Applying social media to mature pharmaceutical brand or medical device management

1. Mature Rx Management
in the Prescriber Digisphere

2. Insights must drive action
Never stop researching HCPs’:
• Use of the Internet and digital technology
• Adherence to and creation of clinical guidelines
• Approach to and sources of clinical information
• Treatment algorithms and drivers of therapy
Patient and disease stratification
…to drive online stakeholder interaction

3. Mature rx play a mix of cards
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4. Physicians see no end in sight…
• Widespread indifference to CER/P4P limitations
belies patient uniqueness, frequently the driver
for a medical career
• Anticipate more bureaucracy with increasing
regulation of insurance markets
• Unlike the FDA and the press, must balance
safety, efficacy, tolerability, cost and adherence
• Under pressure to adopt HIT, with no assurance
of interoperability, ROI, obsolescence protection

5. …while packed into portals
• Clinicians already face multiple “portals of necessity” for
payors, practices, hospitals, universities, libraries, journals,
reference tools, e-Rx, EMRs
• Before considering market research panels, Wall Street
consultancies, manufacturer networks
• Every clinician collaborates virtually in some way
 Yet under multiple legal risks: HIPAA, med mal, scrutiny of manufacturer
payments and ethical conflicts; off-label communication limitations
• Open access and crowdsourced publishing are the new black

6. Love the brand you’re with
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7. Book your tickets late
• Create for the medium (concise, actionable,
naturalistic, five senses)
• Use appropriate abbreviations and sentence structure
• Travel to the point of exploration, consideration,
decision, transaction
• “Know me” wherever/however audiences log in
• Remember that, on unprotected portals, patients,
payors and physicians see everything (P&T minutes,
queries, rants), whether aimed at them or not
• On the social Web, your brand equity is only as good
as the user’s last experience

8. Misconceptions are your problem
• Established “consumer review” sites for drugs
highlight truth-indeterminate AEs, “miracles”
• News of investigations, reports, litigation spreads at
bytespeed -- and lives on
• Any mature brand can foster risk concerns
• On message boards and e-mail lists, “private
messages” may far outpace public posts
• The .com is viewed as “the Establishment,” with little
understanding of FDA regulation on messaging,
product labeling, registration trial limitations

9. Span the pt-to-HCP spectrum
• Pursue new short and long-term channels for
services, information, marketing and networking
• See prospects as connections, individuals
• Whom can you benefit by association, by
service, by networking?
• Whom can you convert as a(n) ally, referrer,
sponsor, advertiser, content provider, affiliate,
partner, roommate, fellow traveler?

10. Words are brand currency

11. No medium is an island
• The Internet: a foundation to access, share and
repackage information
• Mobile applications leverage users’ locations
• Rich media: content formats that enable more
immersive communication
• Social media: share content, beliefs, knowledge,
skills and experiences beyond 1:1 conversations
• All these comprise “the social Web”

12. Social media: building out the Web
• Uses of Web-based, mobile and desktop
platforms to share and leverage others’
beliefs, knowledge, skills and
experiences
• Components of a distributed computing model
for meeting professional and personal needs,
building consensus and supporting
decisions
• An evolution of the linked strands of “the
Web” as originally envisioned

13. Why social media now?
• Mfrs can improve stakeholder interaction and micro-
targeting
 Support marketplace of data, ideas, interaction
and pricing by quality
 Improved search visibility crosses all channels
• As professional hubs become more transparent to
public scrutiny, HCPs adapt their use of digital media to
find and share insights
 Nurture such adaptations, for your own insight
 While also building cross-TA, cross-channel
stakeholder databases that remain a profitable
asset for years to come

14. If content value is king,
the channel is the chariot

15. Engage yourself first
• Tune into your senses as you socialize,
analyze, transact
 Challenge, engage, connect prospects
 Avoid perceived cynicism, condescension, arrogance,
indifference
• Share drama, mystery, comedy, discovery
• Cast a wide net, outside your comfort zone
• Collaborate across time and space

