It’s not a question any longer whether pharma has a need – bordering on moral obligation – to provide value and service through listening and responding via social media. We’ll build a playbook just like we did when we on boarded e-business initiatives 10 years ago. The real question emerging is WHO within the pharma enterprise will own this roll, and HOW will this new ‘Chief Social Media Officer’ relate to other internal partners and their agencies.

So far, numerous leaders are emerging from the pharma organization from legal, regulatory, brand teams and consumer/HCP centers of excellence. Time for a new COE to centralize this role? Maybe.

From one perspective within our advertising agency, this isn’t far from the decision in the 1960’s when agencies carved out ‘brand planner’ role – the one person who would own the market research (listening) and the planning tool box and ensure pull through to execution. This looks and feels like exactly the same need.

To that end, we’re working on a white paper this week with focus on this new COE role, a potential job description, connectivity to key internal and external partners, and some thoughts on the toolbox – stay tuned..

The FDA is currently hosting a visitor survey on their website, www.FDA.gov, which asks a number of usability and information preferences. Among these questions are sections about a visitor’s social media usage, which is interesting in light of the recent FDA hearing on social media and the pharma industry.

The FDA held their briefing, the first ever on social media, earlier this month and invited experts from various industries including publishers, ad agencies and pharma companies. The FDA, which has notoriously ignored most digital advertising mediums and turned a blind eye to social media, now seems to be acknowledging the application of social media for consumers.

The web survey in itself is not unusual, but the question about social media may be a prelude to usage of such by the FDA themselves. One only needs to look at how successful the CDC has been in recent years, to understand the impact of social media on information dissemination and community outreach within the public sector. If the FDA were to utilize social platforms in a similar way, they could speed up the passing of information to consumers, marketers and manufacturers alike. FDA guidelines would be better known and the veil could be lifted on what is and isn’t allowed. Even more important, if the FDA were to go so far as to use social media to engage and gather feedback from the public, than consumers, marketers and manufacturers could contribute to a more transparent conversation with the FDA. Admittedly, this seems a long way off and until we know the FDA’s full position on social media usage, we can’t expect that they will be using it in this way. But, one can hope.

It’s not a question any longer whether pharma has a need – bordering on moral obligation – to provide value and service through listening and responding via social media. We’ll build a playbook just like we did when we on boarded e-business initiatives 10 years ago. The real question emerging is WHO within the pharma enterprise will own this roll, and HOW will this new ‘Chief Social Media Officer’ relate to other internal partners and their agencies.

So far, numerous leaders are emerging from the pharma organization from legal, regulatory, brand teams and consumer/HCP centers of excellence. Time for a new COE to centralize this role? Maybe.

From one perspective within our advertising agency, this isn’t far from the decision in the 1960’s when agencies carved out ‘brand planner’ role – the one person who would own the market research (listening) and the planning tool box and ensure pull through to execution. This looks and feels like exactly the same need.

To that end, we’re working on a white paper this week with focus on this new COE role, a potential job description, connectivity to key internal and external partners, and some thoughts on the toolbox – stay tuned..

Check it out.

Pharma & Social Media – CNBC.com.

Understandably pharma can’t keep up with all the back and forth – banner ads that clearly violate the same issues outlined in the Treximet letter continue to proliferate the Internet.

The best pharma (and the agencies that develop their creative can do) is assess the general advertising FDA guidelines and consider the implications for the digital space. They have to use past tense warning letters to dictate future initiatives, and decide whether they should proactively pull things from market that present a risk of receiving letters.

So what are the immediate considerations?

1. Scrolling important safety information (ISI) is questionable

Due to the physical size limitations of banner ads, creative teams have traditionally developed scrollable ISI to meet branded pharma fair balance requirements. The FDA is concerned with a) the size of scrolling ISI and 2) the likelihood that people will actually read it. Scrolling ISIs are usually tiny and fast- no one reads them. Furthermore, they are separated from the “real” content. The eeny-weeny format makes it easy to overlook. As a result, the FDA warns that this execution does not meet balanced requirements. Therefor, creative teams must find a way to include ISI in branded banners in a way that is as accessible and as visible as any related claims.

