By Sven Larsen (@zemoga)

You probably know that you should be telling stories in your work. But do you know how?

The concept of storytelling as an art form gained prominence in recent years in the business world – but I’d argue that it’s a back-to-basics survival mechanism more than a trend. We all work long hours, busy days, and get absolutely pummeled with information. We can’t handle any more presentations of factual information anymore.

What we fall back on is what has always worked best: storytelling. Tell me something I want to pay attention to – something that draws me in – something that makes me hold my breath to listen. That’s what I want, not another lecture.

Which leaves us with stories. But we also have to remember that we’re slap in the middle of the 21st century now, and we’re drowning in glorious storytelling options that would leave our narrative predecessors open-mouthed. Even the least technical among us can use freely available tools to create videos, soundtracks, typography, cartoons – any sort of story that we choose.

So why, why do so many of us still just pop a piece of clip art on a PowerPoint slide, stand in front of it and drone away?

Because we haven’t fully embraced the idea of trans-media storytelling.

As that link to an article by psychologist Pamela Rutlege notes, trans-media storytelling isn’t just choosing one medium. It’s remembering all of the variety available, considering the story that you need to tell, and figuring out how best to tell each part in each most appropriate medium.

Some brands have figured this out brilliantly – particularly, I think, in television. This is why some shows function perfectly on their own, but also have webisodes and websites with written narrative. Lost certainly did this (and needed to, because its mythology was way too unwieldy for one show), but even comedies like The Office do as well. You don’t have to be incredibly erudite or complex – you just have to give different parts of your story in different ways.

A lot of celebrities manage this quite well with their personal brands. On the red carpet they’re glamorous. On chat shows they’re funny. On their Twitter pages they’re endearingly everyday.

Why isn’t this adept shifting of gears moving into healthcare yet? Now, we don’t have to be Twitpic-ing pictures of ourselves shoe shopping with Nicole Richie or anything like that. We just need to realize two facts:

One, we must tell a story. It doesn’t have to be Dickens, but it has to be more than dry facts.

Two, we must spread that story generously throughout the media available to us. It’s time to move beyond “we’ll post our commercial on YouTube.” It’s time to figure out which chapters of the story play best in which form. Videos are for personal talk, conversational moments. Facebook is for quick sharing. Blogs are for longer-form riffs and small but fascinating data dumps. Commercials and print ads have their own parts to play.

It’s easier to give facts, but it’s a whole lot more effective to tell a story – and living in a trans-media world, there’s no other way to do it anymore.

Jenni Prokopy, better known as @ChronicBabe, discusses the problems that health communities face and puts forth the rallying cry for a league of health community heroes to overcome the stigma associated with chronic diseases and raise awareness through collaborative partnerships.

By Tiffany Ryan (@TiffanyRyan)

It’s every marketer’s dream goal: How do you create brand advocates, people who are willing to not only use your brand, but tell others how great it is? While Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing is a hot topic, generating consumer buzz requires a focus on the most fundamental responsibility of a business: great customer service. If you treat others well, and deliver on your brand promise, people will tell others.

Let’s face it, the world of social media, including twitter, facebook, and the blogosphere makes word of mouth marketing a key component of business plans today. With forums for sharing everything from product reviews and recommendations to offering perspective on a company’s business practices, the opportunity to engage with your customers, establish a relationship with them, and create advocates has never been better.

It’s a huge opportunity and an even bigger commitment, but generating brand ambassadors really is about the basics. Let’s review:

Treat your customers well – Go beyond your customers’ expectations. Make sure they walk away thinking that you have overdelivered, not overpromised. Actively listen to your customers to understand their needs. Ask questions. Get to know them so well that you can anticipate their needs. And most of all, never become complacent in the relationship. They should always feel like a valued and important customer.

