Digital Influence Mapping Project

Top Pharma Social Media Examples

Thanks toJonathan Richman (no, not that Jonathan Richman) there is a great list of examples of pharma using the social Web. In the spirit of his "wiki" - add any thing you know of that is not on his list. Great work from Jonathan and a great resource.

See Social Media Pharma examples here >

Pharma: Don't Wait For the FDA

The phramaceutical industry has long felt itself "unique" due to regulations that hold it back from full frontal social media activity. Adverse events reporting, fair practice and DTC rules were in place before twitter, before facebook and even before or oblivious to blogs. Still most pharmas feel they are uniquely ill-suited to listen to patients and spark conversations. Some use social media platforms as a way to distribute content. Some are getting over their terminal uniqueness and seeing that there are lessons to learn in all directions. Also, everyone knows the FDA will not blaze new trails here and will only act to respond to the worst of missteps. So everyone looks to their pharma brothers and sisters to innovate first.

Media Post covered an interview between EyeonFDA and well, the FDA, this past month. As you might expect, they are not passing judgement on anything:

"The upshot is that the FDA doesn't categorically prohibit pharmaceutical companies from engaging in social media. "It's not the medium, it's the message," explained Dr. Jean Ah Kang, special assistant to Tom Abrams at the FDA's Division for Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications, in charge of Web 2.0 policy development." 

"Even so, it's likely that big pharma will remain reticent about plunging into social media marketing, barring more explicit guidelines from the FDA."

Pharma Marketing Blog covered this interview and the keynote at the eMarketing Summit where Sanjay Koyani, Director of FDA Web Communications, gave a keynote.

"On both occasions pharma eMarketers had their ears perked up to hear what the agency had to say about regulation of pharmaceutical marketing on the Web and especially on social networking sites.

On both occasions, we were disappointed."

Don't Wait

Can pharma look to other markets for lessons? Is it all moot because of their unique situation? A few pharmaceutical companies have been experimenting with communities, corporate blogs, sponsored conversations around issues (not products), and content distribution via YouTube and Flickr. And considering some of the jam-ups in traditional marketing where a pharma here or there has taken it on the chin for mistakes, it would seem about time for some real trailblazing in social media. If there legal teams are allowing them to take risks with traditional advertising then surely they can push the envelope a bit in social media.

• Don't wait for the FDA

• Don't wait till your nearest competitor hits a homerun
• Don't wait until the economy recovers (long wait)
• Stop considering your situation unique
• Look to all sorts of businesses for lessons-learned and do the hard work of finding the application to your own situation
• Build the capacity to try pilot programs to accrue learning and data

How Transparency Via Digital Can Help Consumer Packaged Goods

Do you want to know what ranch your steak came from? Are you as interested in where your eggs come from and whether they are free range chickens? For many products 'provenance' is inherently important. Coffee and wine come to mind. Wine drinkers care about where the grapes come from, the nature of the winery, and even the reputation of the people making the wine. Good wine is defined by these things (oh, and taste, or the experience of the product).

Some people have a growing interest in understanding where their products come from in order to support sustainable and human-rights best practices - call it "social good best-practices." Some care for real or perceived health reasons - simple, unprocessed food must be healthier for you. These concerns may be growing but have not reached mainstream status yet. Nor are they likely to be especially now that we are in the long recession where price and value are the deciding factors at the store shelves. Still, an influential few will make their choices in alignment with their commitment to be 'part of the solution" versus the problem. I mean, even the White House planted a fruit and vegetable garden.

Beerenberg Farms in Australia now helps consumers track and understand the sources behind their jams. They introduced an online application called Provenance Pathway.  Consumers can type in a label code and learn where the ingredients came from and a little about the process from field to shelf. They do two other great things online:

• They tell us the story of Beerenberg Farms and the family behind it all.

• They use the social Web as their platform linking to videos in their YouTube Gallery, their Facebook profile (180 fans) and images in their Flickr gallery.

One thing worth changing? The voice of some of the content still has too much of that 'stagey'marketing tone. You imagine someone taking marketing copy and trying to humanize it vs. just starting with a clean slate. still, I am guessing they will get the hang of it as they get into conversations with customers.

Transparency Builds Trust (and, therefore, loyalty)

I eat jam. It's one of the few sugary foods I still consume and I like good jam. Knowing the story and being able to track the ingredients is something I actually might do once or twice. By that point Beerenberg would earn my trust. I wouldn't use the app beyond that but I would tell a friend. 

note: thanks to one of my favorite resources in the "trend" tab of our The Daily Influence: Springwise, one of the best trend spotting sources out there.

