360DigitalInfluence

By now it is certainly not news to note that YouTube is already the largest on-demand broadcast medium for anyone with an internet connection, boasting over 71 million unique users each month and the 6th largest audience on the Internet. 75% of all Americans have watched at least one video clip online in the last month. These staggering numbers coupled with the rise of broadband adoption in the US (over 80% of Internet users in the US have broadband as of March 2009) mean that online video is no longer a niche activity and has squarely hit the mainstream.

When you consider the opportunities from a Pharma marketing point of view, YouTube is certainly tempting. The FDA has yet to create significant regulations governing YouTube and there have been many marketing efforts in the Pharma space over the past several years which have seen fairly good results. Novartis’ FluFlix video contest from 2007, for example, had nearly 800,000 views of the intro video. In 2008, Sanofi-Aventis launched their GoInsulin campaign video channel which now has more than 300,000 views. More recently, earlier this year AstraZeneca saw success with their branded MyAsthmaStory video campaign sharing real stories of Symbicort patients and how the product had transformed their lives.

Concurrently, many pharma brands including Johnson & Johnson, Boehringer Ingelheim and Novartis (to name a few) have launched their own branded official YouTube channels to share a compilation of videos about various products, patient testimonials, research and development highlights and other corporate produced information. These channels represent an ongoing commitment to the YouTube channel and signal an intention to make this a longer term part of their overall corporate communications.
WHY DOES IT MATTER?
The rise in popularity of YouTube as well as the growing number of Pharma brands experimenting with the right ways of using the platform are important for several reasons. Firstly, this represents a compelling direct marketing channel to consumers that cannot be ignored as a component of an online marketing effort. Secondly, though YouTube is often not considered to be “social media” as much as blogs or Twitter, the links and potential benefits of tying an online video effort to a strong social media strategy can’t be ignored. Finally, as more and more pharma brands begin to turn to YouTube, there is likely going to be increased scrutiny on the channel - which means brands need to be smart about how they engage on YouTube.

Already there are signs of this scrutiny happening, whether you look at something as extreme as a warning letter sent by the FDA to Shire around an ad uploaded to YouTube without adequate fair balance information or potentially dangerous third party groups such as the Prescription Project pursuing an agenda of inviting the FDA to get more involved in regulating YouTube.

10 RULES OF MARKETING WITH YOUTUBE:
Given the opportunity as well as the risks, it is important to approach YouTube with the right strategic direction to manage your risks but maximize your potential for success. To that end, here is a list of rules published in “do’s and don’ts” format to help:

1. DO choose your YouTube efforts strategically. When it comes to using YouTube as a publishing channel for online video, you could extend some of your current efforts and publish TV spots or educational videos, or do something more engaging such as inviting video contributions on a topic of interest. Either way, the best case is when it is a strategic choice instead of a one-time video upload
2. DO create a video as short as possible. YouTube videos can be no longer than 10 minutes, but the ideal tends to be somewhere between 2 and 4 minutes. In general, the shorter video you can make, the better.
3. DO use descriptive language in the title. The title of your video and the description entered are the primary methods that people will decide to watch it. Only the first few lines of your description will appear first, so be sure to write the most compelling description you can and choose a title that will entice viewers to watch without being overly promotional or misleading.
4. DO choose your thumbnail wisely. YouTube will automatically choose a thumbnail image for your video based on the exact midway point of your video (the image at the 30 second mark for a 60 second video). You can, however, change this - and you should to get the most visually interesting image you can.
5. DO allow embedding and ratings on your video. Embedding means that your video will be able to be posted on other websites, a key method that will allow it to be shared online. This is a major advantage of the YouTube platform and will typically increase your number of views. Ratings are a factor in how highly your video will appear on YouTube search, so having a better star rating will help drive views as well.
6. DO integrate your video(s) with other online efforts. You can embed your own videos as a way of using them on a preexisting site or integrating them into your overall efforts. This is important from a consistency point of view, as well as for realizing the potential of the video to add a more interactive element to other online efforts. A key element of this is providing a link to a website that has a clear relationship to the video where a viewer can learn more.
7. DON’T allow comments on YouTube videos. This may seem like a strange piece of advice, but when you consider the low quality of YouTube comments (very few are actually substantial or add meaningful observations) as well the fact that you can still post comments anonymously, there is a high risk factor in terms of people saying meaningless things and your team having to waste valuable time to moderate. If you want to create dialogue, bring the video onto your own site and invite comments there instead.
8. DON’T expect people to just find your video through search. There are millions and millions of video on YouTube and the search algorithm is not as predictable or quantifiable as Google. This means you cannot rely on someone seeing your video or for it to come up when someone searches YouTube. In order to get views, you need to accompany your video with a promotional strategy for how you can drive views as well.
9. DON’T forget your own best practices just because it’s YouTube. It is amazing how often a brand will simply forget what they know to be good compliance when it comes to YouTube. If there is a video that you wouldn’t use for TV advertising without including fair balance, perhaps you should considering adding it. In the description of a video also, you have plenty of room to include the required legal and regulatory language, and this can help you manage any risk of reprisal from the FDA.
10. DON’T create an online channel without clearly articulating its duration. Channels are tempting to create for every branded or unbranded campaign, but the danger is that you only pay attention to it for a month or two and then it seems abandoned. To counter this, make sure you state up front how long the channel will be “active” for before it simply converts into an archive.

RESOURCES & LINKS:

• GSK Domino Video for Restless Leg Syndrome
• Official Johnson & Johnson Health Channel
• Novartis Fluflix Video Contest Intro
• Novartis Fluflix Video Competition Winner
• Official Novartis YouTube Channel
• Official Boehringer Ingelheim Channel
• Parkinson’s Matters Channel (from BI)
• GoInsulin Diabetes Channel (from Sanofi-Aventis)
• Interesting Q&A with former Merck Product Director Kevin Nalty
• FDA Warning Letter to Shire for Ty Pennington YouTube Video
• MyAsthmaStory: Symbicort
• Prescription Project Citizen Petitions

DISCLAIMER: Ogilvy PR works with several of the brands mentioned in this post, however we did not directly work on any of the video examples given in this post.