Build online connections and open the door to new conversations and relationships – Use Facebook and Twitter to listen and monitor. Many companies and brands are fearful of allowing open comments on their Facebook page. The concern is valid, but a negative comment on Facebook allows you to immediately address the concern and resolve it. Twitter is also an important listening platform. The reach of Twitter is astounding, and one bad comment on Twitter can have compounding effects on your customers’ perception of your brand. Participating in the dialogue with your customers on these platforms helps demonstrate your commitment to creating a positive customer experience.

Engage influential people – Magazines have always prided themselves on their longevity as a medium and their pass-along circulation. In the social media era, passing along an article, blog post, flickr shot or YouTube video is as simple as clicking a share button. The blogosphere has created a new definition of “influencers.” Regardless of your product, there is a group of bloggers out there for you. Engage them in your brand experience. Have them participate in giveaways, product reviews, or better yet, a charitable/social cause that you also believe in. Create believers in them, and their endorsement will influence others.

Involve your customer – Build a true relationship. The first step is ensuring your brand is delivering on it’s promise. Beyond that, customer engagement programs, ongoing communications, Twitter parties, Facebook specials, and personal attention can go a long way in keeping your customer engaged.

When we consider all of these points, it all comes down to having a great brand. Consistency of message, customer engagement, and meeting your customer needs still drive loyalty. While social media has given us marketers a ton more opportunities to communicate, it’s comforting to know that the basics still matter.

By Dan Bobear (@dbobear)

Now that AstraZeneca’s experimental blood thinner Brilinta has been given the green light by an advisory committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, they need to prepare for the next hurdle they face: usurping category leader, Plavix, which is slated for generic availability sometime next year.

Most critical: changing physician prescribing behavior.

The lessons coming out of the Brilinta approval process are a key for marketers. Like the study that showed Brilinta’s less favorable results in the U.S., compared to the entire 18,000+ international population of patients studied, what works in one place may not work in another.

What should AstraZeneca (and every marketer) be thinking about?

Location-based promotional activity – You can have the right message but in the wrong place. With the effectiveness in U.S. participants in question, the company needs to address that concern, giving patients and physicians confidence in the drug as an appropriate course of treatment. Traditional marketing vehicles, social media, conference exhibits and direct mail pieces combined with insight gathered through the CRM system will ensure the right message is delivered to the right audience at the right time.

Creating a positive brand image – This article references a poll that showed that 75 percent of physicians were prescribing Plavix for a year or more. For Brilinta to successfully penetrate the market, they will likely need to break physician behavior of prescribing a medication out of habit. Reaching an increasing number of doctors with no-call policies, as well as a consumer audience, will require a multi-channel approach, especially when a low-cost generic option is available. Where to focus?  For doctors, the brand needs to communicate the safety and efficacy of the drug. Patients also need to understand the advantages they will gain through treatment.

Interacting directly with patients – Patients who request a drug, provided they are a candidate for it, are likely to get it. Direct-to-consumer messaging is no longer limited to print and broadcast advertising and educational resources. Today’s patients head online and research treatment options across a variety of sources. Community forums enable patients to get information from other users, medical professionals, and company-sponsored materials. While changing physician prescribing behavior is an imperative, it’s also important to create demand among appropriate patients.

Incorporating social media – Discussion groups, You Tube videos, Twitter, and blogs as well as improved search engine optimization can increase brand awareness and create a positive connection with the target community. Facebook has become an extremely important referral source to drive people to a company’s website. There are brand pages, disease awareness groups and fans or followers that can carry the message to a larger audience. AstraZeneca has taken a deliberate but dedicated approach to social media, but to shift the opinion of doctors and patients, they will need to produce social content that is a little less sterile and a lot more engaging.

The September 16 decision looks favorable. How do you see this changing the competitive landscape? What do you think Brilinta needs to achieve peak sales?

By Andy Smith

Social media is the new mainstream. A new report from Nielsen Co. finds that Americans are devoting almost a quarter of their Internet time on social networking sites and blogs, a 43 percent increase compared to one year ago. In the UK, social media has overtaken every other online activity.

