By Sven Larsen (@svenplarsen)

Watching the big game last night,  I was struck by the diversity of products being advertised. Domain name registration and e-trading as well as the old reliables like packaged goods and automobiles. But one category was conspicuous by it’s absence. Where were the Pharma Superbowl ads?

It’s not like big Pharma companies don’t have the marketing budget for a Superbowl spot. And Pharma agencies certainly have the talent to pull off something as compelling as bungee jumping cars or Danica Patrick in a jumpsuit. So why no creative or splashy spot advertising a big name OTC or prescription product?

I can understand not wanting to spend the money on giving over half an uber expensive Superbowl spot to Fair Balance. But I also think it’s indicative of the way we sometimes approach Pharma marketing.

Pharma agencies have struggled for years with the perception that healthcare marketing is a “creative ghetto”, a place where fresh and original ideas are smothered by regulatory review and conservative clients. Of course, anyone who has been to the Mannys or spent any time in the industry knows this isn’t true. But, at times, I think we do suffer from an inferiority complex. A belief that spots like “1984″ are for cool, hip brands like Apple and not for boring old Pharma.

It’s an attitude we need to shake off. Whether it’s digital media, social marketing or more traditional outlets like television and print, Pharma needs to stand toe to toe with any other type of product and service and we need to use all the weapons in the marketing arsenal. Because, at the end of the day, our message is just as (if not more) important than Coke or Toyota’s. What car you drive or what soda you drink may enhance your life. But what drug you take or what healthcare behavior you modify may save it.

And if the message is that important, isn’t it time we got as creative as possible when it comes to spreading it?

by Jason Brandt (@jasondmg3)

Mad Men protagonist Don Draper works in the show’s fictional advertising agency, but the challenges he faces are real, and not much different than what many healthcare marketers face on a daily basis – meeting deadlines, incorporating new technologies, managing perceptions, and influencing behaviors all while ensuring personal growth.

The pharmaceutical industry and Mad Men’s advertising world have a lot in common: both include vibrant and competitive industries, have major players that influence standards and rely on a targeted audience to boost their business. What can pharma learn from Mad Men?

The devil is in the details. Producer Mathew Weiner pays meticulous attention to every detail from casting to the story line as well as ensuring the props and the set accurately reflects the time period. Creating an authentic and engaging experience with every dialog, interaction and visual is why fans flock to the three-time Emmy Award-winning series. Pharmaceutical companies looking to create that same level of customer loyalty should incorporate that same attention to detail, whether that’s using an authentic voice when communicating on social networks, creating intuitive, customer-friendly applications and services or delivering outstanding customer experiences.

Pick a job and then become the person that does it. Bobbie Barrett delivered this little pearl over cocktails with ex-lover Don Draper. Explaining how she became her husband’s manager – a man who wouldn’t have a career without his wife’s revealing bust line and shrewd wheeling and dealing – she tells him she invented the job.

Ten years ago there was no need for an HTML5 programmer, social media strategist or elder care services coordinator – those jobs didn’t exist. With technology and increased access to information changing everything, companies need to have their pulse on what skills will be needed in the future and recruit a workforce with the right skills to support growth. Individuals also need to develop skills that continue to add value and take control of their internal career path.

Don’t overlook the value of reinventing yourself. Don Draper is a chameleon. Born Dick Whitman, he’s no stranger to reinventing himself, whether it’s changing his name or leaving an established New York advertising agency to launch a start up.

Pharmaceutical companies may find themselves needing a reinvention with the expiration of drug patents expected to affect drug pricing, marketing and patient usage. Surviving patent expiration will require pharmaceutical companies to refocus their marketing messages to ensure they don’t lose significant market share to generic competitors. Shifting the strategy from brand loyalty to one that includes a more life-cycle branding and consumer education emphasis can deliver a competitive edge.
If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation. When a New York City developer didn’t like how he was being treated in the press, Don Draper suggested changing the conversation.