2. Colors, font and imagery matter

The detailed Treximet letter indicates that the FDA expects experiental equality for digital execution of fair balance. Similar to guidelines for print and broadcast, the FDA warning letter dictates that banner ads should visually treat risk and benefit material equally. Font, color, text size, imagery and animation should be evaluated for creative equality. Additionally, this risk information likely needs to integrate smoothly with benefit information, so as not to appear like separate content.

3. Rich media or bust

As more and more FDA requirements arise in a medium where ad space is physically limited, standard flash banners may no longer suffice. Flash, while generally less expensive to develop, offers less room to support the above two implications than rich media. Creative teams should look to rich media, which offers both expandable space and more visually engaging technology. The exception: for some pharma brands, branded reminder ads may be the only option – in this case flash is likely more cost efficient.

In the end, it will really become a creative challenge to execute against the FDA guidelines. Integrating risk and benefit information in tiny-boxed-ad-space will likely require incremental time to concept, design and develop. The brands that will be most successful at over coming this hurdle, will be those that consider the abilities of digital creative execution, not simply the limitations.

I’m not sure I know anyone who works in advertising who doesn’t love the show Mad Men.  Their season 3 promotion allows you to create your Mad Men avatar!  I had to jump right on this.  That’s me in the  bright blue in the middle.

I noticed that the cartoon versions of Don Draper and Roger Sterling (left) are looking a lot like RTC’s Matt Connor and Jeff Ross.  Does that make Barry Kessel the Bertram Cooper of RTC?

Needless to say, I think this promotion is a brilliant use of social media and viral marketing.  Check the Twitter avatar of half the people who work in advertising and they have changed over to Mad Men avatars in the past few days.   But the question always becomes, how do you prove success on promotions like this.  RTC wasn’t involved in this promotion, but here’s what I’d do.  Until the show airs, you can’t determine real ROI of increased viewers.  So, right now we’d be watching the leading indicators.   But what are those leading indicators?  Here are a few of the stats we’d be watching:

Stats as of 07/29/2009 for past 7 days:

• URL posted to Twitter 685 times
• URL posted to 112 blogs
• “Mad Men Yourself” mentioned on 84 blogs
• “Mad Men Avatar” mentioned on 65 blogs
• 315 results on Flickr for “mad men yourself”
• Posted to Delicious 224 times

One thing we learn right away is that Twitter fans are Mad Men fans.  It’s an interesting piece of data for future promotions.  A quick check on my Facebook friends showed more than a few have also utilized and shared their avatars!  Names are obscured to protect their privacy.

Lots to learn from this promotion, and lots of fun to be had!

• Gadfly: a person who persistently annoys or provokes others with criticism, schemes, ideas, demands, requests, etc.
• Gladhander: to greet in an insincerely effusive manner

Custom Illustration by Josh Scott, Senior Interactive Art Director

Both of these types are prevelent in any industry, and Pharma Marketing is no exception.  Most people fall somewhere in the middle.  Just honest people trying to do the best job they can, and wanting some recognition for a job well done.  And let me be clear, I’m not trying to pick a fight. I actually think we need both types.

We need gadflies constantly pushing us to go further, do more, and work harder.  We need gladhanders tells us how great and special we are.   And we need the regular folks trying to get the job done.  Usually it’s the gladhanders that bother me.  Overly self-congratulatory people bug me, but this tends to be restricted to industry award nights.

Right now there has been a shift in the cosmic underpinnings of the universe, because it’s the Pharma Marketing  gadflies that are driving me crazy. I’ve now spent two years learning the complex world of pharmaceutical marketing. I’ve worked in a lot of industries during my ten years in the interactive space.  Each has it’s own unique set of challenges and jargon to learn, but Pharma is it’s own special beast.  Not only do most people think you are the slime of the universe for working in Pharma Marketing, but there are also an insanely complex and vague set of regulations that you have to navigate.

Until I started working with this industry, I had no idea why TV commercials listed out every horrifying possible side effect a drug could have, or why every drug commercial seemed to be identical.  FDA regulations require us to talk about side-effects, but the regulations aren’t always the clearest.  Pharmaceutical company advertising goes through many rounds of medical and legal reviews to ensure accuracy and legality.  In some cases you are literally only able to say three things, so you have to find as many ways to say them as possible.  In this environment, no one really wants to experiment and risk FDA warning letters.

