Healthcare communications expert Bruce Grant testified about pharmaceutical marketers’ use of social media before the Food and Drug Administration in the fall of 2009. Grant has more than 30 years of experience in pharmaceutical promotion, medical education, digital media design and production. Prior to joining Digitas Health, he served as managing director of the pharmaceutical marketing consulting firm eStrategies and director of innovation at Frontier Media Group.

I chatted with Grant about how pharmaceutical marketers can participate effectively in social media and potential scenarios for FDA regulation of social media.

eMarketer: Can you provide a brief synopsis of the testimony you offered to the FDA last fall?

Bruce Grant:

We reported on research results that applied to one of the questions the FDA asked, which was, should special considerations apply to pharmaceutical communications in social media or online banner ads? We had conducted research in the fourth quarter of 2009 on the treatment of risk information in banner ads and suggested that there was a case to be made for the so-called one-click rule that would place the full text of the risk information one click away from the ad.

eMarketer: Are the issues surrounding social media different than the online advertising issues facing pharmaceutical marketers?

Grant:

They’re totally different. Advertising is premised upon the assumption that marketers can tell people what to do and think and that if we tell them often enough and interrupt them in enough different venues, that they will do and think what we tell them to do. Social media is premised upon people turning to each other, not large institutions, to get the resources and the information that they need.

In many ways, social media are used by consumers as an antidote to a particular kind of interruption marketing that consumers, for the most part, find unhelpful. The FDA certainly looks at what kind of communications pharmaceutical manufacturers can make. Under FDA regulations, essentially everything promulgated by a pharmaceutical company that touches on its brands is considered to be either advertising or what it calls “labeling.” Ads are ads. Everything else is labeling and, essentially the same regulations apply to both of them.

If you’re a pharmaceutical manufacturer communicating about a prescription drug, your message has to be fairly balanced between information about the benefits and the risks associated with your brand. You cannot promote uses for your brand that are not on the label. You cannot overstate the benefits of your brand or minimize the risks associated with your brand.

eMarketer: Online hubs including PatientsLikeMe, HealthCentral and WebMD help facilitate a lot of conversations among consumers around symptoms and treatments. What do you make of them?

Grant:

Those are examples of large aggregators of patient communities. I think what’s important to note is that this is not a new phenomenon. The truth of the matter is going back even before consumers had any kind of widespread access to the Internet, there were dial-up services like America Online and CompuServe that offered communities, forums and chat. In some ways, these newer sites are simply carrying those ideas forward and are opportunities to commercialize or provide avenues for pharmaceutical marketers.

eMarketer: What do you think the FDA guidelines on social media will suggest?

Grant:

We believe that the FDA will issue one or more guidance documents probably by the fourth quarter of this year. It won’t provide channel-by-channel instructions for using Twitter and Facebook, but will clarify things for marketers about participating in social media.

In our view, the real barriers to the pharmaceutical industry participating in social media are the same ones we saw in other industries over the last three to five years. The industry needs to start from the premise that social media is about people getting what they need from one other rather than from large institutions.

The challenge is how do marketers relate to this? How do they exist in a world where there’s a big conversation that’s been going on before they arrived on the scene? How do they exist where the level of trust that people participating in the conversation have for each other, is higher than the level of trust they have for any marketer seeking to enter the conversation?

eMarketer: What can marketers do besides creating best practices for participating in social media while they wait for FDA guidance?

Grant:

Marketers haven’t yet fully learned how to listen. That’s the first thing you do. It’s a no-brainer if you think about real-world conversations. You listen to the conversation that was going on before you got there. Who are the participants in the conversation? Who has influence in the conversation? What are their concerns? What are the topics of conversation?

We recommend creating a structured program of listening as an ongoing process. After you’ve been listening for a period of time, and you’ve gotten a sense of the participants and their concerns, there comes a time when there’s an opportunity for you to say something. And in a real life conversation, the most important thing you can say is something that responds to the conversation that’s been going on.

Do you have something to offer? Can you point people to a resource that’s relevant to the needs and interests that have been expressed in the conversation? As you do that, then you pick up credibility. People come to know you. People come to trust you. And you can reach out into the conversation with an idea of your own. You can change the subject at that point because you’re known, because people trust you and because you offered something of value and relevance into the conversation, perhaps repeatedly up to that point.

Listen, respond, reach out. Sadly, there are people from social media properties who are out there just trying to sell ad space, sponsorships or other things.

Look, in contrast, at what AstraZeneca is doing with its Twitter account AZhelps. The company is monitoring Twitter for any mention of the AstraZeneca brand, for people having problems getting the brands under their prescription plan, being able to afford AZ brands and problems with side effects. AstraZeneca is responding to patients with very brief, direct messages on Twitter. For example, “saw your tweet about the cost of Nexium. AstraZeneca may be able to help. Call 1-800” and so on.

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We recently spoke with Aliza Freud, the founder and CEO of SheSpeaks, about how marketers succeed at engaging moms with social media as well as some of the marketing mistakes they make. A snippet from the full interview available to eMarketer Total Access subscribers: (Read more…)

When was the last time you cancelled your Super Bowl party because your favorite team wasn’t playing in the game? That was the question posed by Michael DiLorenzo, the National Hockey League’s social media and digital communications manager, at the Business Development Institute‘s Social Integration breakfast Wednesday.

