PM360 December 2009

DTC 360

SOCIAL MEDIA CONVERSATIONS
By Richard Meyer

Last month, the FDA held two days of hearings on social media and the Internet in DTC marketing. What was so alarming was that over 75% of the presenters were from agencies and a lot of Internet 101 information was presented to an agency that should be aware of how consumers use the Web for health information.

The Flow of Information
It’s important to note that social media, in essence, is a conversation. For the conversation to be valid, however, the sources have to be trusted. Right now, according to Harris Polls, the FDA and drug companies are not trusted by consumers. CNN.com recently reported that 55% of adults are not getting an H1N1 vaccine because “they don’t believe the vaccine is safe and effective.” We are dealing with a major consumer trust deficit with both the FDA and drug companies.

As for social media, it’s not going to save your brand. The harsh business reality is if you don’t make money, the business goes under and new drugs can’t be developed. If you don’t make more money, people lose their jobs—and pharma is losing a lot of jobs.

Blogs and social networks emerged because people wanted to connect on a more personal level using technology—or perhaps because the technological barrier was lowered enough to allow people to connect on a more personal level using it. These networks were not invented for business purposes, in fact you could argue that the reason more people use social networks is because they want to talk with each other without business getting in the conversation. Social media purists (mostly agency people) have said, “Social media is the way to sales and new Rx’s,” and so to
participate in social media as a business, you must do things like “participate in the conversation” and “engage your customers.” The FDA, of course, is concerned that people will talk about adverse events, and consumers are afraid they’ll be talking with marketing people, which offers them no value to participate.

For all the people who attended the social media hearing, I’ve got bad news for you. In the world of declining drug sales, all that talk will get you exactly nowhere and is not going to get people to ask for your brand from their doctors. Conversations do not necessarily translate into new Rx’s and, even if they did, big pharma is nowhere close to being prepared to allocate resources to implement a true social media program, when in 2008 the drug companies spent only 4% of their DTC marketing budgets on the Internet.

People connect on social media for lots of reasons but nowhere on that list is “I want to form a relationship with a brand,” regardless of how many Facebook brand pages have lots of members.

Tracking Influence
DTC marketers continue to use TV to generate awareness, but what they still don’t get is that awareness doesn’t translate into conversion. Forget the garbage about having a conversation with people via social media because the realities are:

• the path of influence is not predictable
• a burst in traffic sent by an influential blog or event is not usually sustained
• our influences change frequently, as do our needs
• influence can grow quickly or slowly but can disappear quickly or slowly as well
• there’s a big difference between “discovery” and “healthcare treatment decision”—I may learn about a new healthcare treatment on the Internet, but I may ask my doctor for something completely different based on the advice of a friend I trust.

The guidelines to be issued by the FDA on social media are completely irrelevant because consumers are already talking and listening to each other about healthcare regardless of whether pharma gets into the conversation. Before drug companies get into the conversation, however, they need a better infrastructure as well a lot more trust from consumers.

Richard Meyer has worked in healthcare marketing for more than 12 years and is the author of www.worldofdtcmarketing.com and www.richsblog.com. He currently works in Internet consulting and can be reached at richardameyer@me.com.