and letter-writers have still found the time to stay very busy. For more background on their 2010 letter-writing campaign, see Mark Senak's analysis here.

Stories like this remind me of one of the reasons I became disillusioned with public relations: media bias. The story really focuses on the notion that "... consumer advocates, some lawmakers and others see the barrage of [DTC] ads as a way to push medicines that people may not need as well as raise the nation's overall healthcare costs." The story goes on to highlight all the shenanigans the pharma industry has apparently been trying to pull over on consumers, citing blogger outreach, celebrity endorsements, and social gatherings as examples.

One-sided stories like this one, combined with the onslaught of FDA letters, are definitely not helping Big Pharma's reputation. More on that later.

Since the report was published Friday, many have weighed in with comments. Read them for a harsh reality check on how people view the pharma industry and DTC marketing. You might even consider posting a comment with your perspective.
DDMAC Director Tom Abrams uses Facebook. I wonder if he'd be my friend?

Hat tip to @LauraN546 for the heads-up on the report. What did you learn from the article? Any key points I missed?

Upcoming Digital Pharma Conferences

2010-08-24T21:57:00.002-05:00

I've been receiving a few questions from clients and contacts lately on which conferences are the best to attend. I've been to a few of them, and they all have their pros and cons. If you're planning your autumn 2010 lineup of pharma marketing-related conferences like I am, I hope you find the following list helpful. Hope to see you there!

mHealth (mobile) - September 8-9, San Diego
ePatient Connections - September 27-29, Philadelphia. Intouch Solutions is a sponsor this year; use code "Intouch300" to save $300 off registration.
Health 2.0 - October 7-8, San Francisco
Digital Pharma East - October 18-20, Philadelphia
unNiched - November 1-2, NYC [UPDATE: This conference has been postponed until further notice. According to their website: “ALERT: After much consideration, we have decided to postpone unNiched 2010 to mid-2011. We expect to make an announcement regarding our future plans for the event in the next week or so.”]
EyeforPharma eCommunication and Online Marketing - November 8-9, Boston, MA
A.L.I. Social Media for Pharma - Dec. 6-8, NYC
ePharma Summit - February 7-9, 2011, Philadelphia (agenda TBD)

Pharma Social Media: Live and Learn

2010-08-17T17:33:00.002-05:00

It's back-to-school time for many of the kiddos, so an education theme seemed relevant for today's post.

It’s true, lots has been said, blogged, and tweeted about the DDMAC letter to Novartis regarding its social sharing tool on a branded Web site. Blogger Richard Meyer even criticized the buzz, telling everyone to, "Get over the FDA letter ... There continues to be a lot of discussion around the FDA letter to Novartis on the Facebook share button. However 99% of the talk centers around agency people who are slowly seeing a gravy train pull out of the station."

Hmmm. I have my opinions about that one, but that's not the point of this post.

Bottom line: the letter represented important new information with implications for many pharmaceutical companies currently using (or planning to use) sharing tools on their sites.

The flurry of excitement and commentary reminded me a bit of sanofi-aventis’ bout earlier this year with the Facebook “Taxoterrorist.” And more recently there was commentary around sanofi-aventis’ removal of its much-lauded GoInsulin YouTube page (the comments alone on this post from Andrew Spong are worth a read).

It’s only August, but haven’t we already learned a lot as an industry about social media this year!

Social media is new, yes, especially to pharma. But these situations aren’t. Situations will arise. Approaches will be challenged. Small mistakes will happen. New information will come to light. Even new or previously unclear rules will come into play.

As an industry, we will learn from these things and be better for our brands and our customers in the end. To be able to do that sooner, pharma companies should reach out for help and let the experts guide them.

Who should handle the strategy, setup the YouTube page, reach out to bloggers? Who should serve as the community manager, the voice, the guide? I’ve blogged about who “owns” social media in the past, and 14 signs you’ve found the right social media partner. Others have blogged that it doesn’t really matter who owns it. But the above situations certainly speak for a need for pharma companies to partner with a team of specialists – no matter in what type of agency they reside - that:

1. Understand public relations, communications, and crisis management. Especially for corporate-level social media communications and situations such as SA’s Facebook and YouTube situations. Social media at its core is about communicating.

2. Know social media and all of its tenants and watchouts. This doesn’t mean they themselves have a Facebook page or have a particularly pretty presentation on Slideshare about social media. It means they have actual experience, are actually doing work for pharma clients in the space, and continue to evolve with the changes.

3. Know digital technology. This seems secondary, but with the recent FDA letter regarding social sharing widgets, it’s become clear this is critical. You need partners that can think creatively about digital solutions to problems. For example, partners that can look at the best way to use metadata, what data is shared with which platforms, and weigh the pros and cons of sharing the same metadata for search engine optimization and social sharing.

For someone to be able to develop creative solutions for you, they need to know the wide range of possibilities that the digital channel offers, and they need the people that can build it right. More examples and questions to ask: Does the partner understand the specs for building your Twitter background so that your ISI displays no matter the screen resolution? Can they build robust moderation tools for your forums and other social spaces that allow you to arbitrate the conversation (because we are still, after all, in pharma). Can they easily optimize your online efforts for mobile viewing? And can they do all this while keeping your users’ experience intact?

Add to all of the above, the context of pharma’s highly regulated, highly litigious, and ever-evolving environment. Pharma experience itself, too, is critical, and anyone that has spent years in pharma knows it is so.

If you’re thrilled with the agency that does your print or TV creative – that’s great. But if you think that expertise naturally translates into the ability to develop a solid social media strategy and the ability to implement it prudently on your behalf, think again.

We’ve all learned a lot. And there’s still lots to learn. Expect social media itself to teach us. And expect FDA to do the same. Meanwhile, engage in the pharma social media community, learn from them, and choose your partners wisely.

FDA WidgetGate: Implications and Recommendations

2010-08-09T19:16:00.002-05:00

Intouch Solutions' Official POV

For those of you following the commentary on FDA's letter to Novartis regarding social sharing widgets (can we call it WidgetGate for fun?!), Intouch Solutions has some new information and recommendations to share with you.

Yesterday I posted a recap, analysis, and collection of musings and opinions on the subject. Today, I'd like to share a more official point-of-view document researched and issued by our Emerging Media team. This Point-of-View (POV) document was issued exclusively to Intouch Solutions clients late Friday and is an extensive sum-total of many discussions and brains noodling the different angles of the situation. It's seven pages long ... and yet we still feel like there's so much more to say!

We hope you all find the POV helpful as you sort through your own situations and the variety of opinions on the subject. After all, there really isn't one right answer - each pharma company will need to weigh their own products, programs, goals, social strategy, and current situation against their own risk threshold.

Credit for writing the POV goes to Sean Nicholson, Sarah Waldschmidt, Jim Dayton, (and me), plus many others here that contributed to the collective knowledge. And we're not done yet - expect more updates soon.

Interested in your thoughts ... how does all the commentary compare with what's really happening inside pharma's walls?

FDA’s 1st Social Sharing Spanking: Was it the Medium, the Message, or the Metadata?

2010-08-08T21:14:00.141-05:00

Introduction
On July 29, 2010, the Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications (DDMAC) of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a notice of violation letter to Novartis indicating that communications created by a social media sharing widget on several Tasigna Web sites violated the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and FDA implementing regulations. The letter was made public August 5, 2010.

According to PubMed, Tasigna is a kinase inhibitor “used to treat certain types of leukemia (cancer that begins in the white blood cells) in people whose disease could not be treated successfully with imatinib (Gleevec) or people who cannot take imatinib.” Tasigna’s labeling carries a black-box warning.

The details of the letter indicate that the Facebook sharing feature of the social widget on Tasigna’s U.S. website generated communications that were in violation because they:

Failed to provide risk information (omission of risk)
Broadened Tasigna’s indication beyond what was approved (broadening of indication)
Implied advantages of Tasigna over other products (unsubstantiated superiority claims)
Implied the drug is more effective than clinical experience or evidence has proven (overstatement of efficacy)

The letter also pointed out that, while the website itself was submitted to FDA per regulations, the shared content was not submitted prior to use. (Failure to submit)

So What?
It should go without saying that this letter quickly received the attention of industry, with news articles, blog posts, and tweets swirling all day Thursday and into Friday. I think many of us in the industry realized it could have been any one of many companies that could have received this letter. Novartis, it seems, drew the short straw.

It’s important to note this letter represents several firsts:

To my knowledge, it is the first DDMAC letter involving or even mentioning the use of social sharing tools (there have been letters mentioning YouTube in the past, but not tools like ShareThis).
It is the first letter that mentions Facebook by name.
It’s the first letter directly addressing metadata, even though metadata has been appearing in search engine results as long as there’s been Yahoo! and Google.

And while the FDA letter calls out Facebook specifically, in actuality, the issue was with Novartis’ use of the free ShareThis sharing widget – not really a “Facebook Share social media widget” as FDA stated. Either way, it’s important to note the implications of the letter likely reach all social sharing tools and even other situations where there are space limitations (such as search and mobile).

Many bloggers have already weighed in with their opinions on the letter.

For a consolidated list of articles and blog posts, see below.
For more analysis and commentary on the letter from yours truly, read on ...

Essentially, the conversations have come down to the medium, the message, and metadata.

It’s the Medium

Social medium, that is. Was this an attack by FDA on social media?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or are new to this industry, you’re aware FDA held a hearing on the Internet and Social Media in November 2009, and has indicated they will issue guidance by the end of 2010. FDA Special Assistant Dr. Jean-Ah Kang has been quoted that while FDA is indeed on track to deliver guidance this year, industry should meanwhile be on the lookout for letters that address some of the issues and questions surrounding pharma’s use of social media.

The Tasigna letter, I believe, may be the first in a series that will help provide clarity on some of the issues and – for better or worse – set some precedent for industry to begin to follow.

Even if Dr. Kang had not foreshadowed the letter, and even if guidance never does get published, the pharmaceutical industry is well-versed in adjusting its promotional approach by interpreting letters from DDMAC. And don’t forget 2010 is on track to be one of the heaviest letter-writing years in DDMAC history.

That said, digging into the details of the letter, it does not seem in fact to be an attack on the use of social media. Instead, it sent a clear message that the same rules apply no matter what medium is used. So was it the message?

It’s the Message
The basic principle of the violations read like many letters issued by DDMAC… omission of risk, broadening of indication, overstatement of efficacy. On first glance it appears Novartis was just sloppy with their use of social sharing. As Eileen O’Brien of Siren Interactive points out in her blog post, “It’s the Message NOT the Medium. This letter does not provide FDA guidance on Facebook. The important thing to remember is that this content did not follow existing FDA guidelines.”

Pharma must follow the known rules. The same rules apply in social media when it comes to indication, fair balance, efficacy, superiority claims, submission, etc. Pharma cannot afford to be careless – even with social media where guidance is sketchy at best.

By confirming that safety information must be included in any social media message -- other than reminders and even AFTER it is posted on the destination site (i.e., Facebook), the FDA is applying the same standard to social media as it has to other forms of pharmaceutical communications. Remember the infamous 14 NOV letters for search marketing in 2009? The message here is that FDA expects compliance with existing regs even if there are space limitations.

So if it wasn’t the medium, and it might have been the message, what’s all this discussion about metadata?

It’s the Metadata

Bloggers John Mack and Rich Meyer both jumped on the opportunity to educate their readers about metadata. Why all this focus on metadata? Metadata matters in this context because most social sharing tools pull metadata – or “data about data” entered into a Web site’s code – to generate the description that serves as the summary that gets shared. Metadata (which is, basically in this context, just words in the code) is generally “invisible” to anyone viewing the site, but is used by search engines and sharing tools to pull certain information about a site.

Site developers are able to define metadata, and some – but not all – pharmaceutical companies include metadata in their current legal/medical/regulatory review process.

I’m not connected to Novartis so I’m not sure what happened in this situation and why their metadata (and therefore their social sharing results) were not in compliance. But from where I sit, it’s possible that:

Novartis did not realize this metadata existed (a developer could have entered the code on a whim and it was soon forgotten) Novartis’ legal, medical, and regulatory committees may not have had any idea that this metadata existed and therefore had not reviewed it, corrected it, nor submitted it to FDA.
Consider this: One example of shared content, captured in the FDA letter from the Tasigna professional site, reads, “More information to Support your Patients.” Most review committees would not allow the inconsistencies in upper and lowercase letters in “Support” and “Patients."
It may be that review of metadata is just not part of their normal site review process.
The metadata was reviewed, but was not updated when the indication changed and/or when the social sharing tools were added.
Metadata was never reviewed or considered in the context of when the social sharing tool was added.

It is even possible the metadata provided by the site was too long for the character limits of the social sharing widget. As a result, the full indication information was cut off, making it appear as though Tasigna is appropriate for a broader range of indications. And the risk information may simply have been too long to be included at all. But looking closely at the wording of what should have been there and what ended up there, this is unlikely.

Still, it matters. If sharing tools and sharing destinations won’t allow content past a certain character limit, where does that leave branded content sharing that now requires indication and fair balance?

It’s All Three!
Some pharma companies have been using social media and social sharing tools for years. The industry called for FDA to provide guidance on the Internet and social media as a promotional medium. As I’ve said before, … be careful what you wish for.

Was it the medium, the message, or the metadata? It was all three. It was the medium because of the industry's hyper-focus on social media, it was the message because the content didn't follow existing guidelines for promotion in the first place, and it was the metadata because the offending content was pulled by the widget from metadata, which has its limitations.

While this letter has implications for many companies currently using social sharing tools on their sites, it does provide clarity on several key points. And? It’s not all bad news. So what do we now know as a result of this letter?

