I was recently contacted by MediaPost to comment on an very interesting story as initially reported on by The New York Times. The MediaPost article also examined the issues around RealAge and pharmaceutical marketing. Certainly a complicated issue – as it is a tremendously regulated industry and most all of us as consumers, closely guard our health.
What was fascinating about the articles, was the concept of the Real Age test – by taking 150 or so questions I can receive my “real age” in terms of my lifestyle. The site also then provides me tips and tools to live younger – from flossing to vitamins.
So peeling back the debate around the issue of marketing to consumers using the answers to their questions, I think there is an additional dimension and opportunity here where pharmaceutical brands need to take focus. As former CMO of WedMD, I have some experience around these issues. As an early pioneer of on line communities, WebMD empowered consumers to find health information on line – at the time many critics thought this would not work but today is a thriving and trusted resource for information.
As we all know, in the past five years the web began to go truly social and empowered consumers to participate. With the rapid and only increasing adoption of social media by consumers, brands need to take notice and get involved in the conversation. Many brands are leading the next wave of marketing and pharmaceuticals need to figure out how to get in and get more social.
I think pharmaceutical companies need to determine how to be part of a community and conversation. Living better is a popular topic that is thriving on the social web today. Using our Social Media Index, we looked at key terms to see how much people were talking about the topics that impact healthy living.
Vitrue Social Share of Voice on Health Topics
Active conversation is taking place around topics of sleep, diet, stress, exercise and nutrition. All of these personal and cultural topics fell within our range of most social brands of 2008 – as popular as iPhone, CNN and Starbucks. Pharma brands need to deploy robust environments where these topics and solutions from peers can be discussed.
When we look at the pharmaceutical brands’ social share of voice we see there is great discrepancy between this need and endorsed information. We look to our peers and family and friends for buying decisions (according to Nielsen, 78% of consumers trust the opinions of peers over all other information sources and advertising) and our health is no different. I value my circle’s input and would take their input over all methods of messaging. So in these great dialogues pharma companies have the opportunity to foster and cultivate forms where this dialog can thrive and information about their solutions can be surfaced.
Pharmaceutical Companies Social Share of Voice
Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Novartis are off to a solid start, but have a ways to go as it is a low base compared to more social brands like Coke, Disney and McDonald’s.
We will be reviewing this vertical in more detail in coming months but wanted to share my thoughts on where we should be focusing some of this debate.
