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One of the biggest issues holding the pharmaceutical industry back from greater participation in social media has often been the issue of presenting the product’s fair balance. For those not in the industry, fair balance is that long list of side effects  and warnings about a prescription drug (you know — that usually include diarrhea and constipation) that the FDA mandates the company include when they say what the drug actually does/is for (the indication).

Because the full text of the fair balance needs to accompany the indication, it makes it hard to put prescription where it can be shared, since the company doesn’t have full control about how much information the company shares.  For example, when you post a link on Facebook, you are limited to just a few lines of text about the product - not enough for the full fair balance, something that has gotten companies such as Novartis in trouble with the FDA. As they say in the George S. Kaufman play from the 1930’s, you can’t take it with you.

What makes me optimistic is that companies are developing innovative tools that WILL let you take the fair balance with the user.

One tool I came across recently is Share. Send. Save. What this tool does is lets the site owner (the pharmaceutical company or healthcare provider) post a bar that says  above content that let’s a user share the information via a social network, email, or as a favorite in their browser without any of the indication, removing the need all together  for the balance, or send an e-mail with the full fair balance included.

What it does:

• Keeps standard metadata intact.
• Enables consistent sharing of only specified content and images across selected channels.
• Sends secure e-mails that can include detailed safety information.

Another tool I’ve recently started hearing a lot about is CMP.LY, which looks to have a lot of promise with Twitter. CMP.LY (read as “comply”)  lets a company set up custom disclosures and codes that can be used to identify any material connections, such as a product indication) in their own blog posts, tweets or other communications. When they are present, the tool presents the user with the required safety warnings, side effects or official links with information.

Other tools are in development as well, but it makes me optimistic that pharma and healthcare brands will be able to engage with their consumers in the social media channels they use to get health information, while still abiding by required regulation. I’m sure we’ll see more of these tools rolling out over the next few months.

As mentioned in last week’s column, this past weekend hosted the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference in Austin, Texas.  Over just a few short days, members of the interactive community came together to discuss new technologies and trends, and this year we saw the introduction of health focused sessions in the world of social media.

On the whole, I found the sessions to be filled with great content from people across different areas of the industry who are innovating in their areas across the healthcare spectrum.  While many of the sessions ran concurrently and I couldn’t attend them all, below are a few key takeaways I left with:

• For healthcare, the Internet is about access to information - something that was reinforced to me over and over again is that we turn online for health information. What the information we’re looking for is varies by audience - whether it be new clinical data for physicians, to let a patient know “what can I expect next in my journey”, to find support from others in similar situations, or to find out “what treatments are available for mom who has just been diagnosed with X disease,” it’s about information. Marketers looking to get involved in social need to keep this in mind if they want to provide their audiences with something of substance that they will find of use.

• There is a role for Pharma in social media - in sessions with patient focused groups such as Patients Like Me and Chronic Babe, something that was reassuring to hear was, “yes, there IS a role for Pharma in social media.” While their sites (which are both doing amazing things) are patient focused, both reinforced that they welcome and encourage participation by Pharma, noting thet they and Pharma have the same goals in the end. They also echoed our own belief that for Pharma to get involved in social media, companies need to be transparent in their role and provide opportunities for communities to self regulate.

• Pharma needs to get past the “adverse event” red herring - one of the major hurdles that keeps healthcare companies from entering the social media space is concern over online reporting of adverse events. As we’ve seen over and over again, patients are not turning to social to report AEs, yet it remains one of the top barriers to getting involved. In discussing this point with a member of a marketing team from a top 10 pharmaceutical company that is very active in social media, and has been for years, he told me they have never had a single AE reported in any of their social media channels. Unlike many of their peers, the company has always allowed commenting in their social properties. This drove home to me what I had long seen myself: patients aren’t looking to social media to discuss AEs. And if a patient does need to report an AE, companies already have existing channels by which to report them.

• Everything is going mobile… and health is no exception - from sessions throughout SXSW one message was very clear: everything is going mobile. As smart phones increase penetration in the market (in the US and abroad) consumers and looking for access and user experiences on their mobile devices that are comparable or exceed what they can do from their desktops. In many cases, such as health, we heard examples of how mobile technology is actually advancing the healthcare industry , such as in Africa, where images of blood samples can be captured from cell phone cameras in high resolution and sent instantly to a specialist hundreds of miles away for analysis. For marketers such as myself, it’s important to keep the role of mobile in mind when developing new platforms and campaigns if we want them to last.

Overall there was a lot of great information presented, and like my colleagues, I’m teaming with ideas about how we can use these learnings, and emerging platforms to help communicate with our client’s stakeholders.

I’m curious to hear what others through of the health track this year. What were your impressions?

South by Southwest Interactive - Health Track

With the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive taking place this week, the Internet is buzzing with chatter about the presentations that will be taking place. While there are a number of great reasons to go to SXSW, I’m personally excited about the number of sessions focusing on social media and healthcare.