 

How Can Mass Brands Benefit?
I don't know how the scale of Beerenberg compares to the big CPGs of the world beyond the obvious - they are a small to medium sized business versus a collosal enterprise (think P&G, Unilever, Cargill, etc...). We hear a lot from social media pundits that mass brands ought to adopt what the pundits themselves have proved - personal branding via social media can make you known. But practically speaking, how can a mass brand adopt the lessons from Beerenberg when, by necessity, their products may be made in a more industrial fashion with stainless steel and plastic substiting for wooden casks or inefficient jars?

CPGs can find the story in their people. Behind the scenes in the test kitchens, laboratories and supplier farms are passionate "creators" trying to make great product and solve problems. Mass brands may not have the benefit of the folksy personality but they are doing something we all need and want even when we don't realize it: they are democratizing great food. They are expected to figure out ways to get more people good food. And for that, most people understand there will be a mass-production model that employs less picturesque production.

Let the passionate people tell the story. Show the parts of sourcing and production that you can.People are curious and they do respect that type of transparency. It may cause the brands to recognize parts of sourcing and production they want to change. There is a "bar' that the public will not allow the brand to dip beneath. But that is why brands are valuable - because they mean something not because marketing tricked people into thinking they mean something.   
 

more:

• Why provenance matters to people and community from iVillage UK
• Some businesses make provenance the main tent of the brand
  

Inside the Centocor Blog

Melissa Katz and Michael Parks from Centocor talked with a few of us and John Mack (thanks to JM) about their new blog:CNTO411 . It follows in the footsteps of very few, most notably Marc Monseau at J&J. That means they are still on the leading edge. Injecting social media into the communications practices (forget about the marketing side) remains a huge challenge throughout the industry. I remain convinced that a few fearless folks like Melissa and Michael are the key to introducing change. I mean not only do they likely have legal and their internal stakeholders nervously watching but they will inevitably be a lightening rod for the social media purists who will analyze their every move and comment vociferously.

Why now?
Melissa referred to their experience launching the film InnerStates and hearing a little bit of noise from John Mack about inviting him and other bloggers. This and other experiences convinced them there was a valuable collection of conversations and influencers and it was time to jump in.

The name?
CNTO411 - that's how they mark product launches - "CNTO". The 411 is "information."

What do they want to achieve?
The site is a corporate site. They may talk about products but it's not the core intent. They do not plan on using it as a marketing site at all. It should be a discussion about disease and conditions. Melissa will be the primary blogger (this is her primary job). They may have guest bloggers.

What might success look like?
Having a pretty fluid conversation going, gaining credibility in the blogosphere. They really want to walk-the-walk of social media.

Summary
It sounds like they are using this as a first step to get experience with social media within the organization. I asked Melissa whether the blog was a conscious attempt to give others within the organization some feel for social media - to gain confidence and understanding. The answer was simple - "absolutely" 

Neither Michael nor Melissa were very specific about the audiences they are trying to reach or how the blog will focus on topics. Sounds about right for a pharma. I love their openness about where this might go. Seemingly little efforts like this (I know it was probably a big lift to sell-in) will go a long way to introducing innovation in the pharmas not just communicate but behave. 

   

WeMedia 08/Miami: Digital Health Entertainment

Humana's Grant Harrison is VP of Integrated Consumer Experience. He is doing some really cool things.

They are investing in many initiatives that could be grouped under 'health entertainment'. Think of games that require kids to run around the house to get to the next level. What's really cool is that they are investing in bringing Velib bikes to the US the way that 20K bikes were distributed across Paris.

Very cool idea for a Humana to support. I wonder how much word of mouth that will spark (never mind 'earned media').

WeMedia 08/Miami: Digital Health Empowerment

At WeMedia 08, Scott Mowbray from Health.com is talking with  Kendall Lockhart, Co-Founder, Nenuphar Mobile Media (and yoga practitioner - you had to be there for his intro) about what it means to empower people.

Ways of 'digital health' empowerment
1. Voting
2. Personal empowerment: during a prsonal health episode, it is critical to know what to ask for, what to demand from all of the health providers involved in your care

Social Marketing & Community
Kendall asks 'What if people don't want to change (e.g. lose weight)'
I would throw back - "what about transtheoretical model of social marketing?" that and other models to describe what causes people to change is begging for the suport systems now possible through social networks/communites. In general there is too much emphasis on simple delivery of credible information (vs. building credible community).