Brand management today is a two-way engagement with consumers often having louder share of voice than company-issued messaging. Putting processes in place to monitor online conversations is no longer a nice-to-have but a business necessity. Before things go south, develop strategies for how you’ll respond to negative or inaccurate information. Changing the conversation doesn’t necessarily require hijacking a thread, but paying attention to what is being said and offering truthful information can help consumers maintain a positive perception of your brand.

While we may not wear the narrow ties or hair pomade of Don Draper, we can still follow in his footsteps by keeping track of the details, owning the conversation and being unafraid to innovate when reinvention is the best option.

Like my image? You can get yourself one over at Sterling Cooper.

We’ve been writing a lot about the case for mobile in healthcare over the past couple of years. And we’re going to keep writing about it. With one quarter of US adults turning to their mobiles for healthcare information, it’s important that the industry keeps pushing forward with innovative sites, apps and tools that will keep us at the top of our game and, in the end, be useful to the community at large.

To that end, exploring how to better accomplish this is always something we’re interested in. Which is why, on Thursday, January 26^th, some of the crew from Pixels & Pills will be at the BDI Mobile Healthcare Communications 2012 Case Studies and Roundtables.

About the Event:
Consumers and professionals are increasingly using their mobile devices for healthcare information. They are also interacting with healthcare providers and colleagues on their mobile phones. This conference will demonstrate the best case studies of how major healthcare brands are connecting with consumers and professionals through mobile communications.

Speakers and Roundtable Moderators:
Meighan Berberich, Vice President, Marketing, BlogTalkRadio
Lance Hill, CEO, Within3
Scott Hopkins, Executive Vice President, Anderson Direct Marketing
Monique Levy, Vice President, Research, Manhattan Research
Dr. Katherine Malbon, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Adolescent Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital
Talya Miron-Shatz, PhD, Marketing Department, Wharton, University of Pennsylvania
Jenna Mons, Consumer Product Manager for LAP-BAND®, Allergan
Mario Nacinovich, Jr., Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Communication in Healthcare; Managing Director, AXON
Xavier Petit, Shire
John Vieira, Daiichi-Sankyo
Date: Thursday, January 26, 2012
Time: 8:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Place: The Graduate Center of The City University of NY; 365 5th Ave; NY, NY 10016

For additional information, including registration, please click here to visit the event website. Use promo code P&P for a discounted rate of $175.

Hotel Sponsor: Hotel 373 is the official hotel of BDI’s events. Click here to receive a discounted rate

Sponsors:
PR Newswire; Within3; Anderson Direct Marketing; BioCrowd ; Cinchcast; Journal of Communication in Healthcare; Manhattan Research; New York University; Pixels and Pills; Public Relations Society of America – New York Chapter; Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development

By Sven Larsen

These days everyone is familiar with e-commerce. And our more social media savvy readers are probably all clued up on f-commerce (that’s Facebook commerce folks). I’ve even heard Google’s Adwords and Adsense business referred to as g-commerce. But what about the next letter in the alphabet. How come no one is talking about h-commerce?

Make no mistake; healthcare commerce online is big business (A Forrester research report projects 2012 Healthcare spending online will reach $8.7 billion). And the traffic for online health retailers is pretty impressive, too. Drugstore.com, a pioneer in the space nets 4.66 million unique users a month (and a not too shabby $416 mm a year in annual sales). But their traffic pales next to more traditional drug retailers like CVS (6.37 mm uniques per month) and Walgreen’s (10.6 mm uniques per month). And then, of course, there is the 800-pound gorilla of health info online, Web MD with a whopping 16 million unique visitors per month (to put that number in comparison, the New York Times website average 17 mm uniques per month). It’s clear that Americans are more than comfortable obtaining health information online and they’re also comfortable with online purchasing of the drugs and other healthcare products they need. So why aren’t we doing a better job of selling those products to them?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating digital snake oil sales or anything similarly distasteful (or anything that might get anyone in trouble with the FDA). In fact, quite the opposite. As an industry, it’s a real black eye for us that most people associate online drug information with spam e-mails offering cheap Viagra and that most of the discussion of drug sales online revolve around things like obtaining cheap Canadian pharmaceuticals. No wonder the Pharma industry has such a bad reputation with many consumers. While drug manufacturers have sat in their ivory towers doing their best to ignore conversations with consumers, the digital space has been ceded to shady characters who have no interest in preserving brand integrity or serving patient’s needs.