This year sessions range from working with user generated content in healthcare, social healthcare and appropriate uses of social media (no, I will not “like” your hemorrhoid Cream on Facebook) to exploring the  doctor/patient relationship online.

I’ll be updating this column next week with my take on SXSWi’s healthcare track and what I’ve taken away from this year’s festival.

Are you attending SXSW this year for healthcare? Which sessions are you looking forward to and why?

If you could have put all the people working in marketing at pharmaceutical companies together in a room today, you might have heard a collective sigh of disappointment. As many suspected for weeks or even months now, the FDA quietly confirmed that the long awaited guidelines for how to use social media for which they held a hearing in late 2009 won’t be coming this year and to expect them (perhaps) in Q1 of 2011. Earlier this month, however, the FDA did release a sweeping document that received much less fanfare from marketers - even though the implications of it may change the world of pharmaceutical marketing for the next half decade at least.

That document focused on the FDA’s “Strategic Priorities: 2011 - 2015″ and offers nearly 50 pages of insights into the future direction of the FDA and offers many hidden insights that everyone who is considering doing any marketing or communications for a drug, medical device, healthcare organization or biomedical research organization should pay attention to. Here are a few of the most noteworthy passages in that document along with thoughts from our Ogilvy Digital Healthcare team on their significance.

“FDA’s primary responsibility is to protect the American people from unsafe or mislabeled food, drugs, and other medical products and to make sure consumers have access to accurate, science-based information about the products they need and rely on every day.”

1. What It Means: Despite Lots Of Hope From The Industry, Social Media Guidance Isn’t A Priority For The FDA
There is only one point in the entire 48 page document of strategic priorities where social media is even mentioned, and much of the document focuses on the much bigger challenges and scope of the FDA. When you work in Pharma, you tend to underestimate the scope of the FDA’s mission. As this document spells out, issuing social media guidance is nowhere near a priority for the FDA - and despite what anyone working in this area may want to see happen, it is unlikely that this will change in the near future. continue reading

With pharma carving out a greater presence online, marketers are seeing the importance of having a social presence to reach their audiences. And with over a third of adults reporting using social media to find health information¹ it’s no wonder why.

As Marshall McLuhan said 46 years ago, “the medium is the message.”  While McLuhan was discussin television and radio, the same holds true with marketing on social media.  Not all social media channels are the same, and with marketers eager to get online, it’s important to consider the right platforms for a product and/or campaign.

For example, while Facebook may have reached over 500 million users, that doesn’t mean a Facebook fan page is the best place for every pharmaceutical product. The key is to finding where the target audience is, what channels they use, and where conversations about the category are taking place. People aren’t likely to “fan” a product or condition on Facebook - associating themselves to their entire online network which could include friends, family and coworkers - that has a high “ick-factor” or could be considered embarrassing.

As well, just because a person may not want to associate themselves with a product or disease publically doesn’t mean they aren’t apt to participate in online discussions about it online. The lap-band gastric weight loss surgery is a great example.

A few, scattered “lap-band” Facebook pages exist, with a couple hundred members - not a high number by current standards. However, a deeper dive reveals a very active community regularly using forums and chat rooms to communicate to one another. For anonymity, the groups are often password protected and/or allow their participants to use made-up usernames. Often as users get more comfortable, and develop sub-communities of their own, we see these usernames give way to real names, and even scheduling of in person meet-ups of the community’s members.

The key to making the decision of where and how to market a product online is listening. By researching and evaluating where a target audience is active online, a marketer can develop a targeted campaign that is more likely to succeed and deliver the return on investment the company is looking for in executing such an initiative or campaign.

Sources:

1. iHealthReports. The Wisdom of Patients: Health Care Meets Online Social Media. April 2008

Almost all the major pharmaceutical companies are using Twitter now (or about to start) and there are Facebook pages and sponsorship deals with social networking sites tailored to doctors or surgeons. Most of these efforts are commonly described as social media because they are all forms of social communication.

Sometimes the most anti-social efforts online, however, are actually the ones that use the principles of social media best. Reading a book or a magazine is typically an anti-social activity, for example. Not because it makes you less personable, but because it is an activity you do by yourself generally with little interaction with others. Activities that are not inherently social are easy to underestimate in this time of an overly socialized Internet.