Pharmaceutical companies still rely on traditional media and means of disseminating information – magazine, television and radio advertising and displays in the doctor’s office or waiting room – but they shouldn’t overlook the value of social networks for connecting with patients and strengthening brand awareness. In fact, by limiting participation on social networks to blasts about new medicines or company news, pharma companies are missing out on an opportunity to better serve patients.

Social media’s interactive nature provides patients with the opportunity to become engaged in their own health care, whether that’s requesting a particular drug or treatment therapy during a physician visit or carrying product messages back to their own social network. Pharma companies that engage the end consumer – the patient – can extend their message through a cadre of brand ambassadors.

How can pharma companies increase their social participation? John Mack identified these uses of Twitter for pharma companies, including:

• Drug/device safety alerts (eg, drug recalls, medical device malfunctions, emerging safety issues)
• Prescription management, including pharmacy refill reminders
• Daily health tips from authoritative sources
• Publishing disease-specific tips
• Clinical trial awareness & recruitment
• Enhancing health-related support groups (e.g. buddy-systems for depression)
• Providing around-the-clock disease management
• Patient-sharing of health-related experiences
• Issuing dietary/lifestyle tips

While the Food and Drug Administration recently issued a warning to a drug-maker against using Facebook to promote a medication, its beef was that the promotion was incomplete, only promoting the benefits and not the risks. The lesson is that transparency is essential. Beyond promoting a particular medicine, pharma should use Facebook to:

• Build relationships and spark discussions – not as a linear platform for conveying information
• Provide valuable, informative information – not just promotional content
• Spark one-to-one dialogue, and encourage patients to participate by sharing their own experiences
• Avoid avoidance; monitor what people are saying and should things go awry, offer clear messages and alternative avenues for getting information
• Work in tangent with other social networking platforms. Want a YouTube video to go viral? It’ll never happen without a coordinated Facebook campaign

Pharma companies shouldn’t be afraid of social media – it’s a valuable medium for carrying key messages, building relationships and increasing product loyalty. But that’s what it is – a medium. What doesn’t change is the core work of examining the marketing strategy, crafting transparent and clear messages, and engaging social media to add value and build relationships.

Image courtesy of Present Diabetes

By Russ Ward (@russcward)

Over the last couple of weeks, if you haven’t heard people talking about Avandia, GlaxoSmithKline’s diabetes drug, you must have been on that mythical desert island that people always talk about.

The FDA convened a hearing to discuss the drug – and specifically, to discuss the heart attacks that patients who were taking it kept experiencing. After the discussion, the committee’s decision was to recommend keeping the drug on the market, but with the addition of a host of rigorous restrictions to its prescription.

The hearings themselves were very interesting, but just as interesting was watching how different media outlets handled it and reacted to it.

Just in the one week surrounding the hearing, it was possible to see a fascinating cross-section of media approaches, as the hearing drew Twitterers’ and bloggers’ attention, as well as that of patient communities, traditional journalists, and competing advertisers. In this post, we’ll take a short look at a cross-section of that news.

We’ll start with the most time-sensitive – Twitterers. There were several journalists livetweeting the events from the hearing itself – in particular, Forbes’ Matt Herper (@matthewherper), NPR’s Scott Hensley (@scotthensley), TheHeart.org’s Shelley Wood (@theheartorg) and CardioBrief’s Larry Husten (@cardiobrief).

All of these journalists have many years not only covering healthcare, but specifically covering cardiology, and so their familiarity with the issues that that drug was facing, and with which the committee was wrestling, made them particularly well able to livetweet the most relevant quotes as they happened, from “We’ve seen enough ambiguity to last a lifetime” to “This drug may not be for everybody, but that doesn’t mean it’s not for anybody.”

Tweets of quotes as soon as they were out of a committee member’s mouth, along with counts of each vote as soon as the members cast it – these were details that only live journalists within the room of the meeting itself could provide. Even participating by webcast would have lost some of the commentary and tone palpable in the room itself.

