Time for DDMAC to move to the 21st centurty
Marketing is changing (understatement of the century I am sure) faster than marketers would like to admit. The United States is in the midst of a transition from a labor based economy to a knowledge based economy. Never before have marketers, consumers and patients had so much information available to them from so many different sources. The challenge therefore is to know which sources of information are credible and which are garbage.
If we were to take a look at a decision making process for healthcare treatments we would probably find, right after awareness, search for information online. Now most pharma marketers would have you believe that people view a pharma product ad on TV and go ask their physician for the brand. This might be true for allergy or lifestyle products but most consumers want to know about treatment options before they ask their physician. After all it's not like a doctor today can spend 20 minutes discussing side effects of all the different medications available .
Go to any message board or Daily Strength.com and you will see hundreds if not thousands of messages posted on every subject from diabetes, bipolar disorder and parenting to cancer and dealing with alzeimers. People want to communicate with each other and share experiences and what better way to do than via the Web. They don't want to believe the promotional messages on product.com websites even when they are delivered by a health care professional.
Daily Strength.com has a lot of support groups
Enter the new era of consumer connectedness where
marketers have to act as brand aggregators in order
to be more effective. However DDMAC feels that social
media on a pharma website maybe too promotional and
as the legal people are not about to let ANYONE
integrate social media with the brand. Well that
thinking is myopic to the realities of the
marketplace and restricts pharma marketers from
moving to the 21st century. In addition it shows no
respect for consumers and patients in that DDMAC
feels that they would take any social media postings
as "word" rather than considering the source of
information.
Pharma and medical device makers should be
petitioning DDMAC to integrate social media into
product websites. Here are some guidelines that could
be used to integrate social media into pharma
websites:
1.
Disclaimer: When someone clicks
on a "community" site within a pharma website they
would get a pop-up box informing them that this is a
tool for patients and users to share information and
is NOT an endorsement of the brand or product. In
addition the website owners should have the right to
delete content that is considered unsuitable for the
audience.
2.
Site within a Site: Have the social
media section embedded in the site but a site within
a site with a slightly different look. Again
disclaimers would be needed.
3.
Verification of posters: In order to join the
community people would have to be verified via return
eMail much the same way that services like Gmail and
MSN's hotmail use. Just think of the possibilities of
connecting with people here; you could, for example,
send updates on the product label to people who
indicated that they are patients. You could schedule
a talk by a physician and invite those people who are
considering therapy but not yet there. The
possibilities are endless...
4.
You could develop widgets so people could stay
informed as to when responses to their questions are
available and allow people to connect to each others
as brand ambassadors. You would be surprised how many
people are willing to talk to others about their
health experiences firsthand.
People believe each other more than pharma companies
when it comes to health information
Of course the
problem with this for pharma marketers is that it
would require an infrastructure to handle the social
media aspect as well as a legal team who was willing
to review the posts on a regular basis to eliminate
any content that is deemed unsuitable. However the
upside of this type of program is a marketers dream.
When I was at Lilly and we launched Sarafem
(obviously before Prozac came off patent) I convinced
management to let me have a message board as part of
the website. In the first week alone we had over 250
posts from women who were anxious to share their PMDD
experiences with each other. However before their
posts could "go live" they had to be reviewed my the
medical, legal and regulatory team which is not what
social media is about today.
Social networks are growing quickly
DDMAC needs to work
with pharma and medical device marketers to
incorporate a social media strategy into online
marketing. Yes there are barriers and marketers are
worried about "controlling the message" but lets face
it consumers and patients control the message today
not marketers.