In many European countries, the advertising of prescription drugs is severely regulated, often to the point where the brand name of a medicine cannot be mentioned in any campaign, including in advertising on the Internet. But are there unexploited opportunities for brand communication by the pharma industry via the Web?
Web 2.0 offers many tools that benefit both companies and consumers—among these is the blog. Blogs have proven extremely useful for product support, sales, PR and branding, and more and more pharma companies are employing blogs as part of their marketing efforts.
Two years ago, I suggested to one of my more innovative pharma clients that they develop a blog to communicate online the benefits of their medicine. At first, the client was very resistant to the idea. Their brand would be strengthened, they said, through sponsored content on appropriate sites. At that time, the company’s annual budget for online media was around €30,000.
Later, the client’s online media budget underwent a drastic reduction—drastic enough to require new and more cost-effective solutions.
Of the options available, the blog seemed to be the best tool, and after some weeks working with a provider, we were able to launch a blog. To avoid direct contact (and therefore conflict of interest) with the company, the blogger was employed by one of the funds of the pharmaceutical company.
The blogger, writing under a pseudonym, described a hypothetical sickness in a way that engaged readers and generated interest and a Web presence. In order to have sufficient content to launch the blog and update content frequently, we had several posts available that had been written in advance. This gave us a year’s worth of ready content, and in the first several weeks the blogger was required to generate only one or two new posts.
Initially, traffic was driven to the website via link-partners (an arrangement of “if you put my link on your blog, I’ll put your link on mine”), but over the course of several weeks, the blog began performing well on search engines and key word searches, increasing visitor hits even further. In just two months, the blog was regularly receiving 200-300 unique hits a day.
In the beginning, the client was understandably reluctant to mention the brand name directly in the blog. However, blog readers clearly asked about the medicine in the comments, and so the blogger was able to publicly state the name of the therapy in response.
Social online media is not moderated content. These are platforms in which anyone can talk or write about anything. If companies use this tool responsibly, then their relationships with their target groups can be strengthened. However, companies must be careful to stay within legal boundaries, and for this reason, in the case of this client, the brand manager, the PR manager and the company lawyer were kept informed about every step we took.
A real successfull french pharma blog
Hi,
I absolutely do not agree with what have been writen Nebojsa, it is quite scandalous ion fact to here that indutry have to lie when it comes to new web2.0 rules.
Can we know what was the blog in question ?
Here is a example of a blog, related to a pharma company and not hiding behind lies : http://www.femmesavanttout.com/
and this is my personnal blog on pharma management experience : www.managementetmoi.blogspot.com
Kind regards.
Not a recommended route...
I agree with Lisa - I'd have some serious concerns about this approach, and would definitely not recommend it to clients.
Moreover, the legal boundaries in this area may soon be changing - in the UK at least.
The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 are due to come into force on 26 May, and can be interpreted to cover the whole area of 'bogus blogging'.
Falsely representing yourself as a consumer is one of 31 practices illegal under the new law. This could have a major effect on viral advertising, commercial blogs and word-of-mouth marketing.
Under the new regime, marketers and agencies engaged in such activity may also face criminal sanctions.
Worth a thought....
Best approach to capitalize on social networking tools?
While I fully understand and support the need for pharma to look outside the standard box to find new and unique ways to connect with both doctors and patients and truly respect the effort here to do just that, I have to question whether fictitious patients with fabricated symptoms being supposedly “treated” with pharma’s drugs and communicating their “virtual” success and satisfaction online via a blog really serves the industry’s best interests. Although the initiative described here is said to have stayed within legal limits and may well have delivered an impressive ROI for the company, at a time when pharma’s poor reputation (earned or otherwise) is perhaps its greatest liability and largest stumbling block, building relationships using what essentially amounts to an online ruse doesn’t seem particularly desirable or even ethical.
Is a relationship begun in even some level of deceit likely to be a lasting one? If we want to employ social networking tools (and I agree we should), I think we must identify innovative approaches that won't compromise the industry’s remaining levels of trust and integrity. But maybe I'm missing something here; I'd certainly love to hear more about this project from the author and other readers thoughts on the subject.