I wrote this piece only to share my view and opinion on the future of the pharma regulation on digital marketing activities.

1. Haider Alleg
1 novembre 2013
MANIFESTO
Food for thoughts on the future of the regulation in the pharma industry.
Online advertising
SEO or Search Engine
Optimisation is just one
visibility tactic among other.
Where most of it is technical, it
is not enough to optimise your
presence. Online advertising is
key, wherever it is on journals
or social media. A guide
should clearly present what are
the advertising opportunities,
per channel, per message, per
audience.
Working with
bloggers
Bloggers can sometimes be
even more influencing than
organizations. When it can be
tempting to work with them,
this relationship should be
monitored and transparent.
A global coherence
Where the ABPI is a good
guide for working in the UK, it
is also a reference for global
projects as most of the time
pilot are starting there. Then,
the roll-out at the european
level is still difficult. Even if the
EFPIA is giving directions, it is
still related to the local code of
each country and giving a lot
of complexity for global
initiative.
Manifesto
We need agility
I would like to share through this manifesto a view that is my
own, as a digital marketer working in the industry. This is
therefore not a company position.!
If I can notice a department where we are clearly behind
regarding the requirement of the digital channel, this is the
marketing and commercial operations.!
New technologies are pushing the boundaries of what internal
marketers can do. This task has been externalized to agencies,
lighter to digest the amount of new trends in the digital era.
Somehow, the different topic I am covering next would need
the pharma players to internalize them, or at least to know
clearly how to deal with them in a good way.!
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2. Haider Alleg
1 novembre 2013
Social media is not a trend, it is a standard!
Patients are online users consuming other media and services
from others industries. Therefore, while the health
information is one of the most searched and discussed, when
it comes to social media services, it is a bit blur on best
practices.!
Prescribing apps?
With more and more mobile
users, health apps are growing
fast.
With different goals, some of
them are designed to help you
get a better output from your
treatment by following advices,
monitoring symptoms or
answering questions.
• Who should review the
accuracy of the code behind?
I think we will see an increase of
tech start-ups running into the
quantified-self movement, or
health connected object.
First of all, I believe we should help pharma players with a
template of internal guidelines for social media, that can be
tweaked with the company vision or the brand essence when
required.!
This will help pharma companies to ensure not spending time
closing groups of discussion started by employees, and avoid
having individuals sharing views on the behalf of the company
on public spaces. These guidelines should be also covering
what sales reps can and can’t do. I saw lately some initiatives
going in that direction for Twitter, but we should extend this
to a broader view.!
I also believe that social media plans are too often initiated
with not knowing the full impact on the structure of the
teams required to make it work. Social media is a
conversation that starts, and never ends. Or if so, there is a
next dialogue taking place somewhere else.!
If perceived as gadgets, they
could be soon impacting the
behavior of patients, and
interfering in the diagnosis from
physicians.
Should doctors prescribe apps
then? We do have patient
support programs and they could
be the missing link for the data
accuracy.
We should be part of this as we
are strategic partners of
physicians, and not let web pure
players take the lead, like they
did with the telecommunication
sector. We see now Google and
Apple creating phones, apps and
providing even the signal.
Manifesto
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3. Haider Alleg
1 novembre 2013
This is the very reason, pharma players should have a check-list knowing if they have all the strength
to deal with it, even if they have an agency helping. !
Also, often what we try to achieve is already out there. We should try to be a strategic partner to
patient group, helping them raise their voice. This will then force us to imagine new innovative
services, while helping them manage the content and the conversations. !
From my experience in different industries, social media can be a tremendous game changer, but now
more than ever, it requires a lot of resources. The pressure from other industries in the web
experience is pushing pharma players to step-up their game and we don’t have room for failure
anymore. The good news is that a lot of cases studies can help us understand what patient and
physicians expect.!
This is leading me to another topic maybe even more important than the presence on social media
itself. Listening to the web is critical to prepare a good presence. Knowing what is missing, and
providing meaningful solution is what we should do all the time. Like market research before
launching a product, it can take a lot of efforts to listen to the web, but it is worth it as your digital
strategy will become more accurate.!
For a long time, we were scared on adverse events collation through the web. Thanks to the new
updates from the code of conducts, this aspect is clear. I would like still to stress the fact that some
platform are a bit complexe to monitor, due to the way patient interacts on it (Twitter is a good
example). We should also be more precise of what is an adverse event on the web, as a lot of
identification data are missing to really report complete cases. Ideally, monitoring should be guided,
helping pharma players to know how to setup their radar by platform, by disease topics (treatment,
symptoms, brand name) and how to deal with adverse events (shall we take what is the SMPC or
broader?).!
To finish on social media, I think we need to differentiate a one-to-one communication to the one-tomany communication. As in a website, if somebody requires information on a sponsored social media
platform, it should be clear that what the code is asking us to do with email addresses, form and the
24h answer window.!
I just wanted to share my view on the subject, and I am of course please to discuss about it. I am
facing every day these challenges and I do believe that this is together that we can push the
boundaries of our creativity, for the benefit of the patient and the clinical practice.!
!
Haider Alleg | Global eMarketing Manager (Gedeon Richter)!
www.haideralleg.com | +41 79 230 70 45!
Manifesto
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