Those issues (adverse events, off-label discussions, fair balance presentation, no meaningful FDA guidance) hardly need rehashing here, and despite the barriers, progress has been made on the digital front, as evidenced by – if nothing else – pharma’s willingness to invest in smaller-scale social media efforts not directly tied to product sales. In the digital sphere, ROI means “hitting the primary endpoint,” and that endpoint could be data collection, engagement with widgets or functionalities on a page or within an app, or the number of visitors (or likes) on a Facebook page. “The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in five years,” a quote from Socialnomics author Erik Qualman that surfaced in one of the presentations, speaks to the accepted necessity – in some quarters – of social media participation and customer engagement.

“Advertising has already largely shifted to what people say about your brand,” as opposed to the magazine, television and radio ads that people consume, said Martin Husar, customer strategy and innovation at Sanofi Canada. In Canada, DTC isn’t allowed, but last October Sanofi tapped the Toronto-based agency MediResource for an interactive Facebook campaign around atrial fibrillation (A-fib). The business objective, said Husar, was to “own the primary venues for Canadian patients and caregivers to learn about AFib.” By his measure, the company’s Afib at Heart | La fibrillation auriculaire à coeur Facebook campaign has been a success – one need not “like” the page to access the content, and thousands have clicked on tabs like “Ask the Expert,” or “Don’t Skip a Beat,” a Simon-inspired memory game.

A Janssen Canada educational campaign around psoriasis goes a step further, offering a list of available treatments, and a dermatology locator that returns only those dermatologists who “agree that they will use biologics” – Janssen markets Stelara, an immunomodulating biologic – and who have voluntarily signed up to be listed on Janssen’s Living Well With Psoriasis website, according to Spilios Asimakopoulos, director of marketing technology, Janssen Pharmaceuticals Canada. The site also offers a shareable psoriasis “severity calculator,” which is available online or as an app for download.

South of the Canadian border, others agree that the educational/disease awareness space is a good place for experimentation. John Patten, a sales rep for Facebook, told ePharma attendees that “Facebook makes sense in terms of initial support groups [for rare diseases], and locating others with the disease.” He also singled out Bayer’s Walk for Hemophilia and Sanofi Pasteur’s Voices of Meningitis as good examples of Facebook educational campaigns. “Pharma is more powerful in the unbranded, open wall pages” on Facebook, said Patten. Whitelisted brand pages, or pages with the comments function disabled, will be “de-prioritized in the news feed,” and they go against Facebook’s model, which Patten defined as “a distribution platform that promotes authentic sharing.” Perhaps as an added nudge to discourage whitelisted pages, Patten announced that by the end of February, “admins can drill down into individual commenters, and message them directly,” to help deal with “your drug turned my arm blue” adverse events comments.

A couple of hours before Patten’s presentation, however, a regulatory affairs director from a major pharmaceutical company was on a panel griping about the fact that while Facebook allows blocking of comments on the wall, “we can’t turn off sharing or commenting” on the actual brand image. Asked whether the company responds to such comments on the branded Facebook page, the panelist said no: “once you do that, where do you stop?”

DJ Edgerton

For those of you who didn’t know, it’s Social Media Week. Granted, the week is almost over, but the panel that you all care about didn’t take place until yesterday afternoon here in NYC.

The panel’s mouthful of a name—“Navigating Social Media & New Technology in Healthcare & Pharmaceutical Industries”—is nevertheless an accurate description of the discussion. Perspectives ranged from physicians (one Jay Parkinson, who essentially started his practice with Google Calendar and an iPhone) to Big Pharma marketers (Ned Russell of Saatchi Wellness).

DJ Edgerton (pictured), CEO of digital creative firm Zemoga said pharma is really dragging its feet on the social media issue because of compliance and liability. “The number one driver of social media in pharma is adverse event reporting,” he said. “So they’re disabling their Facebook walls, not interacting with the community, because they’re afraid.” Which, he added, defeats the purpose of social media.

Of course, once the industry finally does go beyond just dipping a toe in this pool, the implications are revolutionary. Russell and Parkinson foresee the disappearance of the traditional “brand.” Instead, “campaigns” will focus on patient education, possibly directing consumers to the new KOLs—their peers.

Even now, pharma brands have little or no traction in the social media world. While consumer products like sneakers and Slim Jims thrive, as Parkinson pointed out: “No one wants to ‘friend’ Lipitor.” Those who follow companies or brands on Twitter are almost exclusively people in the industry or connected to it. In exchange for real online “patronage” (so to speak), companies need to offer some real value—most likely in the form of information.