In addition, other top pharma Twitterers were covering, retweeting and posting links to coverage, among them Pharma Marketing News’ John Mack (@pharmaguy), as well as @fiercepharma and – not surprisingly – a tweetstream called @avandialawsuits.

Bloggers were in hot pursuit of the live Twitter coverage, with coverage like Elsevier Global Medical News (@aliciaault) riffing on “A Few Good Men” with “The Truth About Avandia? You Can’t Handle the Truth”. (Many of the previously-mentioned reporters, also, bylined coverage in blogs before or in addition to filing their stories.)

Because the diabetes community is so large and deeply involved in their care, the concept of communities took a large role in the communication of this. dLife, the premier diabetes community, was buzzing with news, questions, rumors and responses…Here’s a sample.

And of course, the traditional media did not hesitate to cover the news, from USA Today’s Rita Rubin (@ritarubin) and her coverage, to @matthewherper’s “Death of Avandia” on the Forbes blog, and Deborah Kotz’s (@debkotz2) US News story on “what now” for Avandia.

On a traditional paid media front, the competition wasted no time. The morning after, Takeda launched ads that touted their drug, Actos, and its differences from Avandia. This action is almost exactly the same – down to the wording of the ads – that they undertook three years prior after a similar situation with Avandia.

Lots of news, lots of people talking. What’s it all mean for you?

Well, the next time there’s a competitive event in pharma, do a quick overview like this. Keep abreast of the news in the industry, of course – but more than that, watch the media. See who’s covering it, and how. See what the different time frames are. See who’s focusing on which angles. It can tell you a very great deal about who gets their news from whom and, therefore, which people really are your “key opinion leaders”. Know whose voices are heard and repeated and whose opinions matter most.

By Bob Mason (@BobMasonPalio)

Social media is one of the biggest shifts in modern business. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, Wikis and more have created new opportunities for businesses to interact and learn about their customers, prospects, competitors and even their own employees. Twitter alone boasts 50 million Tweets each day – that’s 600 per second.

To support social initiatives, many organizations rely on their in-house public relations or marketing staff. However, this new form of media requires some specific knowledge and skills – and internal training and development may not be available. With social media becoming a prominent fixture on the business landscape, many organizations are creating a new role to support community and brand building: social media strategist. A social media strategist is responsible for educating customers and developing strategies for how to best use new technology for marketing, communications and customer support.

A social media strategist will have the skills to guide the organization in exploring new methods for listening to and interacting with the community at large: customers, analysts, investors, employees. Today, the world is both audience and focus group. Savvy social media strategists are familiar with tools and techniques to learn about customer preferences and understand how to interact with the target audience across multiple social media platforms.

Effective use of social media starts with having a social media strategy. Is LinkedIn the right place to reach your target audience? Are they tweeting on a regular basis? A social media strategist will identify where you should be by first understanding where your audience is participating. For example, right now there are millions of profiles on LinkedIn.  Your social media strategist will identify individual connections as well as groups your organization should participate in. They’ll also have insight into each group’s own proper etiquette for participating. A social media strategist should also know how to set up groups, moderate them and build participation.

At the heart of many organizations’ social strategy is the corporate blog. According to the latest count from Technorati, there are 112.8 million blogs – with new ones popping up daily. A social media strategist is not only responsible for creating and managing content for the corporate blog, but also monitoring, and when appropriate, responding to comments from readers. They also need to monitor other bloggers to acquire competitive information and identify prominent or influential bloggers. Using tools such as whostalkin.com and Google alerts are helpful in keeping apprised of activity in the blogosphere.