DDMAC doesn’t discriminate – consumer and professional sites alike are being scrutinized.
The same rules apply when it comes to indication, fair balance, efficacy, superiority claims, etc. Don’t be sloppy – even with “invisible” metadata.
Since fair balance being one-click-away wasn’t good enough for FDA, the myth of the “one click” rule-that-was-never-a-rule was, once again, discredited and debunked.
The biggest issue with social sharing is space limitations. This used to equate to mostly Twitter, but it applies to any social sharing where metadata feeds the content and 3rd parties such as the sharing widget or destination site may take liberties to shorten it.

There was potentially even some good news …

FDA did not outwardly prohibit use of social media, social sharing tools, Facebook, or even loose connections to user generated content.
FDA has always carefully considered the source of the offending content. FDA didn’t have a problem with user generated content, and all but implied that once the information is shared and out of pharma’s control, pharma is not liable. The key, however, is to make sure the content that IS within the company’s control is in line with current regulation.
There will likely be more letters – and hopefully eventually guidance – that will contribute to a framework of even more clarity around the use of social media by pharma in promotional materials.

In the words of Jim Dayton, our Emerging Media Director:

Social sharing is still very important; FDA didn’t say you can’t use these tools, they just clarified that in using these tools, the same rules apply around indication, fair balance, and risk.
Social media is not going away and the FDA letter issued to Novartis is not a game-changer. Nor is it a justification to stop using social media.
Instead, it has provided clarification as to the appropriate use of social sharing and has provided an opportunity to for companies to refine their overall marketing strategy.
By adjusting social media strategies to include these clarifications, marketers can better serve consumers, professionals, and regulatory requirements.

In the end, was it worth it? Were people really posting information about Tasigna to their Facebook pages? Were consumers “digging” content about a kinase inhibitor that treats Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia? Or did someone slap a sharing widget on a site because - heaven forbid - they thought it would look cool and thought that meant they were "doing" social media?

If there is anything to learn from this, it's that social is not a tactic. Social is not an icon you slap on your site. It is something that should be considered carefully, strategically, and with strong, pharma-friendly, tech-savvy partners who can help you understand the power -- and limitations -- of the Internet and social media tools.

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Additional Resources – News

Additional Resources – Blogs

Customer Service is the New Marketing is the New Customer Service

2010-08-04T15:49:00.002-05:00

Pharma – as you know – is full of silos. Marketing, public relations, sales, and customer service all inherently have the same end goals, yet operate in extremely disparate internal functions. Some companies are better than others, but all seem to have their special struggles. Unfortunately, that can translate to duplicate and conflicting efforts, wasted resources, and decreased customer satisfaction.

But what if we look at things differently by combining some of those silos? What if we thought about it this way … In today’s marketing environment, part of the role of marketing IS customer service.

And I don’t mean that someday brand managers will start manning the call center (although wouldn’t that be an interesting exercise for one day?) I mean that customers today want and expect a more customer-centric approach from any communication they receive from a company. And the emergence of social media has increasingly compounded this phenomenon.

Similar to the central themes in Seth Godin’s popular Meatball Sundae and Bob Gilbreath's The Next Evolution of Marketing (hat tip to Jonathan Richman at Dose of Digital for the free copy), rather than relying heavily on mass media to sell pharma products (i.e., DTC TV), today’s pharma marketing should treat every opportunity to connect as an opportunity to provide value.

Now certainly some pharma companies hyper-focused on profits will scoff at this and scream “Where’s the ROI?” But a customer-centric approach doesn’t have to be expensive, and small steps can pay off in big ways.

Customer Service via Your Web Site
Let’s re-think customer service as it applies to your Web site. And again – I don’t mean posting the 1-800 number on the site so people can call with a question. When the Web first emerged, Web sites were little more than brochure-ware sites – a digital version of something that had been created for print. But as technology and our understanding of the Webs’ capabilities have evolved, so have the opportunities to connect with customers.

What could customer service look like when it comes to your Web site?

• Offering valuable, unique content that goes well beyond "this is disease X and product Y"
• Providing an excellent user experience – easy to navigate, easy to use (“don’t make me think”)
• Useful tools and applications that help patients manage their disease
• Coupons, rebates, and patient assistance program information to help them afford their treatment
• A site that gets better with time ... which requires a commitment to constant improvement and a continuous user-centered approach
• Giving your customer as much or more of what they want versus what you want to give them

Implementing a more customer-centric approach to your most accessible, public-facing property – your Web site – can be cheap, fruitful, and fairly pain-free. Where to begin?

• Start with Search. Capture keywords that users enter into your search field on the site. It's a great way to understand not only what people are looking for, but what words they are using. Then, at the next site update, provide what they are looking for - and consider using some of their words while you're at it.
• Get a UX Expert. Employ or partner with a user experience specialist who can recommend the right research to identify the quick wins to improve your site. I've seen some very simple changes create dramatic results.
• Look carefully and honestly at how users access your site. Which browsers do they use? Do they use mobile? Are you providing the best experience possible for them no matter how they come to you?
• Review analytics regularly. Are they finding what they’re looking for? (If not, can you provide it? If so, why aren’t you?) What's working, what's not working? And then take the next step that many do not: ADJUST accordingly.
• Set expectations at launch. Any agency that tells you the site is perfect at launch is full of baloney. Only through watching, listening, learning, and evolving over time will the site improve.
• Take a close look at the activity on your forms or registration pages. Is there a high dropoff at certain points? Can you reduce the number of questions or improve the flow to decrease dropoff?
• How about the design? Was the look-and-feel designed by a guy with a print background,or by an experienced Web creative team, well-versed in user-centric design?
• Remember, you are most likely not your target audience. Put personal preferences aside and let best practices and research results guide decisions.
• Don't wait those 6-12 months to make changes. Work an ongoing optimization schedule into your 2011 plans, and work with your agency to define what that means and what the deliverables will be.
• Measure your results. Look to improve KPIs by lowering bounce rates, increasing page views, increase time-on-site, increasing engagement metrics, increasing registrations, etc.

Look at it from this angle: Are your users completing the tasks that you want them to? How do those match up with what they are looking for? Is there a way to meet in the middle to both guide their behavior in the way that you need, but also provide them with value and a positive experience?

Putting Customers First
As Alistair Davidson explains in the The Soap Holder Effect, what happens when you put customers first?

Putting the customer first does not mean selling the lowest-cost product or reducing profit margins. Rather, companies that put customers first create excellent products—and are rewarded for it.

Given, the pharma industry has its own special hurdles when it comes to product development and refinement. But as marketers, can’t we create “products” (such as mobile apps), “services” (education, live support, access), and especially positive experiences (Web sites) that fill this void?

[Special thanks to Steve Wright, VP Technology, and the rest of our ThinkTank team for getting this conversation going!]

On Being Creative in a Regulated World

2010-08-03T12:00:00.004-05:00

NOTE: This is a guest post, with many thanks to the author, Greg Kirsch, Vice President of Creative Services, Intouch Solutions. Follow him on Twitter at @Greg_Kirsch!
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Let’s face it, people who aren’t in our industry might think pharma marketing lacks creativity, but these people probably haven’t faced the same challenges we face. Ask any copywriter or designer in the pharma industry, “What’s the most challenging part of your job?” and you’ll probably get an answer that goes something like this: “Getting concepts past the medical/regulatory review board!”