Yes, we’re bound by strict regulatory requirements that preclude us using some of the traditional methods that other consumer marketers use to tout the features and benefits of their products. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t find new and better ways to educate consumers about their health and help them maintain positive lifestyles. Or even just make their lives a little easier.

Consider the plight of a young mother who has just relocated with her family to a city where she doesn’t know anyone. She needs to find a GP she can trust for her family. She needs to find a pharmacist she can trust as well. Maybe one of her children has special needs and she needs to find a local support group. Maybe she just needs to know where that 24-hour drugstore is located. Perhaps she has a prescription that has run out and no one to authorize a refill. What does she do now?

She probably looks at Yelp or one of the many sites that publish HCP reviews. She may type the name of a national drugstore chain into a search engine and find a store at random. And she will spend a lot of time online looking for resources to help her and her family. Not a problem, right? We all know young moms have nothing but time on their hands.

How much better would it be if she were able to go to a one stop portal that contained tons of information about the healthcare resources available in her community? A site that listed HCPs, local specialists, pharmacists and patient support groups. A site that also provided links to educational resources online and e-commerce partners who could help with issues of supply and cost. A site sponsored by one (or several) Pharma companies that provided a real service to the community and a positive representation of our industry online. And, not for nothing, a site that increased compliance and by extension benefitted both the patient and the Pharma company.

The above, is just one example, of ways we can interact with and benefit the end consumer, without violating FDA guidelines. I’m sure our readers could come up with numerous other ideas. The key here is to once again step outside the narrow confines of our traditional industry thinking and to learn from other players in the market. A good start would be for Pharma companies to become more active in the general conversations about online marketing and retailing that take place at sites like INTERNET RETAILER and SHOP.ORG. Ultimately, the end consumer for Pharma is a consumer and we need to realize that despite all the rules that bind us, the purchase funnel for our products is no different than any other.

What do you think? Is this the year we finally start talking about h-commerce?

by Briana Campbell (@MsMatchGirl)

By now, you’ve all had time to review the FDA’s draft guidance on Responding to Unsolicited Requests for Off-Label Information About Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices. And you’ve had time to read the multitude of responses that came after (if you didn’t, Fabio Gratton has compiled many of them for you). And, as this is something we’ve been talking about for over two years now, you’ve probably been waiting for our response.

We were disappointed in Advertising Age’s write up calling this Social Media “Guidelines.” While this draft guidance should clear some things up for pharmaceutical companies surrounding responding to unsolicited off-label inquiries via electronic media, without being the definitive guidelines that we’ve been waiting for since 2009 (head’s up, those are not coming anytime soon, if at all), it should be used as just that – a guide. We’re not lawyers (we’ll be getting you insight from one ASAP!), but we’d guess that keeping social media responses in line with these guidelines should keep pharma companies out of hot water for at least the near future.

As recently as December 2011, we posted a piece, “Shoot First, Apologize Later: Why Pharma Needs to Proceed Without Social Media Guidelines,” that offered up the idea that, with a bit of thoughtfulness behind it, pharma could easily embrace social media platforms, not only for the benefit of their own brands, but the patients that are searching the social web for answers.

Companies that want to change, lead or influence need to take calculated risks and proceed even without formal guidelines. Often, a permissible approach results in delays, obstacles and stagnation. For companies waiting for permission, by the time they get it, it’ll be too late. Someone else will lead the pack and they’ll again be reduced to playing catch up.

That doesn’t mean to proceed without caution and strategic foresight, but it does mean the time to act is now – not at some undetermined point in the future. Consider how the U.S. Navy has embraced social media for recruiting. Realizing that conversations are happening online, with or without guidelines, they chose to not fight it and instead promote social media usage throughout the ranks.