Edgerton had some pretty powerful closing advice for the industry: “Be not afraid.” The biggest mistake a company can make right now is to ignore social media. Take the risk and reap the rewards.

More than 250 people were in attendance for the two-day event, which included pharma marketers, brand managers, and patient education specialists who shared a common interest: The desire to connect and engage an educated, digital savvy population of e-patients and their caregivers.

Some attendees came to hear keynote speakers such as Dennis Urbaniak from Sanofi-aventis, Joe Shields from Pfizer, and Marc Monseau from J&J share their expertise on driving change, patient adherence, and the art of tweeting, respectively. Others like Derek Rago, vice president, strategy and marketing, McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions, traveled to Philadelphia from Arizona for the opportunity to understand how social media and networking influences his clients.

“How will pharma embrace and use social media appropriately? I’m thinking it’s part of a broader marketing strategy and building an appropriate relationship with my patients and social media can play a part of it,” said Rago.

Urbaniak, vice president of innovation and new customer channels at Sanofi-aventis, kicked off Tuesday with a presentation on shifting to a customer-centric approach. “The first mindset shift is the term around patient. We need to stop thinking patient and we really need to start thinking people,” said Urbaniak. “At Sanofi-aventis, we learned that when you’re a person who is first diagnosed with cancer and given the news that you need to undergo chemotherapy, it’s a tremendous impact. We look to see what hospital and grant programs are out there, but then build a program for patients that they want like bringing chemo therapy into their homes if that’s what fits their dynamic.”

Joe Shields, product director, consumer marketing and strategy integration, Pfizer, followed with new ideas for patient adherence. “For me, success is a healthy patient,” said Shields. “The empowered patient will be a collaborator and an active participator. It’s less about the sticking to something, and more about the ‘I want to do this for my health and my family.’ Adherence is starting to elevate the role of everyone in the community, and like health care, is a team sport.”

For the duration of the conference, participants had the option of using Twitter to ask questions and continue conference discussion with tweeters near and far. The live Twitter footage was projected on a flat screen monitor for everyone to follow in the ballroom. It was only natural that J&J’s Marc Monseau was on site to discuss the popular virtual space that the company mastered under his direction.

“We saw the Twitter feed as being a news gatherer and information provider as a starting point,” said Monseau. “When we established the Twitter account, I did not want it to be a bunch of press releases.”

Here are six quick tips for getting started in Twitterland straight from the source himself:

1. Create a business case
2. Connect with other initiatives
3. Establish a personality
4. Set guides
5. Gain legal and regulatory support
6. Tweet, tweet, tweet

In addition to Twitter, Eileen O’Brien, a former digital agency veteran who led a 1:1 coaching session on SEO/SEM during lunch, said that Google’s Sidewiki was the hot topic of conversation among pharma folks. She demonstrated the tool to me, located on Google’s tool bar, by posting her own comment about the drug Allegra on www.allegra.com.

“It’s having a side conversation by posting comments,” says O’Brien, who was a fan of today’s tweeting scene. “It’s really great to see everybody here tweeting in questions and answers.”

Pfizer announced, last week, that it was partnering with technology firm Private Access to launch an online social network to help patients find clinical trials more easily.

According to Pfizer, a top complaint from physicians is difficulty in matching patients with trials. “Finding volunteers has been a big issue for anyone conducting a clinical trial. Not just pharma companies, but any researcher conducting a trial,” said Kristen E. Neese, director, worldwide communications, Pfizer.

The problem is twofold. One the one hand, patients are concerned about sharing their personal health information; on the other hand, there hasn’t been a central location for patients to look for clinical trials and have their information matched with the most appropriate trial for them.

Pfizer Senior Strategy Director Usama Malik told Pharm Exec on Wednesday that the difficulty finding patients is causing drugs to take longer to get to trials, and in turn, raising costs.

“The clinical trials industry is highly fragmented,” Malik said. “Pharma companies, traditionally, haven’t worked in unison to increase value. They don’t speak to each other about the holistic opportunity for patients, providers, and pharma [to work together].

The new site will offer best-of-kind services including:
• Education and awareness for specific conditions and clinical trials
• Trial recruitment via patient posts and traditional research requests
• Some form of social community

Since 2002, Pfizer has posted every clinical trial its been involved with on NIH’s trial bulleting, but the drug giant wanted to establish a network that offers a more personal experience for the user. “This builds on that by creating more of a social networking site where patients can share their information and find trials that meet their specific needs,” said Neese.

For example, a diabetes sufferer can go to clinicaltrials.gov, type “diabetes,” and get thousands of protocol listings. Sorting through the different criteria is daunting, said Neese. The new site will allow patients to determine if they want to share their private information with researchers who are looking for patients that meet their specific criteria.