Kendall: Is there more 'community' now?
Scott feels that we live in a one-brand (WebMD) world. We are at an early stage of development of alternative sources for credible information.
I would throw back - what about the vast array of LongTail patient affinity groups? Are we really headed towards a model of a handful of WebMD competitors or will it be long tail from here on in with patient affinity groups like those hosted by Inspire.com and PatientsliekMe?

A Health Social Network With No Professionals...

Social media amplifies everyones' voice. In many cases, it has broken the dominance of traditional media and corporate communicators by empowering "citizen journalists" to break stories and challenge the traditional headlines. Moms can connect with each other and get advice versus relying on the "experts" annointed by publishing houses and media companies.

But health is one of those areas where we may bemoan the tyranny of traditional medicine and the special interest influence of pharmaceutical and insurance providers, but I still can't diagnose a major illness never mind treat it. I rely on a doctor. (regretably as mine is such an old-school, "stop-your-whining"- kind of doctor).

iMedix just won the Crunchies for Best New Startup 2007. This is annointed them by the social media tech community from the Valley (I am guessing here as there were 0ver 122K votes cast to determine the winners) where the emphasis is on "tech" and venture capital. It is not a hotbed of medical innovation.

At it's heart, iMedix is a social network for people who want to talk with other people about common conditions and health interests. If I have thyroid cancer (I don't but do have a related thyroid thingee), I can type it into their super-simple interface and recieve simple web search results from prefered, brand name sources (are they "scraping?") and a number of people who have tagged themselves as interested in 'thyroid' or 'thyroid cancer.'

Now, I will admit that I am a bit curious about what the crowd makes of this weird phenomena of thyroid malfunction. I am suspicious of some environmental condition that will reveal itself someday (my wife, myself and our cat all suffer from a related condition). Still, why would I reach out to these people?

The iMedix social network has a lot of things going for it and most of those are in the simplicity of the interface, the function and the overall ease of use. It stands as a strong testament to the strengths of a Web 2.0 mindset. Still many services are trying a social network model for healthcare issues. Some, like Revolution Health mix community content and features with professional information from trusted brands like Cleaveland Clinic, Mayoclinic.com and others. There are even "doctor bloggers'. Inspire, formerly Clinicahealth, goes a different direction by offering a social network platform to those that share a condition and want to connect with each other. It might be the Preemie social network or the Diet and Fitness community at Discovery Health.

iMedix is a broader social network driven by a front-end search interface that drives you to people who have tagged a common interest. We don't know much about each other. The service is new and most profiles are half-baked or not baked at all. Mine included. I am just not sure how much of my health interests I want to put on my profile beyond the one I have shared in this post.

Problems with iMedix:

• The management team is all tech VC and start-up folks. Not a single health professional or pyschologist.
• No clear way to assign credibility to different members. I could easily get a bunch of hooey from folks with no repercussions to the service or that member.
• The homepage is a big stock photo. Don't these startups know that stock photography telegraphs - "don't trust us, we are creating an image here."
• The dominant member (or does he work there?), Sean, appears to be represented by a wonderfully attractive...stock photo! Remember the Macwarehouse catalogs in the nineties that featured thumbnails of their customer service people that were laughably stock images? - "Hi! I'm Gretchen. Call me." Well, it's not funny when I am suffering from a condition and you want me to trust you.
• There is no critical mass of members. Right now, the service seems stocked with test accounts and staff members.

I like the technical and user experience. But that's not a good enough reason to give it the best startup award (the awards were user-voted). We'll see if they get past the weaknesses mentioned above to unlock a truly powerful health social network. To do, they will have to probably partner with some of the more trusted information providers. It's not likely enough to aggregate their search results.

Will they change? Or does iMedix just want to flip the company? Or worse, are they struck by tech hubris that won't let them see through to these weaknesses enough to fix them?

Idea Bar #9: Health Fashion & Lifestyle Store

So many pharmaceutical companies want to build better relationships with patients and physicians yet get caught in the ruthless cycle of pressure for short-term product sales and safely navigating regulation or worse, the threat of more regulation. Launching a new drug is complicated. And it's a game with a lot riding on it. A game that can squash creativity in certain organizations.