16. Be a useful marketer
• Perceived durable value prevails
• Support informed choices, satisfying decisions and no-
mess transactions
• Leverage unasked validation’s power
• Help users find, index, sort, filter, act on what they need,
from all comers
• E-mail and search: still online marketing pillars, but as
pathways to content and social bridges
“People want choice, convenience and control.”
Ed Artzt, past Procter & Gamble CEO, 1994

17. Support your brand and HCP search
• Support positioning
 Add value to existing products and services
 Create new revenue streams and brand support
• Leverage shifts in distribution models
 Only decades ago, “searching the literature” meant
walking into a medical library
 Clinicians still looking for the “best option”
 With dx/tx/rx support on handhelds, laps or desks,
the clinician seeks “instant access” to what’s
relevant this second -- and easy ways to act on it

18. Monitor the market
What, when, how, why, where are topics mentioned,
queries made, advice provided?
 Include yourself, you, allies, competitors, influencers and
emerging players/solutions
 Resource: http://mashable.com/2008/12/24/free-brand-
monitoring-tools/
Closed networks, blogs and boards: not the real world,
but real to participants
Monitor the media that mean something to you
personally; assign staff to do the same

19. HCPs in social media:
fragmented seekers
• Though top physician portals (Sermo, Medscape) boast
only about 100K each at their ID-validated levels, almost
all HCPs utilize portals for information or transactions
• Tweeting and blogging have reached cliché status, yet…
• Most physicians still compartmentalize their social media
participation due to legal and privacy concerns
• While all seek the most actionable information for the
smallest investment of time

20. From abstraction to reality

21. Go where the heart is
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22. Link in, learn more
Friends,
Shared
allies Communities
Blogs bookmarks
(people &
E-mail groups)
Colleagues
You and
your Transaction
customers engines
Shared
content
(YouTube) Portals Facebook
(Amazon) IM Affinity groups

23. Market with meaning
• Marketingwithmeaning.com provides examples
• Never stop linking the brand with the patients,
physicians and outcomes
• Position the business for peer validation,
unasked support -- far more powerful than any
pay-for-praise
 Avoid reciprocity traps
• Measure outcomes all day, every day

24. Leverage social & search
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25. Tomorrow’s digisphere:
richer, yet tighter
• SEO and SEM require constant monitoring of
search engine algorithms
 In the semantic Web where social and search
converge via vocabularies and tagging
 With natural language search a user-friendly front
end, but content still the difference between a
commodity and a relationship
• Ubiquity of broadband brings GPS/GIS and
immersive experiences to the forefront
 Validating the importance of combining rich and
interactive media

26. Implications for action
• On-demand search, instant query of audiences
(peers, followers, readers)
• Bite-sized, personalized content
• Explicit transparency of sponsorship, funding,
source of message
• Maintain positive focus on “opportunities of the
commons” (e.g. adherence to definitive tx), not
single-brand solutions
• Willingly submit to outside comment, annotation,
caveats, corrections -- but wave the truth when
others distort it

27. Potential social objects
• Widgets, blidgets, desktop/Web/mobile apps
 Resource tracking, selectable by media type,
specialty, role, MESH term
 Facilitate peer sharing using existing networks
 Support annotations, comments, questions on
content
 Offer abstracts that integrate with existing Web-
based notes apps and/or reference managers
 Support Twitter hash tags that reference a common
topic/issue, enabling real-time consults
• “Sponsored by” model often more workable than overly
narrow content or channel

28. Success in the digisphere
• Inducing “naysayers” uncomfortable with pharma
interaction to engage with you requires:
 Saving them time
 Providing a greater value for the same time
 Benefits that existing channels cannot match
• Target individuals who bridge networks, are articulate,
and/or have unique opportunities for influence
 “Digital thought leaders” may not be as influential
off line
 Lay influencers may not have active disease; many
are caregivers or past sufferers

29. Above all, leverage interaction
• Ask targeted audiences specific, relevant questions, that
challenge and engage
• Share and build on the outcomes, leveraging the spirit of
open access and the equity of key brands
 Build and grow collaborations across time and space
 Use social media as a frame for rich media initiatives
• Accumulate social and intellectual capital to fuel
offerings that outpace competitors’