When you consider the target audience of physicians and medical professionals, you could make the argument that they have even less time to indulge this socialization need. Why can’t technology and social media be used to support this type of online interaction as well? This seems to be the premise behind a site from Sanofi-Aventis called iPractice that is getting quite a bit of attention from those who talk about social media efforts in the healthcare space. continue reading

Yesterday was a busy day of back to back presentations from the first day of the FDA hearings and there are many recaps now sharing some topline points from the conversations and presentations. I shared my own take on some big themes that emerged from the early part of the day here on this blog. Aside from the content presented during each of the speaker’s time on stage, I think there were several pivotal moments of significance throughout the day. Here’s a chronological recap of what I felt they were, and what they might mean for the next step of this process the FDA has just begun:

1. Pharma needs guidance (Eli Lilly) - Being the first real pharma brand to speak on the agenda, Michelle Sharp did an excellent job representing some of the main concerns that most pharma brands have. Her point that they were operating in a vacuum and therefore simply not willing to use the online channel was well presented. Ultimately, it was her presence and the comparative courage of Eli Lilly to have her on stage that truly stood out, particularly when you consider how many pharma brands were content to sit on the sidelines passively and simply watch the proceedings. continue reading

The much anticipated FDA hearings on how pharma and medical device companies should be able to use the Internet and social media for promotion kicked off today and the presentation room at the NTSB was packed with formally dressed people with expectant faces, ready to participate in what most people consider one of the most important moments in the history of online advertising and promotion in the medical space.

Based on the presentations this morning (including mine on behalf of Ogilvy) there were several themes that emerged as topics that will be interesting to track throughout the rest of the hearings and beyond. To a large degree, these were also the points that the FDA asked probing questions on after speakers were done presenting, which is an indication of what topics the agency considers to be most important as well. The speakers in the morning session included Ogilvy PR, Pew Prescription Project, Eli Lilly, PhRMA, Pharma Marketing News, IAB, VuMedi, WebMD and WEGO. Based on listening to those presentations, here are a few topline thoughts on implications and common themes that are emerging so far:

1. Good quality content for patients and HCPs from companies IS worthwhile and desired. Through the morning proceedings, everyone agreed that companies should have SOME ability to create and promote content online. This is an important agreement moving forward, as it assumes that the focus on future guidelines from the FDA will be about HOW companies can interact online and not on the broader question of IF they should even be allowed to. If there is one big conclusion that I hope the FDA takes away from today, it is that there is an important and meaningful place for pharma and medical device brands to share content and messages online, and this category of information should not be silenced completely or banned.

2. Doing nothing is not an option. A few speakers mentioned the same point this morning, that with the growing number of “unscrupulous” sources of medical information online from people such as “snake-oil salesman” promoting miracle cures, the necessity for the FDA to step forward and help to define what acceptable forms of marketing online are is vital.

3. Companies should not be responsible for policing the Internet. One of the most common questions that companies are asking is how deep they should need to go when it comes to finding and correcting bad information. While opinions on that point may vary, several people this morning mentioned the same point of view that companies should not have to police the entire Internet for bad information.

For the rest of today, you can watch the rest of the proceedings live at http://www.capitolconnection.net/capcon/fda/111209/FDAlive.htm.  Also, if you would like to read more about our POV that we presented today, including a summary of our “3 C’s” model for accountability, you can visit the following resources:

Ogilvy’s Presentations Today and Tomorrow at the FDA >>
Summary of Ogilvy’s 3 C’s Model For Accountability >>

Next week Ogilvy will be sharing our point of view when it comes to how pharmaceutical and medical device brands should be allowed to use the web and social media for marketing and promotion. This has been a significant gray area in the past and the FDA has begun the process towards having some updated guidelines set. We are one of over 60 organizations that will be speaking during the two day hearing next week, and the questions will range from everything to what information marketers should be allowed to link to, and how they should be held responsible for content online.

The biggest question that the entire process will raise is how to define the content, messages and conversations online that marketers should be held accountable by the FDA for. To answer this top question, we will be presenting our point of view through “The 3 C’s Rule” …

What do you think - does this “rule” go too far, or far enough towards helping define what messages marketers should be accountable for online? For more context, check our our full FDA presentations on Slideshare:

http://www.slideshare.net/ogilvypharma

Most marketers who have anything to do with promoting pharmaceutical products or medical devices have the upcoming FDA hearings at the top of this minds heading into next week.  With less than 7 days to go until the hearings, all the presentations have been submitted to the FDA, the anticipation is rising and conversation online about the hearings from speakers, attendees and online watchers (the hearings will be live webcast) is rising.

Ogilvy is among the organizations slated to speak at the hearings, and we have several activities planned around them beyond speaking - including hosting a “tweetup” the evening after the first hearing in our Washington DC office for anyone interested in coming and having an informal chat about how the day went and implications for our industry. In preparation for this moment, here are 5 things anyone in the industry should expect to come from the hearings, as well as some initial information you should know:

1. What is the format of the hearing? The entire hearing consists of short introductory remarks by the FDA followed by a series of 15 or 10 minute presentations by approved speakers. There are about 60 approved speakers and on Thursday they will all focus on answering the first four questions from the FDA hearing notice, and Friday morning will solely focus on “question #5′ which is about adverse event reporting online. Friday afternoon will continue general comments. Each presentation will be specifically cut off at the time alloted and the FDA panel hearing these presentations may choose to ask questions during a speaker’s alloted time. continue reading