Regulation like "fair practice," DTC rules and "adverse event reporting"  are hard enough. The effectiveness of the push and pull of TV adverstising for drugs is really not all that clear. 

So, how can pharma build that better relationship? Can they really balance product brand-building, corporate brand-building and sales?

The Well, Well, Well Marketplace

Someone needs to create the Well, Well, Well Market (WWWM). We're talking -  "well, well, well, don't you look good" or "well, well, well I thought you were sick but you seem to be doing okay..."

This is a market that sells products that help us all live well with our various diseases and conditions without sacrificing our taste. If we test ourselves because we are diabetic, we use cool kits like Stickme Designs. If we have to take food through a tube even after you are back at work (happened to a friend of mine), you have a cool shoulder bag with the tubing built into your shirt (remember the cool "stillsuits" from Dune? ). If your hair is out due to chemo, not only do you get much cooler scarves but head-care supplies like sunscreen and even some hat suggestions.

The bottom line - every condition that allows us to remain engaged in life we ought to enhance by putting our best fashion and design talent against it.

It's Alessi for devices. Donna Karan for chemo scarves. Dean Kamen for wheelchairs.

Marketplace of Ideas
And it's also a marketplace of new fashion and design innovations from the crowd. Look at today's NY Times magazine article on the 'craft-centric' cottage industries sprung up throughout the Web . This marketplace could become not just a breath of fresh and cool air for people challenged by conditions, it could also become a boost for those creative minds that would dream up super cool solutions.

One of the biggest hurdles for big business to develop lifestyle solutions for people without legs or with special medical needs is the small size of the marketplace. Yet their are many entrepeneurs who are motivated by the challenges they face or their loved ones face. They are more than willing to dream up fashion and design products without a million-dollar payday expectation.

Pharma builds the store 
What if a pharma built the store? One of the challenges here is that no one pharma has drugs for devices across a wide collection of conditions. While this one has deep expertise in diabetes, another will have deep expertise in cancer treatments. Maybe an independent needs to build the mall, but the individual pharmas need the opportunity to create a cool store for their patients (and physicians) that help them live well with their condition. 

Being 'of-use' to patients is a great way to demonstrate they really do care. And helping people with diseases or conditions lead a high-quality of life via the best style and usability in design is one way to do it. Even if a pharma just built a promotional 'window' for these great products and, in the process, motivated others to design even better looking chemo chapeaus. 

Pharma Opportunity: Health Fashion

I need a new blog category. Besides Idea Bar. I need a category for ideas we recommended that show up somewhere else completly independently (and corroborate that we are onto something.

Springwise - one of my regular must-reads - reports on fashion "carrys" for glucose testing. This is a simple step forward but in an intersting way implies a shift in approach for those with, in this case,  diabetes. Don't let your disease own you. Don't let the fashion-less product offerings from health companies own you.

In this case it took an entrepeneur (and woman with gestational diabetes) to offer a cool way to carry her gear. We recommended this to a pharma client a while back. Now they should buy her company. Not for the revenue but to make a deeper commitment to the patients they serve. Not just medicine but lifestyle in context to their disease.

I love that she has a "beta-stickers" program. If ever there was a company set up to succeed via word of mouth, this is it. I hope that's where she goes with her marketing.

Rickin Velte's company is called Stick Me Designs. Check them out.

An Exceptionally Curious Patient

I have been following Amy Tenderich, DiabetesMine.com, for some time. Recently, I got hooked into her challenge to improve the product design for diabetics and other patients. This garnered a design from Adaptive Path and lots of visibility.

Her blog is passionate and well written. The epitome of the empowered patient or, as she herself says, the "exceptionally curious patient."  Being exceptionally curious about her, I wanted to know more. So I asked. Here's what she said:

Me: What did you expect to get out of blogging when you first started? What did you think your blog would be "about"?

Amy: My diagnosis came as quite a shock, and I felt terribly alone and overwhelmed. So I turned to the Internet for help.  At that time, the Net offered nothing but a dizzying array of formal medical documentation and "bad-news" headlines. Patients had a very limited presence on the Web (chat and message boards), and nobody was talking turkey about what it's really like to live with this volatile disease. So I set out to create the diabetes site that I myself was looking for as a patient -- a place to share what I was learning, to “vent,” and to connect with others affected by diabetes.  I thought it would be mostly a personal outlet. Later, the news reporting and community advocacy dimensions just evolved; I ended up throwing myself into this thing 100%. 