But, all that beings said, there is movement.  Everyone is working to do better by patients and healthcare professionals.  Everyone is working to come up with new ideas and better ways to provide “fair balance” in their ads.  Everyone is working to better utilize the Web and digital channels to better serve patients.  There is more work to do, especially with the new draft guidance released by the FDA.

I guess the gadflies should keep poking us to ensure we don’t get self-congratulatory and turn into gladhanders.  But it doesn’t mean we can’t swat back at them.

And special thanks to RTCRM Senior Interactive Art Director, Josh Scott for that great illustration!

1. There are numerous definitions of RM that generally aim at achieving business results through ongoing dialogue and mutual value exchange. What matters, though, is “how you trust” – and this depends on your vantage point and the value you perceive. While RM depends on the building of mutual value through a planned series of marketing interactions, the majority of tactics discussed still remain within the realm of “direct.”

Direct marketing is an initial outbound marketing activity that seeks to capture customer data, deliver a choreographed communications stream, and drive a conversion or retention objective. But it has proved hard for pharma to generate cycle times fast enough to truly provide a second or third follow-up marketing contact of increasing and customized value. Are we showing the customer we know them? Not as much. In other words, marketers are in the operating mode of short-term direct pilots that seek to maximize reach and frequency with plenty of “acceptable” spillover.

I believe the jury is still out on whether outbound direct marketing goes far enough in showing we have heard the customer, and likewise have earned greater trust points through ongoing dialogue.

2. Furthermore, on the subject of short-term marketing, the conference group discussed how larger-portfolio companies are known for fast rotations of key marketing managers (1.3 years’ tenure on average). How does this impact a team or organization’s true commitment to long-term community relationship building? Short-term marketers, held to short-term results, are compelled to expect an immediate return. So what are the implications for staying “direct” and not closing the relationship loop? These marketers might overlook investments in relationships for the longer term. Smaller, more condition-specific companies (Novo Nordisk and diabetes, UCB and epilepsy, to name two) seem to have a better alignment, with a top-down mission to truly partner with the specific disease community for the long term – therefore, their corporate and brand reputation-building activities, even social networking, take on a special passion – as everyone in the organization becomes intensely passionate about their condition holders.

While the link of protecting authentic community building and sales/marketing is a tenuous line, the truly passionate teams that bring real patients closer in to the process seem to have a better chance at finding that trust and not overlooking long-term category development activities.

3. For big and little pharma to truly place the customer at the center of their planning process, healthy pipelines, including franchises with multiple medicines in the same category, can help strengthen the commitment to communities of condition holders, and nurture the passion, empathy, and trust that are required for true relationship building with condition holders. This will require brand teams to look up, look beyond, and see how their particular brand fits within their own pipelines and line extension life-cycle strategies. A broad view of brand architecture modeling is a new key step that shouldn’t be overlooked going forward.

It’s the duty of all RM planners to help their clients see the forest and the trees – and build in the right marketing process steps for both category and brand development. After all, isn’t this just code for elevating an own-able brand attribute and investing in it, and defending a unique, differentiated positioning? Now that the social media playbook is maturing and gaining adoption, greater alignment is essential to achieving the next level in patient value creation.

These are exciting times, and looking up and around frequently will be key as our health landscape changes over the next few years. If pharma wants to aim at new measurements (like “trust” or health outcomes), looking beyond short-term revenue and ROI maximization is essential for finding new value propositions that will keep R&D manufacturers relevant within the changing health system landscape.

Shame on me? The manufacturer thought so – and in a carefully worded, multiple paragraph error page they told me all about how to spell their name correctly, and how I should click on the correctly-spelled URL to go to the site.

What arrogance! Now that I am a parent, I would steer friends away from this company if a good alternative is present, even though the company in question now simply redirects the mispelled domain traffic to their main site.

The takeaway here is that it pays to open your online shopfront to everyone, as you would offline, especially when many pay enormous sums to gain the awareness threshold of “branded recall” that might bring customers to your door in the first place.

The best marketers will embrace imperfection in recall if it leads prospects to purchase and blocks fraudulent interception – and these companies will invest in domain names and search engine filings that harness that “imperfect” traffic.

Now that the trend for new “Web” companies to have cool, incorrectly-spelled names, these same potential customers might get punished for spelling brand names “correctly.” Shame on them.