Because the role of social media strategist is so new, many organizations are struggling with defining the necessary skill set and job requirements. A strong social media strategist should:

• Recommend, implement and manage social network policies and procedures
• Determine which social media tools are right for your objectives
• Be able to live stream from a conference or moderate a tweet chat
• Have an understanding of various technology and tools such as HootSuite and hashtags
• Know how to use Twitter from a mobile device; upload videos to Vimeo and YouTube and add photos to Flickr
• Have solid writing skills to create blog posts and excellent communication skills to respond in real-time to customers, prospects, other bloggers, etc.
• Create tags for content to align keywords with the company’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy
• Use “chicklets” to encourage readers to share content with their own networks

The role of a social media strategist is dynamic. Like other forms of media, they’ll create an editorial calendar or publishing schedule to serve as a framework for disseminating information on the company blog. From there, they’ll want to promote thought leadership through Twitter. However, it’s more than just serving up the information. Using social media such as Twitter and Facebook posts can add depth to content and get customers and employees more plugged into the community. Beyond posting and tweeting, the social media strategist will spend time working with a brand monitoring solution to discover all the places that the company needs to monitor or participate. They’ll also work internally with employees, the sales force and customers to help share insights and strengthen relationships.

In today’s increasingly social world, having a social media strategist on staff is no longer a nice-to-have – it’s essential. By taking a disciplined approach to social communication, companies can take advantage of social media to ultimately build their brand and business.

By Bob Mason (@BobMasonPalio)

We’ve talked before about different types of online communities, from Twitter to virtual worlds. The term, “online community” can mean anything from the “big ones” like Facebook and Twitter, to smaller niche organizations such as the Planet Cancer community for young adults fighting cancer.

These little societies can do amazing things. As an outside organization looking to come into one of these spaces and communicate effectively to the members, though, it’s important to know what they can do and what they cannot. So here’s a little down-and-dirty-guide to them.

Online communities are great for…

Finding the right groups. Don’t spend the time and money on one of the top sites if your targets have a niche community that caters specifically to them. Kids with diabetes, breast cancer survivors, parents of children newly diagnosed with autism – there are groups and organizations, community-gatherers and champions. Find them and you don’t need to waste your message on people with whom it will not resonate.

Building enthusiasm. These communities are where you can workshop ideas. Show your target audience that you trust them and respect their opinion – but then, ask for it and use it. Should you convene official – and expensive – focus groups, or do you have a situation where it could be better to tweak your idea while you get buzz building live and in public?

Crowdsourcing ideas. The people involved in online communities are passionate enough to have searched it out, joined, and actively participate. They can be a gold mine, telling you exactly what will work – and what won’t – for people like them.

However, don’t forget that online communities are not great for…

Getting broad national exposure. Just because your information was posted on a community that has several million participants doesn’t mean your great-aunt Ethel in Paduca has seen it. Even if you’ve got stats to match Oprah, digital audiences aren’t exactly the same as broadcast or print ones. This can work in your favor, though.

Starting a new one from scratch. Think of a bricks-and-mortar comparison. Would it be easier to get customers if you open up a store in a crowded and popular shopping mall, or to build the same small-sized space off on its own? Or, worse yet, to try to build a building as big as that shopping mall, just for your own shop, and try to make it pay off? Leverage existing networks whenever you can: the people and the structure are already there. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Earl D. Whipple is the Senior Director of Business Communications and Digital Media for AstraZeneca.  In an effort to drive online visibility and digital engagement for one of the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies, Earl and his team launched AstraZeneca’s first company blog and Facebook community.  Today, Pixels & Pills talks to Earl about Pharma’s obligation to engage in social media, corporate social responsibility, healthcare reform, and the challenges facing Pharma blogs.

By Kimberly Reyes (@CommDuCoeur)

1. In your blog, you talk about healthcare companies’ “obligation to responsibly engage in social media.”  Why do you think that social media has gotten so much attention from the healthcare community, and what advice do you have for pharma to properly adopt it?

