What Pharma Marketers Should Ask Themselves About Social Programs

Marketers across categories are dipping their toes, and sometimes even an entire ankle, into the social media waters—and that includes pharmaceutical marketers.

Drug marketers are making use of social media tools and platforms as well as viral, crowdsourcing strategies to accomplish a variety of things. They’re using it to help increase the level of consumer engagement with their brands, tweak perceptions of their brands, deliver information and education, and monitor and analyze consumer-generated content. In some cases, they’re also tapping into online patient networks such as PatientsLikeMe.com to recruit patients for clinical trials. Of course, there are benefits and risks associated with this method of trial recruitment. Marketers that sponsor trials question the value and legality of reaching potential participants online. Patients who participate must safeguard their privacy even as they opt in to participate.

AstraZeneca, Novartis, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Boehringer Ingelheim are just a handful of pharma marketers that have been experimenting with Twitter for more than a year.

Highly regulated, the pharmaceutical industry, perhaps more than any other, must concern itself with the potential for negative fallout from social media. At issue: consumer discussions of “adverse events” from taking various prescription drugs, off-label uses of drugs that may be discussed and promoted among consumers, and incorrect information about drugs and drug marketers on third-party sites. On the one hand, drug marketers appear as if they want to participate in social media and are doing so, albeit in small, experimental ways. On the other, they’re concerned about the prospect of undue regulation and scrutiny from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

I spoke recently with Peter Pitts, former Associate Commissioner for External Relations at the FDA, about the prospects for pharma marketers to participate in the social space. He suggested that companies should think about more than just compliance with the letter of the law to keep consumers and regulators satisfied.

[Pharmaceutical marketers] need to ask whether their social media program is good for marketing and good for public health. If they can’t answer yes, then they shouldn’t be doing it.

I interviewed Pitts in preparation for a forthcoming eMarketer report on direct-to-consumer healthcare spending, set to be released in August. The full interview will be available to Total Access clients only.