We can all push ourselves to come up with better ideas by implementing these 3 key elements of the creative development process:

Information
Stimulation
Incubation

Information

Seeing common things in uncommon ways
New associations
Combining disparate ideas to form new concepts

All of these definitions of creativity assume there is raw material to begin with. You can’t put two disparate ideas together to make a new one if you don’t have the original ideas to start with. So it stands to reason that the more ideas, thoughts, concepts and information you already have to work with, the more new combinations you will be able to muster.

For us that means reading trade publications, subscribing to pharma blogs, and staying abreast of the latest pharma and marketing news. The more you know, the more you’ll grow – and the more creative you’ll be.

Stimulation
“If you do the same things you’ve always done, you’ll get the same things you’ve always got.” I’m not sure who coined this pithy bit of wisdom… but it’s true. Being informed is only part of the equation. You also need to stimulate your thinking.

A rut in a road is formed when vehicles take the same path over it again and again. Likewise, a “creative rut” is formed by following the same patterns again and again. Just as you must take a different path to get out of the rut in the road, you must take a different path to get out of a creative rut. Bottom line: Expose yourself to different stimuli.

Patterns are comfortable, but to be creative you must get out of your comfort zone. Listen to a different radio station. Take a different route to work. Take a different person to lunch. New and different experiences are part of the stimulation you need to spark the various pieces of information in your conscious mind together to form new ideas and strategies.

Incubation
Where are you when you have an inspiration – that “spark” of creativity? When I present that question to groups I inevitably get:

“When I first wake up”
“In the shower”
“On my way to work”

These answers are so common that they’ve been coined “The 3 B’s: The Bed, The Bath, and The Bus." Accepted theories of creativity claim this phenomenon is due to incubation. Creativity is a 24/7 endeavor – even if you’re not consciously working at being creative, your subconscious is. This is why when you’ve lost your keys, you usually remember where they are after you’ve given up looking for them. Your conscious mind stopped working on it, but your subconscious didn’t.

Teresa Amabile, head of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard University School of Business, has devoted her career to the study of creativity. In a great article in Fast Company magazine, Amabile’s research dispels the myth that “time pressure fuels creativity.” In her words:

“People were least creative when they were fighting the clock. In fact, we found a kind of time-pressure hangover – when people were working under great pressure their creativity went down not only on that day but the next two days as well ... Creativity requires an incubation period; people need time to soak in a problem and let the ideas bubble up.”

Creative Solutions for Pharma
So what does all this mean for pharma marketers and their partners looking to boost their creativity? One obvious conclusion is to avoid procrastination. Don’t put off doing that big project until the last minute because you may not give your subconscious time to work out the best solution.

Another conclusion: Actively take time to reflect (something Steven Covey and other self-help gurus recommend). Meditate. Be still. Not exactly something that’s easy to do in our fast-paced industry, but one that will pay dividends in terms of enhanced creativity.

Where Shiny Object Meets Results

2010-07-28T12:58:00.001-05:00

I hate it when our clients get sold a bill of goods by a "vendor" (though I usually prefer the term "partner," in this context these companies don't deserve the "partner" label).

When a slick sales person swoops in and promises them the world ... to the tune of millions of dollars.
When the shiny object shines so bright and pulls so hard that it can't be resisted ... even if its off-strategy.

Unfortunately I see a lot of that in pharma. It irritates me not because that budget could have been ours. (We have plenty of work to keep us busy - hence my recent hiatus from blogging and tweeting) But more because I hate to see the client's good money go to waste on ideas that don't have business impact. And this behavior tends to give agencies a bad name.

I would like to see the day where we all find middle ground - where shiny object meets results. Where innovation meets tangible outcomes. Where results-driven programs - programs that meet objectives and achieve business success - win awards not because they are pretty, but because they did what they were supposed to do.

That - I'd like to see. Wouldn't you?

Tips for 2011 Planning Season

2010-07-01T11:03:00.001-05:00

I find the pharmaceutical marketing and communications planning cycle a strange one. I do understand it centers around budget calendars. But customer behavior, new opportunities, and program optimization don't always follow that same schedule.

Nevertheless, as usual, it's summer and we're already off and running with most of our clients on strategic planning for 2011. Objectives are reviewed, strategies honed, brainstorms scheduled. Despite the weirdness of the schedule, it's always an exciting and busy time!

I've been to a lot of these meetings, and you might be surprised at how much they differ from client to client, brand to brand. I think the format makes a big difference.

At Intouch, we like to gather the broader team beforehand and bring some ideas that day. To get our teams' brainstorm juices flowing, we shared the below brainstorming tips. Hat tip to VP Creative, Greg Kirsch, for sharing these ideas from a session he gives on creativity:

Six Tips for Better Brainstorms
1. Defer Judgment. There are no bad ideas. Negativity kills creativity and saying “we tried that once” or “that’ll never work” inhibits free thinking. People will be more hesitant to throw out outlandish ideas (which could lead to something more realistic) if they think they might look stupid - especially in front of a large room full of clients and agency partners. There will be plenty of time to evaluate later.

2. Try warming everyone up with something called “Whatiffing”. It’s like stretching before you run. Start the session by saying “Before we get into the real session let’s take 5 min and brainstorm on something totally ridiculous—for example what if we saw through our thumbs (once I did this and someone said ‘instead of wearing ‘contacts’ we’d wear thumbtacks’)—or “what if men could have babies” etc. . . “ It’s fun, get’s everyone in a good mood, and sets the tone for the rest of the meeting. When you’re ready for the real brainstorm, people are already thinking creatively.

3. Quantity is key. You’re looking for a lot of ideas. The more the better. Even if it’s crazy, it may spark an idea in someone else . . . so encourage quantity. Again, we can weed them out later.

4. Tag on. It’s ok to tag onto someone else’s idea. It’s not your idea or my idea . . .it’s the group’s idea. That’s what makes it work. Encourage people to jam ideas together. Ask “what else could we do to build upon Jill’s idea?”

5. Move around. Take the chairs out of the room. Give people balls or toys to play with. One study showed people come up with 500% more ideas when they are stimulated with toys, and other objects, as opposed to control groups that only sat in a room around a table.

6. Have fun. If nothing kills creativity faster than negativity, the opposite is also true. Nothing enhances creativity like fun, laughter and joy. That’s why kids are so creative. They’re not worrying about being judged or looking silly. They’re just having fun.

I'm also a big fan of using sticky notes to write down, post, and move around individual ideas (for example, for prioritization or elmination later). I've also seen small "dot" stickers used for people to rank or vote on the best ideas when they're up on the wall. Both work well and get people up and moving around. The best ideas always rise to the top.