Patient health guides everything we do at AstraZeneca and we understand that a healthier world cannot come from medicines alone. People are increasingly turning to social media for information on their health and medicines but the accuracy of health and medical information varies within social media.  In many cases information is outright wrong or contradictory.  Pharma companies must adhere to clear regulatory guidelines by the FDA in on how they must communicate. Unfortunately those guidelines can’t always keep pace in evolving mediums of communication, particularly in social media. There is an abundance of patient and consumer dialogue occurring in social media –and that dialogue may include information on my company or our medicines. The challenge to patient health is that this information isn’t always accurate. Waiting for the FDA to provide specific social media guidelines before a company jumps in doesn’t help patients.  The conversations are already occurring – with or without a company participating.

Any pharma company considering entry into social media needs to assess their own risk comfort and timing – not just from a corporate/legal perspective but also from a patient health perspective.  Keep the priorities of patients as a top concern. Weigh corporate risk with the potential risk to patients by not joining the dialogue.  We welcome the opportunity to grow the dialogue with others in our industry, and have enjoyed the opportunity to engage with those already present.

2. In a recent Pixels & Pills blog post, we pointed towards AstraZeneca’s commitment to corporate social responsibility.  Why is corporate social responsibility so important to AstraZeneca, and can you provide me with some examples of your most successful programs?

Developing and making meaningful medicines is an important contribution to public health.  But we also challenge ourselves to do more to not only improve healthcare but also society at large.  Corporate responsibility is critically important to AstraZeneca as a sustainable, responsible business.  Our Global CEO, David Brennan describes it as “a journey not a destination,” because our company is only as good as the trust and confidence we earn with our stakeholders – including physicians, patients, regulators, business partners, and customers. Through energy conservation, waste reduction, and other measures, we’re managing our environmental footprint responsibly and working to help make the world a healthier place.

• AstraZeneca participates in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star program, implementing sustainable facilities design through LEED®, and investing in other energy-saving technologies such as solar panels, geothermal technology, wind energy credits, and hybrid engine vehicles for our field employees. We biannually report our contributions to nonprofit organizations on our US website.
• Employees at all our sites actively participate in recycling paper, bottles, and other office products. In addition, we provide CFLs (compact florescent light bulbs) to employees through the EPA’s Change-A-Light program, Earth Day events, and energy fairs.
• In 2009, AstraZeneca provided $769.6 million in savings to 507,475 patients in the United States last year through our AZ&Me™ Prescription Savings programs

3. In your opinion, what are the key influences of healthcare reform on the pharma industry?

AstraZeneca is proud that our industry was actively engaged and led in the health care debate by our Global CEO David Brennan, who served as Chairman of The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) this past year.  Very early in the debate we publicly shared our health care reform principles and committed to work with other innovation-based biopharma companies on health care reform.

The U.S. health care system leads the world in medical innovation but has suffered from high administrative costs, major health insurance coverage gaps, and health quality disparities. Considerable challenges remain within health care reform but the new law is an important step forward for patients and scientific and medical innovation.

4. In your November 6, 2009 blog post, you addressed some of the challenges facing pharma blogs.  Can you re-iterate some of these challenges, and explain how you have used the feedback to evolve the AZ Health Connections blog?

AstraZeneca believes our company has an obligation to participate in social media in a responsible way to help educate and empower patients, caregivers and prescribers to make informed decisions about our company and our medicines. The biggest single challenge is the ability to have real conversations on a particular disease state or on one of our medicines. I think this challenge holds true for any pharma company engaged in social media and it is not specific to just blogs.  People deserve fast, accurate answers to their questions – and from live people – but comments or questions in these areas are constrained.  This is not how we want things to be but until FDA regulatory guidelines address how social media can engage in this area, we have to be responsible and make the hard decisions to either not publish certain information or take more time to respond to certain comments. We won’t publish questions or comments about our medicines and in when it comes to disease areas we’ll review for accuracy, fair balance, and compliance with FDA regulations.

Continuing our coverage from yesterday, Wendy Blackburn, founder of ePharma Rx talks about winning “Best Industry Observer Blog” in the inaugral Dosie Awards and her thoughts on the Social Media and Healthcare Roundtable.