Fixing the “trust deficit” with the public
Nov/04/2009 06:35 Filed in: The drug
industry
Restoring Trust:
1. The CEO has to have small town-hall meetings with employees to explain his/her vision of how we are going to restore trust which includes "being more transparent with everything we do". Think and act like our customers are in meetings with us.
2. Acknowledge your missteps: Don't try and fight the negative perceptions of the pharma industry. Acknowledge your past missteps and ask for forgiveness and tell the public what you are doing to ensure it never happens again. This is going to be tough to do because the legal profession has made a good living off pharmas mistakes.
3. Understand that building trust requires time: It's not going to happen in a week or a month and could take a long time to win consumers trust. During that time identify the key influencers and reach out to them to ask "what can we do to convince you that we are worthy of your trust?"
4. Develop a company social media strategy: Who can use social media and what can they say? Should you allow employees access to Twitter & Facebook ? Who can BLOG and what can and can't they say?
5. Explain the current environment in simple easy to understand terms: 80% of the public don't understand the drug development process. Inform and educate the public that it costs close to a billion dollars to develop and launch a new drug and that only one in 7 or 8 make it market.
6. Talk the talk then you have to walk the walk: This means that you should be establishing a database of all your customers (patients) who are using your products so that you can quickly inform them about new potential side effects and results of clinical studies. It also means that you should keep them updated on which insurers have your product on formulary and which do not. Treat your customers like customers and don't be afraid to engage them.
7. Share your resources: What pharma resources are of value to your customers and consumers? How can you share these resources with your audience ? Keep in mind that consumers are also going to go to your competitors as well to listen to their messages. Encourage that (it's happening anyway) but highlight reasons why they should trust your product/brand.
Restoring trust in pharma is not going to be easy and is going to require time but with the right approach it can be done. Above all it needs to come from the top because during a real absence of leadership people will listen to who ever steps up to the microphone and right now consumers have a really big microphone in the Internet.
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