Working with Agencies
Finally, I wanted to revive a post from last year about working with your agencies on planning. In case you missed it, click the link for some tips for that, just in time for 2011 planning. And to these I would add:

There is no FDA crystal ball. Don't let the uncertainties around FDA's guidance on internet/social media stifle your creativity. We won't be able to predict the future - so just plan what you feel will have the most impact on your business.
Think "integration." Really. I challenge you to step up and be the champion of breaking down silos, fostering a collaborative, positive approach across agencies and functions.

I hope you all find these helpful. What are your suggestions - what's worked / what hasn't? I'm always interested to hear from others. Until next time - happy planning season!

The Gov't Controls Google's Search Results for Your Brand. Surprised?

2010-06-30T00:06:00.001-05:00

Did you notice that lately, every time you search for a pharma brand on Google, the #1 organic result is always the NIH? Always? Always. It's not the brand.com site anymore. And it's no coincidence. Here's an example:

Want to learn more? Our Pharma Search Engine Marketing specialists provided the below brief to our clients last week, and I wanted to share it with you all as well. Did your digital agency partner let you know about it already? Hopefully so ... but we're learning that not everyone was aware of the change. Google hasn't exactly been promoting it much either. Hat tip to our search dudes Dave and Nathan for their insights.

On June 21st, Google launched a new feature in search results that they are calling “Medication Search.” This new feature is a partnership with NIH that will provide more detailed information about medications directly from the search results page. Now, if you search for a particular drug by brand name, the official product site will no longer be the top result displayed in Google’s results. Through their partnership with the NIH, Google will display government pages containing detailed information about the product (what it is, side effects, how to take, dietary instruction, etc.).

While this feature is still very new, the Intouch search team wanted to make all our clients aware of this update and the potential concerns and opportunities this new feature creates:

Concerns
The primary concern with this new feature relates to the way in which users interact with search engine results pages. Common statistics claim that 47% of all searchers will click on the #1 organic result for this search, and that percentage drops to 12% for listings in the #2 position. From our experience and through data analysis of our pharma sites we manage, we know that the brand name is by far the top natural search term. This is largely due to the fact that Brand.com typically owns the #1 position for brand name searches. With this new feature, brand.com will be dropped to the #2 position, which we believe will lead to a drastic decrease in natural search referrals for that term.

While the new feature has only been live for a few days, a quick analysis shows that we have seen a decline in visits from brand name searches by an aggregated total of 30% when compared to last Tuesday (June 15th). Some brands have seen as much as a 65% drop while others have not yet been impacted by this change in Google search results.

Opportunities
While there are some very strong concerns about this new turn of events, this also opens up an opportunity for pharmaceutical SEO to evolve. Brand name searches are a major traffic driver for most pharmaceutical brand.com sites, but with the potential significant decrease in natural search traffic from their top keyword, this opens up the opportunities for pharma SEO to engage long-tail terms. These are terms which individually have lower search volume and lower competition. These terms, if grouped together, can bring more traffic and more relevant users to a given site.

In short, further integration of SEO strategy into overall online brand planning can help offset some of the losses that will incurred at the expense of this new search feature.

I've blogged in the past about Big Government going after pharma and pharma marketers. At the risk of sounding political, this latest move by NIH and Google U.S. feels more like Google China to me. And if you are into the political implications of this (my husband is a card-carrying Libertarian so he was all over it) here's some perspective from Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine quoting our search expert Dave Anderson.

What do you think? Is this move by Google in everyones' best interest, or is the government exerting a bit too much control? Did Google ultimately make the change to get more money out of Pharma paid search? Should there be more transparent disclosures from Google about this change?

The implications - to me - should be a bit frightening to us all.

UPDATE: Here's a little more information and context on the switch from Search Engine Land.

Celebrating the Pharma Women of Twitter - Part Deux

2010-06-21T22:35:00.001-05:00

As I’ve continued to blog, tweet, and attend more conferences/tweetups over the past year, I’ve been lucky enough to get to know more people in the pharma industry. That’s one of the things I love best about Twitter – meeting “strangers” online who become instant friends in-person. I often say “it’s the difference between a hug and handshake” when you meet someone face-to-face that you’ve previously known through Twitter (vs. not having known them at all).

Last fall, I did a short post celebrating the pharma women of Twitter. I did it because we seemed like a rare breed – the few females who are involved in the pharma/healthcare industry, put themselves “out there” via social media, and use Twitter on a regular basis to share and connect around pharma digital marketing and PR. (Not to leave out the ever-special pharma Twitter dudes - we love you too - but you're a little more prevalent, you understand ...)

The original list is still certainly a good collection of experienced pharma women worth following, and I invite you to visit it if you haven’t already. But with the recent explosion of people on Twitter, I’ve been able to meet and follow many more Pharma/Healthcare Women of Twitter. So it was time to create "Celebrating the Pharma Women of Twitter - Part Deux." Check 'em out and give 'em a follow if you're so inclined ...

Melissa Davies – Famous for her “1-in-500” adverse event report from her days at Nielson, Melissa is a few months into her new role at Return on Focus consulting. She’s smart and plugged into the industry – look for her at the next conference.
Marian Cutler – A self-described “Passionate communications maven," I first met Marian at the 2009 FDA Hearings. I just love love love this woman’s energy. She's one of those people that doesn't know a stranger in the room, and a super-networker. Follow her and introduce yourself - you'll be glad you did.
Janet Carlson – If Janet was at a conference you attended, you'd know it - the woman speaks up and speaks her mind, which I respect. She blogs and tweets about a variety of topics - all of which are interesting. She's the founder and CEO of One Eleven Interactive, an interactive and mobile marketing agency.
Donna Cryer – a.k.a., "DCPatient," Donna is another woman I met at the FDA hearing. Following her and reading her blog provides a smart and healthy dose of perspective from the patient (and sometimes even caregivers’) point-of-view. Follow her and stay grounded.
Dana Webster – One of the things I like about friendly, personable Dana is that she's not one to claim to know it all. Her Twitter description includes the description "Student of Social Media" - great point - we are all students here, aren't we? One of her past claims to fame: Serving as a (female) Cialis sales rep.
Betsy Stevenson – Betsy is a great networker, conference frequenter, and knows her healthcare PR stuff. She's a public relations business owner providing support for the biotech and pharma industries.
Arly Iampietro – Known simply as "Arlyi," on Twitter, Arly is an admirably consistent tweeter and often one of the first to identify the latest pharna social media canpaigns. In fact, she tweets about a lot of the same topics that I do. If you follow me, follow Arly.

There's lots of smart pharma/healthcare women to follow out there. Follow these ladies first (here's a shortcut to a Twitter list featuring both sets). Then – tell me – who am I missing?

FDA "On Track" to Issue Internet/Social Media Guidance in 2010

2010-06-09T14:25:00.001-05:00

I read with interest this understated - yet important - tiny blurb that appeared in my June issue of MM&M Magazine this week (pg. 9):

"Kang: online guidances due in 2010"

I was not able to find the article online, or I'd link to it. But basically it states that:

FDA is on track to issue draft guidance this year on promotion of regulated medial products using the internet and social media, the agency's Jean-Ah Kang told MM&M.