Much as a person would be asked to befriend someone on Facebook, a patient could be alerted that a researcher is looking for patients with diabetes; the patient will then be asked if they would like to share their information with this researcher.

“We have a long term vision for this site that includes not only Pfizer clinical trials, but all clinical trials,” Neese says. “We want this to be a tool that is going to be useful to patients. For it to work, it has to include more than just Pfizer.”

The site is scheduled to launch within the next year.

The brands in the study were given a social influence marketing (SIM) score that measured two attributes—the total share of consumer conversations a brand has online (share of voice), and the degree to which consumers like or dislike a brand (net sentiment). The SIM score combines the two attributes to measure the favorable impact of a brand.

In the pharmaceutical category, Razorfish measured the SIM scores of the top five brands with the most consumer media spend in 2008: Ambien, Lipitor, Lunesta, Plavix, and Rozerem. Of the five medications, Ambien captured a majority share of voice at 58.8 percent. However, its net sentiment was one percent lower than Lunesta, which received 64 percent net sentiment (but only 9.3 percent share of voice).

“We did conversation monitoring with our partner, TNS Cymfony, and we [analyzed] the online conversation for the last six months of 2008,” said Lisa Flaiz, vice president, group director, national pharma practice lead at Razorfish. “We then established a benchmark index for each industry using the brands we chose to analyze.”

The data does not include conversations that are not publically viewable, such as forums that require registration or private Facebook accounts. However, that still leaves a ton of data from sources like Twitter, YouTube, and comments on blogs.

“The beauty and the curse of these open forums is that you give up control of the brand, and you have to be willing to accept that there will be some negative comments for the greater good of elevating the conversation around the disease state,” said Flaiz. “Elevating the conversation online is now [like a] funnel—it helps create awareness and preference and I think we can be encourage by this.”

Interestingly, Rozerem’s reputedly popular Abe Lincoln ads do not show much traction online, with only 0.6 percent share of voice and a total score of 0.5. That can’t feel good from a campaign that cost Takeda $91 million in 2007.

“That’s share of voice over the total industry conversation,” Flaiz pointed out. “From a volume perspective, you just aren’t seeing that much traction in conversation around Rozerem. I think most of the conversation around the beaver came from industry people.”

Three pharmaceutical companies recently took big steps into the world of social media, launching Facebook applications that give consumers the ability to download and interact with health information material.

For those having a hard time keeping up with the rapidly evolving world of Web 2.0, a Facebook application (“app” for short) is an online program, game, or service that consumers can add to their Facebook homepage by giving the app permission to exist on their site. Most apps are simple and free to use.

Last week, Shire announced that it had teamed up with the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) to launch “Virtual IBD March on the Hill,” a Facebook application that provides health information about the disease. Shire will donate $1 for every person who installs the online program. The way the program works is that once the app is installed, users can choose a virtual shoe from a handful of designer styles, and virtually take part in CCFA’s seventh National Advocacy Conference “IBD Day on the Hill.” 

“We wanted to launch this program on Facebook to give people the opportunity to gather in one place to support the cause,” said Victoria Noble, product director for Shire’s ulcerative colitis treatment Lialda (mesalamine). “So much awareness is driven by walks, but folks are left behind because they can’t actually walk.”

The application is branded with Shire’s name, but no product is associated with it. At this time there are no plans to add an interactive tool or a forum, but Shire does intend to tie the site in with its sales force detailing material and professional marketing assets.

Asked how Facebook marketing differs from buying an online ad on a Crohn’s disease Web site, Noble told Pharm Exec that the application reaches a different audience. “The people involved in Facebook are looking for patient support and community, as opposed to someone that searches Google for treatment information,” she said.

Shire, however, wasn’t the first company out the door with a Facebook app. In March, Pfizer and EMD Serono partnered to release “MS Champions,” a much richer application featuring a unique map that shows the location of every registered user who is volunteering, walking, or riding in support of multiple-sclerosis treatments. The site also provides information about the disease and a link to a branded site for Rebif (interferon beta 1a), EMD Serono, and Pfizer’s MS therapy.

The companies are now gearing up for phase two of the project, which will include some form of interactive conversation, though the details are still being ironed out.

“One of the key things about Facebook is the ability for users to blog and express themselves on the site,” said Carole Huntsman, vice president of marketing for US neurology at EMD Serono. “We are working on our social media policy overall, and we have been looking at how we can evolve the site going forward.”

The plan is to allow users to blog in real time, but have comments reviewed before they are posted in order to make sure that all content is compliant with regulatory guidelines.