Me: How do you feel about it now? What do you get out of it now?

Amy:  Right.  Fast forward to Fall 2007.  DiabetesMine is a nearly a full-time gig now.  I post almost every day. My site hosts advertisers.  I spend an absurd amount of time on the web, for a mother of three.  I attend industry events and sit in on webcasts; people send me news tips and requests to reprint my material and pleas for help.  I've learned a ton, but I am still no doctor.  I'm still just watching with wonder.  I remain an exceptionally curious patient with a compulsion to do something for people with diabetes. 

The outpouring of appreciation has been tremendous. I’m amazed every day by the emails I get from people touched by diabetes.  And I was honored to win the LillyforLife Achievement Award for diabetes journalism last summer. It's magnificent to know that all the time and energy I'm pouring into DiabetesMine.com is recognized by the community it's meant to serve.

Me: You have wrestled with a chronic condition in the established healthcare system, established a independent voice in the patient and healthcare "community", just attended Health 2.0 - what do you think the 3 biggest changes are afoot for healthcare as a result of digital innovations?

Amy: Lots of changes are on the horizon, based on everything I heard at the forward-looking Health 2.0 conference.  Three “movements” of note are:

Changed RELATIONSHIPS – all these interactive tools on the Internet provide patients with information, choices, and a public voice never imaginable before. As a result, our relationships with each other, and with our doctors and our healthcare insurance plans are changing.   When a patient goes to see their doctor armed with detailed questions about the new diabetes drug Januvia, for example, they not only help themselves, but also the entire patient community, by prodding that doctor to know the latest and greatest.  All of that doctor’s other patients will benefit from this as well.  The patient also changes their relationship with the doctor from a passive teacher-student dynamic to more of a partnership.

The PERSONALIZATION of medicine – part of the movement is doing away with the “cookie-cutter” approach to medicine, because experience shows that individual patients can respond quite differently to the same dose of the same drug. Through molecular analysis, we’re now able to identify genetic markers that help determine each individual’s health needs. The experts tell me it won’t be too long until we’ll go visit our clinicians, undergo genetic testing, and then get handed a miniature hard drive containing our personal genome sequence, which can later be uploaded onto publicly accessible databases. Sounds like science fiction, but it is in fact already happening.

An OPEN MARKET approach to health – visionaries actually foresee "disengagement of the employer as the healthcare payer" which will "open up a whole new market."  In a free consumer healthcare market, we might use something like a FICO score (rating of your financial credit) to rate your personal health.  The better your health, the higher your score, and it would be your doctor’s job to help you raise that score.  If your doctor doesn't help you improve your score, that would be good grounds to find another doctor.  Under this model, doctors would be directly accountable for the care they give, and patients would do a lot of shopping around!

Me: Healthcare is pushing from many directions towards the consumer more in charge of their own healthcare. Does "in charge" equate with "in control"? What has to happen to help consumers be successful at managing their health?

Amy: Through blogs, wikis, podcasts and more, consumers certainly have a more powerful voice in the healthcare arena than ever before.  We are definitely in the middle of a transition toward “consumer-driven healthcare” – although I’d say many of the core concepts haven’t fully materialized yet. 

Education is definitely key, not least because of the potential to widen the gap between the Internet “have’s” and “have-nots.”  There’s still a large portion of the population that doesn’t have access to all these nifty online tools. 

What would be invaluable, for example, would be something like the experimental Expert Patients Programme launched in the UK recently.  They took people living with chronic illnesses and taught them self-management skills over a six-week period, with an option for brush-up courses later on.  They dealt with problem-solving, managing stress, and how people can develop positive “partnership” relationships with health care professionals. The program was a huge success, at least from the perspective of the participating patients.  And I have no doubt that their long-term outcomes will be better than their counterparts who weren’t in the program.

Me: What's next for you?

Amy:  A lot needs to be fixed in healthcare in the US – from the insurance reimbursement model to the design of medical devices for patients with long-term illness.  I view technology and social media as important factors in bridging the gap between “the system” and its consumers.  I want to be an active part of the group that helps improve the situation through community involvement. I guess my specific goal is to help improve the lives of the people who depend on the healthcare system the most. 

Amy is smart and influential. If you are interested at all in what an exceptionally curious patient with a great understanding of social media thinks about healthcare and 'digital health', read her blog.