The rest of the short article quoted Dr. Jean-Ah Kang, special assistant to DDMAC director Tom Abrams, and re-caps all the details and statistics around the November 2009 hearing and subsequent docket submissions. The guidance is expected to address four of the five topics mentioned in the Federal Register notice. (They won't give guidance on adverse event reporting, since that's regulated by CDER and CDRH.)

What caught my eye is that here, in June, an official representive of FDA is publicly stating on record that they are on track to deliver guidance by the end of this year. Although that's a timeline we've heard a few times before, I've been a bit skeptical about if DDMAC would really get it done. If they do? Kudos to them; I will be very impressed. And it will also make me wonder if they already had guidance drafted prior to the hearings.

Either way, I think we'll all be somewhat relieved to finally have those FDA-sanctioned "guardrails" everyone's been talking about. Then again ... I guess that depends on what the guidance will say and mean. The way I see it, that could go one of three ways:

1. The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same. FDA's guidance will echo what we already know: the same rules apply for online marketing as those that were created for offline years ago. Marketing must be on-label, not false or misleading, balanced, and provide adequate evidence for claims.

2. Clarity is the Remedy. FDA's guidance may provide more direction on how pharmaceutical companies can legally connect with consumers and professionals online, including via social media. Perhaps they will even make some provisions for how to fit fair balance into spaces like a Twitter post. Perhaps they will address the long-fabled "one click rule."

3. Be Careful What You Ask For. We may receive clear guidance, but we may also not be happy with what we get. Based on the FDA's extremely conservative approach this year and extremely busy warning-letter-writers, it doesn't bode well. What if FDA essentially says pharmaceutical marketers can't mention brands in Tweets? What if they disallow unmoderated user-generated content in pharma-sponsored social spaces? I actually don't think they'll be that specific, but I am a bit concerned that we may see guidance that has far-reaching implications for what will -- and won't -- be do-able in 2011.

Stay tuned ...

Best Industry Observer Blog? Really? (not a chance)

2010-05-14T18:12:00.006-05:00

I don’t mean to be ungracious. Really – I don’t.

Jonathan Richman over at Dose of Digital blog (of Pharma/HC Social Media Wiki fame) worked very hard to implement the first-ever Dosie Awards. According to Jon, “the Dosie awards were created to find the best examples of social media in pharma and healthcare. The nominees for the awards were drawn from the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki.”

This week at the BDI conference (more on that later), I was utterly surprised and honored to win the Gold Dosie for Best Industry Observer Blog. Click here for the full list of winners).
But here’s the problem:

While I enjoy writing ePharma Rx and hope people in the industry get a lot out of it, it is by no means the best example out there of a pharma industry observer blog.

It’s honestly a little embarrassing. ePharma Rx beat out the Wall Street Journal health blog? Really? It’s better than Jon’s own ever-prolific Dose of Digital or John Mack’s controversial Pharma Marketing Blog? Or the snazzy Pixels and Pills? Sally's smart-and-sciency Pharma Strategy Blog? Shwen's early example of Med 2.0? Steve Woodruff’s thoughtful Impactiviti? Pharmalot, RoskaDigital? Or the hundreds of other industry blogs out there? Honey I don’t think so.

I’m not just trying to be coy. I really believe each and every blog has its own unique style and merits. The diversity is what’s so great about blogs, right?

ePharma Rx launched in Sept. 2008 (first post here) as kind of an outlet and experiment. It honestly hasn’t changed much sense then – still on the Blogger platform and still the same old Blogger graphic template! We’ve talked a lot about changing it up. But (fortunately?!) client work keeps us busy - so here it sits - looking like it’s been beat up by the digital ugly stick, despite our best intentions to “give it a facelift someday.”

It's not optimized. I don't have all the latest and greatest gadgets. I don't follow our own best practices on blogging and I go through spurts of time when I don't post for weeks. I don’t even have a cute logo like Dose of Digital’s pixel-chomping dude or Pixels and Pills’ rockin’ purple capsule.

There’s just not much to it – except for the content itself. And there are plenty of “industry observer” blogs that have great content.

But the Dosie Awards were determined purely by “People’s Choice” voting, and the Dosie Awards were about social media and word of mouth in action. Read Jon’s findings from the awards experiement.

To Jon’s point, it IS social media in action. Everyone had the same opportunities to mobilize, tell people about the contest, and guide people to vote. What if the Wall Street Journal had published a “vote for our blog in the 2010 Dosie’s!” post?

Then they would be the one writing this post - not me!

All that said, I am proud to display my gold “Dosie” badge of honor, as a tribute to word of mouth and social media. .

And I’m sending a huge and humble “thanks” from this blogger to everyone who supports ePharma Rx in ways big and small – and apparently to the many, many of you that voted for it in the Dosie Awards. I truly find joy in meeting and hearing from you each and every day.

P.S. - What’s really the best blog out there? That’s for you to decide, based on your own preference. I discover great new blogs in the digital pharma world often, and I learn from them all. I encourage you to visit Jon’s Wiki and see the long list of Industry Observer blogs – old and new – listed there.

Cheers and thanks again. ;-)

EAVB_QXOBKZQPOR

Pharma Tweet Feed Roundup

2010-05-10T08:53:00.003-05:00

Whether you're new to Twitter, new to pharma, or just looking to expand your horizons, pharma-related Twitter feeds can be an infinite source of news and views on the industry. Below I've rounded up a few of my favorite lists as a resource for readers.

You can use this "list of lists" to find new people to follow, make new contacts, and otherwise stay in the know on all things pharma. I am sure there are more out that I missed - if so, feel free to let me know!

50 Best Pharma Feeds for Twitter News - This is brand-new and actually inspired the idea for this post. Hosted on a site dedicated to those interested in Pharmacy Technician Certification, it's a nice roundup of pharma-related tweeps organized by categories.
Impactiviti's Social Rx – Well-connected pharma social maven Steve Woodruff provides a long list of pharma people active in social networking (with links to both blogs and Twitter accounts).
TweetList – From TweepML, this list of pharma and biotech tweeps makes it super-easy to select & follow everyone at once.
1,001 Remarkable People to Follow on Twitter - Phil Baumann rounds up a list of pharma people to follow on Twitter, plus a good Twitter primer. Don't worry - the list is really a little shorter than 1,001, but he gets credit for the clever attention-grabbing title!
Top 24 Pharma Tweeps - Ignite Labs provides a nice widget for following who they consider the top 24 pharma people to follow on Twitter. Flattered to be included!

Update:
Bonus! Here are two other Twitter resources I've received positive feedback for publishing in the past:

Pharma Co's Who've Found Their Voice on Twitter - A list of pharma co's using Twitter along with some basic Twitter statistics.
Celebrating Pharma Women on Twitter - A salute to the top (in my humble opinion) pharma-related women tweeters.

Social Media Silliness Meets MOA Video Seriousness

2010-05-07T08:00:00.013-05:00

Many of us in pharmaceutical marketing try to find humor wherever we can. Because, let's face it - the industry can be very serious stuff, the conditions we deal with can be life-threatening, the treatments we market can have serious safety risks, and it's difficult to be creative in a highly-regulated industry.

Recently my agency, Intouch Solutions, was nominated for the first time for "Agency of the Year" by industry pub Med Ad News. I'm excited to announce that we won for Category III! (there were three categories, based on billings) We're thrilled, especially because the honor is not typically bestowed on digital agencies like us.

But really, that's not why I'm writing this post. Getting back to the concept of finding pharma humor wherever we can, I wanted to share the video that we created for the awards cermony:

Social Media Silliness Meets MOA Video Seriousness

What's it all mean? Nothing really. Consider it a little reminder that in the often-somber world of pharma, we should all remember to not take ourselves too seriously. Enjoy.

FDA Cracks Down on Unbranded Promotion

2010-05-06T10:36:00.001-05:00

It might make me a pharma geek, but I like watching what FDA/DDMAC is citing in its letters to pharma on promotional activity. It’s always interesting to me because with every untitled or warning letter for every brand, implications can be far-reaching. Just in the first quarter of 2010 alone, FDA issued 21 letters – a number putting them on track to quadruple the total number of letters sent in 2008. And the latest letter sure got my attention, as well as the attention of other bloggers … and no doubt pharma marketers and their regulatory folks.

On Tuesday May 4, FDA posted a letter to Novartis citing two unbranded Web sites (http://www.gistalliance.com/ and http://www.cmlalliance.com/ ). Neither site is currently live, and even the WaybackMachine doesn’t have them archived. But FDA gives us plenty of information about what they thought about them anyway …

In the letter, FDA states the Web sites were in violation because “they promote the drug for an unapproved use, fail to disclose the risks associated with the use of Gleevec and make unsubstantiated dosing claims, (which) can put patients at higher risk of experiencing adverse events.”

The thing is, neither site mentioned Novartis’ oncology drug Gleevec by name. Not once.

Carrie Martin over at the FDA Law Blog pointed this out in her excellent post,

DDMAC’s detective work to link the alliance websites to Gleevec included the following: comparing the alliance websites to Gleevec’s product website and finding them “perceptually similar” in terms of color schemes and layout, locating Novartis logos on the alliance websites, finding direct links to the Gleevac product website on the alliance websites, reviewing the publications referenced and finding one that “recounted” a pivotal trial from one of Gleevac’s approvals, noticing that footnotes referenced imatinib (Gleevec’s established name), and—somewhat surprisingly—looking into the registration of the alliance websites and finding them registered to Novartis AG.

FDA must not have liked having to do all that detective work. The letter’s tone is extremely accusatory and serious, demanding the usual plan of action but also corrective action to “disseminate truthful, nonmisleading, and complete corrective messages about the issues.”

I’ve blogged about leveraging unbranded approaches in the past, and PharmaVOICE just did a story on the growing influence of unbranded promotion. And the point has been made many times that an unbranded approach is the most comfortable and appropriate when it comes to social media. But it seems the FDA is clamping down on the gray area between unbranded and branded pharma marketing. So what do we do now? And where should the lines be drawn?

Our account service teams often are involved in discussions with our pharma clients, especially marketing and regulatory experts - about where the line should be drawn. There’s no single or easy answer to the questions that arise:

How close of a link between unbranded and branded is too close?
Can branded and unbranded share the same color, shapes, or other graphic elements? (this was addressed in the Gleevec letter)
If the drug is the only one offered in its class, how conservative should we be with unbranded promotion? Does doing unbranded in a one-drug category inherently imply branding?
What are our competitors doing in the unbranded space, and if they haven't received a warning letter, does that mean it's ok?
Can we discuss disease symptoms on an unbranded site that the drug does not treat? (even though, often, information on symptoms is exactly what patients are searching for)
Does adding drug safety information to unbranded sites increase or decrease liability?
Does mentioning the company name on an unbranded site imply a connection to the drug? (according to the Gleevec warning letter, yes!)
Can you link one site to the other? What if you use an "offsite disclaimer" when you do, does that limit liability?
Can you use an unbranded banner or search ad to link to branded content? Should you?
Can you send a branded email to a database that was acquired through unbranded means?

Unfortunately there's no "Unbranded FAQ" provided by FDA that answers these questions, and companies are left to interpret the rules on their own. All of our pharma clients - at the cultural, philosophical, and individual levels - hold different levels of tolerance and risk for unbranded promotion. (In my experience, it often depends on how recently they received a warning letter, and also how much influence the marketing team has over regulatory's decisions!) I'm not an attorney or a regulatory expert. But here’s a small bit of advice I can give:

Don't let regulatory constraints drive all of your marketing decisions.
BUT ...
Pay attention to the latest letters coming out of DDMAC. Follow the known rules. And finally, be smart about any risks you do take. Make sure they're worth it!

Pharma: It's Not About You

2010-04-27T09:59:00.003-05:00

I was delighted to co-author the below article on the patient-centric approach for Med Ad News' DotPharma eNewsletter a few weeks ago. I thought readers here might enjoy it as well:

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Pharma, it’s not about you anymore

Marketing and communications have fundamentally changed forever, and the pharmaceutical industry is no exception to this. Pharma communicators face new channels, new challenges, new rules, and seismic shifts in the way they reach both consumers and healthcare professionals.

Customers – not companies – control when and how they are communicated to.

Thanks to the Internet, the exchange of knowledge is democratized, widespread and rapid. And the expectation exists that corporate communications must be valuable, authentic, and immediate.

Dissecting social media propaganda
Just five or six years ago, search engine marketing was perceived as the next emerging promise in pharma eMarketing. Database marketing, eCRM, and emails were also becoming a focus. More recently, video emerged as the new big thing. It can be argued that all of these are still important. But today, there’s no doubt that social media is the current buzzword in pharma eMarketing.

The groundswell of interest and energy around the Nov. 2009 FDA hearings was proof positive that the pharma industry is trying hard to figure out how to participate in social media. Industry publications focus on it, bloggers blog about it, conference speakers speak about it, and there are tweets aplenty. (Just search Twitter for hashtags #fdasm or #hcsm to see examples and a wealth of information on the topic.) Many personalities in the space are philosophizing, pontificating, and talking, and occasionally there will be some good advice or a helpful case study. But how can a pharma marketer decide where to even begin?

The current state of affairs
First, let’s look at where we are today. Take, for example, the role of the sales rep and his or her traditional approach to physician calls. Reps ask the physician if they can “count on them for the next five scripts.” And when taking this concept into the digital realm via edetail, do we really still believe physicians will spend their own valuable time reviewing the digital equivalent of a sales aid?

Compare this outdated approach to other industries, such as the auto industry. If someone is in the market to buy a car, do you think they would like to schedule time to get detailed by each company and each model? Or would they like to be in control of their own search for information and decision-making process … searching, reading reviews, asking friends, and test-driving in order to decide for themself?

