Consumer opinions count

Jul/07/2008 12:55

Consumer-opinion websites have been a principal enabler of hardening consumer attitudes. In this new world marketers can not only lose control of their messages but they may also experience greatly diminished selling effectiveness because of a few bad reviews & experiences on social media sites. That suggests a vastly more critical role for advertising research and testing, especially for products or services that have, shall we say, checkered pasts like pharmaceutical brands.

Fair balance can be scary these days and nobody has done anything to really explain the complicated language on the label. Pfizer has a new format but the language can still be confusing to patients and as thus a lot of health seekers are turning to each other for health information.

Just go to any message board or chat room and read what people are saying about medications. The talk on the Evista board has been really active with people wondering about the risks versus the benefits of the medication. On the ED boards people continue to talk about Viagra vs. Levitra and Cialis. Some men are finding out, for example, that although these prescription medications allow them to have sex the sex they are having now is not as good as the sex they had when they were younger.

Market researchers have always gone through message evaluation and then used a formula for reach and frequency of the target market. This is as outdated as basic demographics and should be in a book entitled “Marketing History”. The new segment is the segment of each person..reach and frequency is too hard to measure in todays fragmented media world yet that basic model is still in use today.

Pharma needs to find a way to first listen to what is being said on social media, then develop a marketing plan to influence the influencers. If they continue to ignore the impact of influencers on our lives they will pay the price in a lot of wasted dollars that have a negative ROI.