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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

Bloggers as well as mainstream news media have been closely following the story of Nadya Suleman, the mother who gave birth to octuplets last week. Following ethics questions about the doctors who gave her fertility treatments, people began to question why Suleman was looking for a larger family in the first place since she already had six kids at home. Even baby product manufacturers are staying at arm’s length and haven’t offered any of the donations or support that usually follows famous multiples. In social media, moms are getting nasty about their feelings towards Suleman- a reminder of the dynamic nature of the online parenting network. continue reading

One journalist that should be required weekly reading for anyone in the PR and marketing fields is Jon Fine who writes a column for BusinessWeek magazine all about the business of media. During a conference on online communities, Jon and I spoke about several topics, including how journalism is evolving, whether local media will survive, and what advice he might offer to aspiring journalists and PR people about succeeding in this new world. He breaks down some of the myths about the separation of traditional and new media, and offers a great vision of what the journalist of the future might look like: