Connecting.the.Dots

• Watching Whiteboard friday: http://tinyurl.com/6zev3a #

I scoffed at Brand Tags when it launched, but this article from Digital Influence Mapping has compelled me to check it out again.  The battle of the brands was interesting, but what I’m really finding fascinating is the “guess the brands” section.

It took me all of 11 seconds of looking at the tags to determine Bose Audio and 21 seconds to figure out another tag cloud was Second Life.  It took me about 10 seconds to guess Jif Peanut Butter, but I spelled it wrong, so they didn’t count it.

As the site points out: “the basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people’s heads. Therefore, whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is.”  This is a really interesting way to see what people think of well known brands.  I’ve also found Amazon’s experiment with user tags to be a similiar, but real-world example of this same idea.  Anyone can add a tag to a product.  I’ve seen some really interesting tags that surprised me.  For example, someone is clearly on a mission against homeopathic treatments because you’ll find many tags like “junk science” and “total crap” on those products.    There’s a potentially serious brand management issues here.

We can add user tagging to the long list of UGC that companies need to get really smart about really fast.  If nothing else, they should be listening.

[tags]brands, tagging, relationship marketing, brand tags[/tags]

• Just found out that the clerk of the House is Twittering. Thanks @eyeonfda #

• Still digging Plurk over Twitter. Come see me at Plurk! http://www.plurk.com/user/carlenlea Weird to be twittering about another site #

• Still playing with Plurk. Come play with me! http://www.plurk.com/user/carlenlea I’m starting to understand friendfeed.com, more & more #
• OMG. This is too funny: http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/ Thanks @mashable for post this #
• Uggh…pharma marketing bloggers are even more annoying than pharma marketing! http://tinyurl.com/6hpvg5 #
• Freakin sweet. I can tweet from wordpress and it auto tinyurls my urls! Twitter Tools plugin rocks: http://alexking.org/projects/word … #
• Okay — didn’t auto tinyurl that url. http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress #

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?

[tags]pharma marketing, DTC marketing, social media marketing, social media, pharma[/tags]

• Is it wrong to twitter about twitter alternatives? Checking out plurk, tumblr, and pownce. Twitter on tumblr: http://status.twitter.com/ #
• Realizing I need to do a full blog post about the stats that both Flickr and YouTube now provide to users. Way more info than I thought #

• @stevebaker love the twitter resume post. #
• connector of people ideas & info – 8+yrs. strategist, geek, SMO, marketing, blogger, baker, tea drinker, snake handler, artist. BFA UMiami #
• creating my resutwitter: http://tinyurl.com/6jl5f2 – in case you missed the original article http://tinyurl.com/6zjxfa from @stevebaker #

• New stats on Mobile Web use: http://tinyurl.com/6g9eov We do seem to love our smartphones! #
• And…Wait…Put on your Shocked Face: “Disconnects between C-Level Execs and Customer Service” http://tinyurl.com/5noujv #

• New stats on Mobile Web use: http://tinyurl.com/6g9eov We do seem to love our smartphones! #
• And…Wait…Put on your Shocked Face: “Disconnects between C-Level Execs and Customer Service” http://tinyurl.com/5noujv #