There are loads of heavily regulated industries joining in online. Why shouldn’t pharma be amongst them?

In lines 338 through 351 (on page 10) of the draft guidance, the FDA lays out some of the thought behind the draft guidance release, writing that “the Internet has revolutionized communication” and that it has “spawned a variety of social media tools that host online content primarily created and published by users other than the intellectual property owner or product manufacturer.” Given the nature of online communities and the public’s growing reliance on the social web to gather information about their personal healthcare via internet communities, web pages, social platforms and discussion groups, it makes sense that the FDA should offer some thoughts on how their already stated policies for responding to off-label inquiries (first laid out in 1982, and restated many times after) can be applied to trends in emerging electronic media. From lines 207 through 209: “This draft guidance sets forth FDA’s current thinking on this topic consistent with Agency’s past policy statements about responding to unsolicited requests.”

Many have mentioned, and we agree, that the language, as laid out in this draft guidance, seems a bit confusing. Our friend Jonathan Richman at Dose of Digital has you covered, with a handy flow chart explaining what pharma can and cannot do in responding to these requests. We’d recommend printing it out and hanging it eye-level, for easy reference.

The internet, web sites and the social web as we know them are constantly changing, evolving and growing. This draft guidance, while maybe not the set-in-stone policy so many marketers and the pharma companies they work with – so many of whom are terrified to dip a toe in the water of social media, for fear of drowning in misunderstood or mis-handled regulations and red-tape – were hoping for, are a nice step forward in clarifying how pharma can respond to inquiries, public and private, via the web.

So. Next steps?

Let’s keep moving. Let’s keep innovating, building, growing and pushing forward as the social web continues to do the same. With an eye to this guidance, and some strategic thinking before jumping on the bandwagon, there is no reason that pharma companies can’t join finance and insurance in finding out the all the good that can happen from participating in social media.

We say, listen to the conversation, develop a plan around it and go forth. Stop running scared. Be smart and you’ll be okay.

by Russ Ward (@russcward)

Can science be crowdsourced? Can medicine take advantage of the knowledge of the masses to leapfrog to advances? Can we use social media tools to cure disease?

These are (increasingly specific) questions about the utility of digitally shared intelligence to improve healthcare – sometimes called “citizen science” (similar to “citizen journalism”). While nobody is nominating Mark Zuckerberg for the Nobel Prize just yet, there are definitely signs that social science is paying off. Here are three.

Where it all began: SETI@home

The idea of taking computer power possessed by the multitudes and combining it for science probably dates back to SETI@home, a program first offered to the public in 1999 to donate their superfluous computing power to the search for intelligent life. Still active, the program works by distributing telescope data out for analysis.

Procrastination for science: Foldit

One of the original and best-known examples of crowdsourced medical science is the Foldit project. It takes the complex process of genome folding, and turns it into an online game. If human players can best computers in figuring out biologically “winning” solutions, this can not only provide immediately faster answers, but can also help researchers teach computers those strategies in order to keep improving the pace of their work – whether assisted by computer or volunteer.

Global symptomatology: Health Tracking Network

While SETI@home and Foldit use crowdsourcing in a more detached fashion, using individuals’ resources to solve scientific puzzles, Health Tracking Network asks for your help by sharing your own medical information. High-level information about your cold or flu symptoms will, they hope, allow better predictions and tracking of these viruses and their paths.

There are certainly many naysayers for crowdsourcing in medicine – including this post by John Mack last year, in which he points out the risks associated with having patients “review” their treatments.

However, there are other examples in which citizen science has sped up the time for experiments to be conducted (including this study on tuberculosis).

To me, the difference is an important one. On the one hand, exploiting volunteer or inexpensive human aptitude for completing small nonlinear tasks rapidly can clearly be efficient and effective. On the other hand, relying on anonymous opinions for quality analysis may not be such a great idea – but I don’t think that’s news to anyone who’s been within ten feet of the internet.

Are you working on any projects that harness the power of the people – be they your clients, your patients, your healthcare professionals, or the public at large – to make medical science advance more rapidly, discover more broadly, treat more accurately or predict more closely?

We recently chatted with Paul Simms, Chairman of eyeforpharma, the mastermind behind the ‘Pharmasuiticus reps’ YouTube nature “documentary,” which you may have seen doing the rounds in your social networks.

Pixels&Pills: Why did you decide to make this video?

Paul Simms: We find ourselves quite frustrated with the current situation in pharmaceutical sales management. This is still the area of highest expenditure in medical promotion, and whilst we have seen some movement, there is still a hardcore group resisting the new methods which will ultimately make a great improvement to healthcare at large. This is despite the swathes of industry insiders preaching the need for change. So, to really incite action, we simply went to great lengths to emphasise the ridiculous nature of the once-saturated pharma sales landscape.

P&P: Has it worked?

PS: Depends what you mean.  After a week, there were over 5,000 views without us any real promotion from us, and we’re currently close to 10,000 views, so people are obviously watching and sharing.

Of course, numbers aren’t the point. We hope that it will switch on some light bulbs and make people think about changing their ways of working.  But it’s too early to say whether it has achieved this – ask me again in a year!

P&P: Popular it may be, but some people haven’t liked it, as evidenced by a few detractors on Pharmalot. Do those people have a point?

PS: The main objection seems to be a belief that we are poking fun at the pharma sales rep. And this is a group of people who are going through tough times. There is plenty of fear, diminishing returns and plenty of lay-offs within this group, and we’re kicking them while they’re down.

Laughing at others’ misfortune is certainly not our intention, nor do we want to rub people’s noses in it. The theme of the film was ‘evolution’, not ‘death’: we have used parody in an attempt to reduce or remove the ‘old style’ of rep from the face of the industry and make no apologies for communicating that in the most effective way we can think of. There are now plenty of examples of where a more mature focus on the differing types of customer and an individual level of communication has created great returns – for both the pharma company and patient. The changes within healthcare systems across the world provide an unprecedented opportunity to improve communication and rid this industry of its terrible reputation. But action, not sympathy, is required in order to make that happen.

P&P: What’s next for eyeforpharma?

PS: Well, connected to this film is the 10^th anniversary of our annual flagship event in Barcelona. This time we’re co-locating our eMarketing event with it, so we’ll have more than a thousand people in one space.

It’s interesting to me that whenever we’ve mentioned to the sales community that we’re bringing the online marketers to the same venue, they’ve welcomed this with open arms.

However, the opposite has been true of the online community. Their reaction has been either sheer ambivalence or more of a ‘what, those guys? What have they got to offer?’

For us, it’s clear that progress will only happen when both groups understand how to work together. And we’ve still got a fair bit of work to do in order to answer the question: ‘with 1000 pharma executives in one place, what together can we achieve?’ That’s the opportunity we have. Indeed, e would welcome input from anyone out there as to how to get the most out of this unique gathering. We may even let you take control!

Apart from that, we have a lot more initiatives in the pipeline. Some of them are even quite serious – for example we are currently running a mobile health competition which will really improve the lives of teenage cancer patients. It has backing from Livestrong and 9 other charities and we’re very excited about that.

P&P: And tell us… What will your next acting gig be?

PS: Hopefully none for a while! I hadn’t even intended to be in this one; clearly the camera crew decided I was the most Neanderthal-like and simply had to play the ‘alpha rep’. I guess it’s praise of a sort.

by DJ Edgerton (@wiltonbound)

The question seems almost nonsensical at first – your Twitter followers may be really outstanding people, but they’re not organic chemists or researchers. And your Facebook fans, while devoted, probably do not, generally speaking, know how to move a new drug through the FDA approval process.

Just the same, it’s a mistake to discount your social audiences as a source for insight and innovation. In fact, a wide range of category-leading companies do just that. While social media is not as planned or controlled as a focus group, there’s potential in polling the audience when it comes to research and development – and along the way you can even benefit the very people you’re polling.

Doing it right requires a three-step plan:

Understand what you want to accomplish. In this regard, social media is no different than traditional R&D research: Don’t ask existing or potential customers anything without a clear purpose behind “the ask.” What do you want to accomplish? Are you looking for feedback on a service (such as when consumers call into the customer care center) or improvement on a product or direction for a new advertising campaign? What about new products: Are you exploring the potential for one or looking at whether your customers have a need for a product that you have not thought of?

A solid roadmap will have goals covering what you hope to accomplish and clear indications of which social channels are – and are not – appropriate. Need to demo a product? You Tube makes sense. On the other hand, Twitter may be a better fit for simple questions requiring quick feedback. And tools like custom Facebook apps offer ways to bring customers and fans into the content creation process.

Be relevant in your questions and rigorous in your data collection. A solid roadmap lays out needs and expectations, but even the best plans can go astray if your research questions don’t balance your needs with the realities of social media, which often boil down to: Don’t be boring.

Tweets sending people to a 50-question survey or requests that Facebook followers sit through six sample commercials in search of the one they like best are unlikely to go anywhere. Instead, keep things short, clear and – most importantly – be ready to monitor and take feedback from the conversations that grow out of your public questions. They can be the source of tremendous insight.

Crunch the data and don’t leave the audience in the dark. One of the unique aspects of social media is that a lot of silos get knocked down – people have a great (and sometimes unreasonable) desire to peek behind the corporate curtain and know what’s going on. This is a powerful force and can jump-start your social-driven research – people love to be treated like insiders, and promising to give them a first peek at a new innovation, a new campaign or even just a slight change in how your company does something will motivate participation in your research.

The key is: You have to deliver on your promise. If you tell participants you’re working on a new way to talk about an established product and want their input, give them a peek before it’s rolled out to the public. Not doing so is bad form in the social landscape; promising to do it and then not delivering is an even bigger faux pas.

Whether it’s a one-drug boutique company or a global powerhouse, research and development is a constant part of pharma’s product and service lifecycles. While social media isn’t a substitute for formalized marketing research, it can be a powerful, low-cost augmentation to the toolbox.

by Briana Campbell (@MsMatchGirl)

“If it’s not mobile, it won’t work in 2012 and beyond,” Jason Falls is quoted as saying in Awareness Networks 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions. “We’re a marketplace conditioned to look down on our screen first. It’s not a B2C vs. B2B thing. If your users are people, you’re going to need to be mobile.”

We’ve been talking about the importance of thinking mobile not just for pharma and healthcare marketing, but to provide much needed health services in the developing world for a while now. We feel strongly that including a mobile strategy in your plans will not only help you stay in business, it will help push innovation in healthcare to the next level.

With people turning more and more to the “second screen,” it’s important for us to think on how that screen can be best utilized. From The Department of Health & Human Services Health Data Initiative, which encouraged competitors to innovate around open data available from the government to make smartphone apps to improve health, to the insights shared by Jonathan Richman in his 2011 SXSWi presentation, “Your Computer is the Next Wonder Drug,” digital innovation is what is moving the world of healthcare forward. And pharma needs to keep pace.

Some quick facts for your consideration:

By 2015, 500 million people will be using mobile healthcare applications. [source]

Smartphones will offer the best opportunities for mobile health by 2015. [source]

17% of cell phone owners, or 15% of adults, have used their phone to look up health or medical information. [source]

Later this month, we’ll be at the Mobile Healthcare Communications 2012: Case Studies and Roundtables, taking place January 26, 2012 in NYC. This half-day conference will present case studies demonstrating how major healthcare brands are connecting with consumers and professionals through mobile communications. Case studies will be presented by representatives from Allergen, Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center – New York, Daiichi-Sankyo, and more. Interactive roundtables will follow the presentations. We’re looking forward to learning more about what companies have been successfully doing with mobile in the healthcare space, and talking about how we can keep innovating.

Use promo code P&P for a discounted rate of $175.

Date: Thursday, January 26, 2012
Location: The Graduate Center of The City University of NY
365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street), Conference Level C, New York, New York 10016
Website: http://www.bdionline.com/mobilehealthcare2012.html
Discount Code: P&P