DiLorenzo explained that one the challenges faced by the NHL is convincing fans to “activate nationally” during the Stanley Cup playoffs — that is, getting people to care and watch playoff games even if their local or favorite team isn’t playing. So when a couple innovative fans came up with the idea to have a “Tweet Up” for the 2009 playoffs, the NHL ran with the idea. Since then, #NHLtweetup has become a great example of how marketers can use Twitter not only as an engagement tool, but as a loyalty and community building tool as well.

(Read more…)

Most businesses have realized that when it comes to social networks like Twitter or Facebook, simply broadcasting content isn’t quite enough. Consumers want companies to engage with them on social networks — not because they want to have a relationship, per say, with a brand of soap or shampoo, but because they appreciate the opportunity to give feedback on products, receive meaningful information from brands, and catch the occasional bargain, among other things.

According to research from Cone, some 74% of US new media users have a generally more positive impression of a company or brand after interacting via new media. That might be why so many marketers are planning to move from the trial phase of their social marketing efforts toward strategic use of the channel next year: Customer retention and engagement ranked below only new customer acquisition in a Unisfair study of leading marketing priorities among US marketers in 2010.

Still, engagement means many things. For some, it means creating a team of customer service representatives to scour social networks for complaints, questions and praise. Best Buy’s Twelpforce is one successful example of this. JetBlue’s Twitter feed is another. But here’s a question that has been raised by some, and is worth considering: Are customer service efforts on Twitter a danger when customers start to expect a direct response and brands aren’t available or have the resources necessary to deliver? Will consumers view it as the same thing as not picking up the customer service phone line?

Noah Brier of The Barbarian Group, along with Hive Awards’ Alan Wolk, AdWeek Editor Brian Morrissey and Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer, chatted about the engagement expectation in this excellent video. Take a look: (Watch the whole thing, or skip to the 4:00 minute mark.)

The Social Media Bubble Part 2 of 3 from Hive Awards on Vimeo.

Money quote from Schafer:

You can’t set expectations where, if you have a problem with a Best Buy gift card, the Best Buy CEO is, all of a sudden, going to help you out. It’s just not rational. Things don’t happen at that kind of scale. At the end of the day, understanding social media as a brand doesn’t necessarily mean having a conversation with your customer. That’s a real big misnomer out there. [The alternative solution, therefore] may very well be enabling your customers to have conversations with each other.

Schafer also points out how instead of directly engaging customers on social networks, brands like Apple have created forums and communities where customers can interact with other customers or ‘brand-certified’ specialists. What do you think? Are you willing to allocate the resources to manage the engagement expectation, or are there alternative solutions? What type of social media engagement is right for your brand?

We recently chatted with Nick Higgins, the director of global video at Adconion Media Group, about the differences between online video consumption in the US and other parts of the world, the benefits of re-targeting online video, and how marketers can use in-banner video to drive engagement. A takeaway from the full interview (available in eMarketer Total Access):

eMarketer: There has been a lot of discussion in the US about finding an alternative to preroll video. What is a more interactive or engaging unit?

Mr. Higgins: I find that a lot of the conversations at many of the North American digital advertising events that I attend are very linear. The conversation is often just focused on in-stream video products. The fact is that the digital medium is far more versatile and interactive, and in-stream is just one facet of what is available to marketers.

A good example of this is starting a consumer’s journey off around premium content. Say it’s preroll video within CBS’s “Late Show” on CBS.com. Using the Internet, brands can re-target the user from the preroll experience and reach consumers in-banner.

You can then start sequential messaging to a brand’s target audience creating a story and experience. You can also start playing with the different formats, such as in-stream to in-banner video. Or create sequential messaging across different ad formats.

Not only are you changing the messaging and the level of interactivity, depending on your message, you could be driving people down through the communications funnel to brand awareness and engagement and ultimately to a retail offer.

eMarketer: Can you offer an example of a category that’s using these types of video solutions?

Mr. Higgins: In Europe, we’re working with a large automotive company that has looked at the different levels of interaction that they generate via display advertising. This company has tested various ad formats to drive traffic to their Website and encourage in-banner video brand experiences.

Once users have visited their site, the re-targeting takes place with video. They’re able to extend the brand experience at a very low cost. There’s a lot of effort, time and money going into building Websites and driving traffic to them. Re-targeting offers a more cost-effective extension of that messaging.

eMarketer: What kind of ROI resulted from using this method?

Mr. Higgins: Depending on where video was used, the ROI is going to be twofold. There’s a caveat—the use of video as the initial engagement, i.e., Web planning against a demographic or category of size, will be around launching the brand to the right audience. Then the measurements are delivery of the assets, which is the awareness component. The second factor is engagement. Engagement represents the level of interactivity, which depends on how many videos or features within the ad unit the audience has interacted with.

eMarketer: How many options can you offer within the ad unit?

Mr. Higgins: Unlimited. And we’re finding that provided the content is right and it’s matched to the right audience, we’re generating a high level of interactivity. My definition of interactivity is users watching multiple video clips and engaging with the various features within the ad unit.

The full version of this interview is available here, to eMarketer Total Access subscribers only. Every day they have access to new interviews with digital marketing leaders and trendsetting entrepreneurs.