Originally Posted by Carly & Art on Flickr
A lot of my clients at RTCRM are pharma companies, so I read quite a few Pharma blogs. They are constantly complaining about the lack of Web 2.0 and social Web elements in Pharma marketing. For example this article from World of DTC Marketing touches on many issues that I encounter when working with clients, but never gets to the true issues that we and our clients are dealing with.
Has this blogger and every other Pharma Marketing blogger never heard about FDA regulations? That’s why Pharma can’t move beyond Web 1.0 — they don’t have the technical & legal processes in place to deal with Adverse Event reporting. They are also extremely, and somewhat understandably, risk adverse. The major issue with Pharma marketing is that the lawyers run the show and too few organizations are educating them or working with them to craft processes to mitigate risk.
Another major issue is risk. Getting truly engaged in the social Web can help put a “human” face on a Pharma company if it’s done well, but it opens companies up to more risk and different kinds of risks than they may be used to dealing with. The other question is should they focus their social Web efforts on consumers or healthcare professionals? Direct to consumer (DTC) advertising is something that pharma companies debate the merits of and a lot of consumers think it’s a bad thing. Pharma is making some really interesting inroads to the social Web with healthcare professionals via sites like Sermo.
One last, very ignored issue, is patient privacy. There is a lot of question about how pharma companies getting involved in social media may be a conflict with HIPPA and other privacy regulations. Zack Rodman wrote two detailed posts about privacy issues on the RTCRM blog. These begin to detail how complicated an issue this can be for pharma companies and pharma marketers.
Believe me, I’d like to see more of my clients move incorporate social computing into their marketing plans, but I want them to do it the right way. Set some organizational foundations, test the waters, and determine if there’s a decent ROI before jumping in head first and having an expensive disaster to clean up.
Please, pharma bloggers, find a new drum beat. How about some constructive suggestions instead of just complaints?
Technorati Tags: pharma marketing, DTC marketing, social media marketing, social media, pharma
1 comment so far ↓
Like , and agreed with, your thoughts. These constraints make things dificult, but not impossible.
Frankly, I think we get too caught up sometimes in the need to do everything at once. Big Pharma seems to not be comfortable sometimes with small, effective, baby steps…
Maybe it has something to do with wanting to make the kind of big splash that wins marketing awards or maybe it is just a function of size and intertia…I don’t know, but it is a personal frustration.
Disclosure/discalimer: I work for a large pharma company, but the thoughts here are my own and are general in nature.
Leave a Comment