Physicians want to make their own decisions. And pharma companies are offering a product that patients don’t want to need, and often are in denial of needing. There are very real and serious barriers that complicate connecting with customers. You can’t sell medications online like a packaged good; it requires a new approach.

The customer-centric model
If pharmaceutical companies insist on continuing to drum the self-serving brand message, pharma’s attempt at social media will fail. Companies and agencies can be so consumed by shiny new objects like social media, they forget that, first and foremost, the approach must be customer-centric. Many prognosticators talk about the new age of a customer-centric model for pharma, but what does that really mean?

Pharmaceutical companies must marry these two fundamentals:
• What patients and professionals really want and need
• What the pharmaceutical company wants and needs

It’s time for pharmaceutical companies to work to repair the damage to their reputations, and step up to give back. They can afford to do many of the good deeds that will indeed turn out to help the bottom line. It’s about connecting, not broadcasting. It’s a new focus on disease education, not the old approach of disease mongering. It’s communication around payment assistance and insurance support, not dissemination of press releases. It’s deep content designed to help patients manage their disease, not a trick to get them to sign up to a database.

It’s offering help, information, support, and hope where it’s needed. Without an agenda.

Pharma marketers should work to find out what people are searching for and needing from them and their brand – from anyone, in fact, that is able to give it. And then? They should, simply, give it to them.

And yes, they should also engage. With the exception of a few pilot examples, pharmaceutical companies have largely shied away from true two-way digital communications with their customers. However, patient support call centers have been around a long time. What’s so difficult about duplicating that experience online? Why not empower a corporate spokesperson to speak online on behalf of your company and your brand? Today, customers expect and demand it.

Making it happen
Here are some ways to start connecting with customers online in ways that are more meaningful to them:

Social media listening. Social media has provided a goldmine of information never before obtainable through traditional surveys and focus groups. Ongoing monitoring plus regular, deeper audits will help pharma companies identify quickly what both patients and professionals need and want.
Social media “asking.” Social media is an excellent platform for reaching out and asking what customers need and want. Sometimes simply asking the question will open up new doors for connecting.
A new look at search behavior. Search analytics can provide valuable insights into how people search and what they’re looking for. In addition, marketers should watch what people are searching for on their own current properties – especially paying attention to what they aren’t finding there.
Design from a customer-centric viewpoint. Brand managers and their agencies should always include user experience and usability experts to ensure online properties – from Web sites to Facebook apps – are developed from a customer-centric viewpoint. (For an excellent explanation on the difference between user experience and usability, see this article from 2006. Other industries were discussing these disciplines years ago; it’s time for pharma to catch up.)
Changing the channel. Marketers often feel that a Website is a given cost of entry, should serve as the hub, and everything else online is secondary. But what if your specific customers spend more time on YouTube or blogs than on commercial Websites? User preference should drive digital channel decisions.
A new approach to content. Content – in the form of copy, video, audio, rich media – can be expensive to create in great quantities. But content is what your customers need, and all the better if they find it on your site and not someone else's. Better yet, if they find it valuable, they’ll tell their friends through social sharing tools.

Think about what you really need and want. Find out what your customers need and want. And leverage the online arena – where your customers are looking for answers – to connect the dots and build those relationships in more meaningful ways.

Faruk Capan is the CEO and Wendy Blackburn is the executive VP of Intouch Solutions, a full-service interactive pharmaceutical marketing agency.

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Featuring "news and views on interactive and digital pharmaceutical marketing," if you're not signed up for DotPharma, you should be. Learn more here. Thanks to the folks at Med Ad News for the opportunity to be featured, and for the permission to reprint.

What’s the Single Answer to Pharma’s Biggest Digital Marketing Questions?

2010-04-13T09:00:00.002-05:00

We get a lot of good questions from our pharma clients about what's right for them, their company, and their brand when it comes to digital marketing, and especially social media. The endless digital opportunities are largely untapped and unexplored by pharma, and social media can get complicated. So there's really no easy copy-and-paste answer to the questions. Then again, maybe there is ...

• Is social media right for your company? ... It depends.
• Is social media right for your brand?... It depends.
• Is Twitter or YouTube the best place to start with social media?... It depends.
• I want a widget – is that the right thing to do?... It depends.
• I want to do branded social. Will it work?... It depends.
• Is TV still an important component of your marketing mix?... It depends.
• Is mobile marketing something I should be looking at?... It depends.
• Will the iPad live up to the hype and transform healthcare communications? Should I care?... It depends.

What does it depend on?

• What your specific objectives and challenges are.
• The brand and where it is in its lifecycle.
• Your corporate culture, setup, and legal/regulatory risk thresholds.
• The disease category.
• Your patients and where they are in the treatment continuum.
• Historical crises and watchouts.
• Your budget.
• Your approach.

9 Things Pharma Should Learn About Social Media from Dennis Urbaniak

2010-04-07T11:31:00.001-05:00

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.

Why Does Wendy Retweet?

2010-03-29T08:04:00.003-05:00

FirstWord recently conducted and published an analysis of “Leading Thoughts on Pharma and Social Media ... a Review and Analysis of the Conversations and Commentators.” They were kind enough to include me in the analysis along with epharma greats such as Andrew Spong, Shwen Gwee, Steve Woodruff, John Mack, Jonathan Richman, Phil Baumann, Fabio Gratton, and Silja Chouquet. To learn more about each of these fellow epharma bloggers, click on the links to read their excellent blogs.

Sorry I can’t post the copyrighted report here, but it can be yours for a mere $295. Full blogger disclosure: I unfortunately don’t get any kickbacks from the sale of this document; I didn't know they were writing it until it was published.

Anyway, the report promises, "Based on the actual social media activity of nine leading commentators over a four month period, the report lays bare the content of their most compelling discussions about the pharmaceutical industry. By highlighting the most common themes and discussion threads, the dossier offers a well-presented overview of what matters to opinion leaders, and how they’re engaging in a more connected way than ever before. … "

Among other things, the report points out that, of all the people in the list, on Twitter, I retweeted the most often. Hmm. So I’ve been thinking about why I retweet so much. Is it because there's so much to retweet? Or is retweeting cheating, as if I couldn't come up with enough of my own content?

One of my goals as an epharma Tweeter is to provide good information. There’s so much relevant information, articles, blogs, infographics, tools, and reports related to pharma, digital, social, marketing, and advertising. I want to share them, and I want to give credit where credit is due. Even if I don’t know you, I'll retweet it if it's good. (AND? Even if you are a competitor. That's something I like about Twitter – I have found it to be a more collaborative environment than anywhere else.) Occasionally it's a 'pure' retweet, or sometimes I will add a word or two of commentary.

So if you follow me on Twitter at @wendyblackburn (and please do - because according to FirstWord, I need more followers!), check out the retweets or “RTs” I apparently so often impart.

For me, a RT means “This is good stuff that I found interesting. I hope you find it interesting, too.”

What are your tweeting (and retweeting) habits?