Laura Pfister Featured on OnAAiR

Our own Laura Pfister, VP, Strategic Insights, is featured on the OnAAiR television show this week discussing social media experiences and strategies. Check it out here.

OnAAir (AAiR stands for Arts Advertising in Review) is a weekly web show where the host, Marcus Vadas, interviews some of Southern California’s leaders in the fields of advertising and arts.

OnAAiR is a forum where people can come and freely express their views about the advertising world and the changes that are going on in it. It is also a place where viewers can call or email to connect with others in their fields.

What Pharma Should Like (and Dislike) About Facebook’s New “Like” Feature

authored by
Ross Fetterolf, SVP Brand Strategy and Channel Innovation
Michael Spitz, Senior Digital Strategist
Ignite Health

In case you haven’t heard, the biggest news in social media this week is “Like.” No, it’s not the return to 80’s valley girl speak that some of us have been looking forward to for decades—according to Facebook, “Like” is their new feature that promises to change the web through a technology called “Open Graph”. At their latest development conference (click here for a webcast of the live event), Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the new “Like” feature pushes us one step closer to the promise of Web 3.0, the semantic Web. For those of you in the Pharma community who don’t know whether or not to like “Like,” the Ignite strategy team wanted to offer up some thoughts that present a compelling story for each side of the argument. Here goes…

Why Pharma Should Like “Like” Ross’s POV

A small snippet of code can now turn even the most traditional of sites into a social experience. Real Pharma social media has never felt so attainable as the day when Facebook “Like” was introduced. Here’s why:

Get By with a Little “Like” from Your Friends

• The new “Like” feature turns the Web into a shared experience, so I can immediately see which people in my social circle (i.e., Facebook friends) have visited an online property, and what they found interesting or helpful within that site. Imagine going to a website to learn about a new medication and finding out that one of your friends “liked” it. Powered with this information, I am now one step closer to making a treatment decision—and can reach out to my friend to learn more.

I Think You Two Might “Like” Each Other

• So maybe none of your friends is taking the product you are considering, or reading the same disease information you came across. Well according to “Like”—there are people out there that are. Who are those people? Maybe they are people that should be part of your social circle, people you should be connecting with. Pharma has been experimenting with the creation of product user communities for a long time now—the first example of this was Roche’s Pegassist Buddy program—that connected users of their product to communicate in a setting outside the jurisdiction of the Pharma company through a simple exchange of e-mail addresses. And while Pegassist Buddies have come and gone, new efforts have emerged which are aimed at generating the same kind of peer-to-peer interaction—programs like the Tysabri Mentor Program.
  

• Facebook “Like” essentially does the same thing—connecting users of a product or with an interest in a disease state, so they can discuss their own experiences in an “off-brand” setting. This feature alone could give a new sense of relevancy to Pharma brand sites, which could not only serve as the official destination for prospective patients to learn about a product, but also the place where they could go to virtually meet other patients who are using a product and are satisfied/dissatisfied with its results. A connection to shared experiences – all powered by a simple click of the “Like” button – social behavior has never been so simple…

Learning Users Likes and Dislikes

• Aside from the ability of “Like” to connect the user to others inside or outside their social circle, how about the ability for the Pharma Company to simply learn more about the content preferences of their users? We’ve piloted this basic concept on disease education sites in the form of the ability to rate content, and it has been a great way to really learn what content our users find valuable, and even determine which content isn’t as helpful. “Like” introduces a layer of user feedback on top of your site that should enable future content decisions, shaping the user experience to be most beneficial to your audience – the inherent goal in any eMarketing effort.

Why Pharma Should Dislike "Like" Spitz's POV

Although the new and revolutionary Facebook Open Graph technology will synergize the digital experience for millions of users as Ross describes, this communications model creates immediate and potentially intractable dilemmas for Pharma. Here’s why:

Mr. Zuckerberg Goes to Washington

• Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement of this new model was genuinely exciting—so much so that several senators, led by Charles Schumer of New York, organized themselves to take action regarding potential privacy violations. "We look forward to the FTC examining this issue,” stated the group. “But in the meantime, we believe Facebook can take swift and productive steps to alleviate the concerns of its users."
  

• The problem here is two-fold: On the one hand, Open Graph will make participating Facebook users’ personal information available to numerous and unspecified third-party businesses; on the other, the technology automatically pulls this data unless users voluntarily and proactively choose to opt-out—far from an obvious process. The special risk to Pharma websites is obvious, as private information regarding an individual’s treatment preferences is made available to unseen marketers and who knows who else.

Do You Want ISI with That?

• Pulling information from a consumer website and making it available on Facebook (as demonstrated by the screenshot from Ross’ own Facebook page below) might work well for jeans or other unregulated products, but the social media guidance so important for Pharma marketers has yet to be mandated. Imagine this functionality made available on a typical brand.com for a drug—would the same rules of fair balance apply within the “Like” box embedded in the news stream on Facebook as the original content on the brand.com itself? To what extent? Who is held accountable?

Adverse Event Commenting

• And that brings up the third potential problem—what about the comment feature below the Facebook “Like” box? How would your brand manager or eMarketing director feel when visitors to your branded websites are able to post text and graphics featuring your heavily regulated drug on Facebook pages, enabling and encouraging their friends and family to openly and enthusiastically comment on them? Should one of them post an adverse event, then who would be held accountable? How would the Pharma Company be able to monitor potentially thousands, if not millions, of individual Facebook pages?

Conclusion: “Like,” What’s Not to Like?

The new Facebook “Like” feature might sound like an exciting and affordable way to reach millions of additional people with your brand messaging, but the privacy, regulatory, and AE concerns are unexplored and potentially severe—not to mention the inherent threats to your brand’s reputation.

That said, despite the remaining unknowns and inherent risks of Facebook’s new communications model, the opportunities for marketing specialists—including those in Pharma—are so exciting and powerful that Open Graph cannot and should not be ignored. The onus therefore rests on us as digital experts to educate our teams, mitigate the risks, and utilize this exciting technology for the benefit of our clients and the healthcare professionals and patients they serve.

So now you’ve heard our thoughts on “Like”—but we’d like to hear yours. So drop us a line in the comments section (and please, no jokes about Ross’s skinny jean experimentation, that’s not what social media is all about—or is it?)

Beware the Ides of March—How to Thrive in the Wake of the Social Media Revolution

by Michael Spitz
Senior Digital Strategist , Ignite Health

Overview

Analysis suggests social media networks will eventually transform the entire digital ecosystem. But data regarding information consumption and influence reveal healthcare is well behind the curve. What can we learn from the powerful features and functionality of social media, and how can we apply these insights to safe and effective solutions we offer our clients today?

Revelation A: Social Media Supersedes Search as the Next Digital Paradigm Shift

On March 15, Hitwise Director of Research Heather Dougherty shared an astonishing metric: Two days earlier the market share of visits to Facebook overtook that of Google.

Weekly Market Share of Visits to Facebook.com and Google.com

Even more astonishing is the social network’s geometric growth: compared to the same week in 2009, market share of visits to Facebook increased by 185%, while visits to Google increased by only 9%. Taken together that week, total visits to Facebook and all Google properties accounted for more than 17% of all Internet traffic—nearly 1 in 5 web visits.

Implication A: Technology Has Finally Caught Up To User Behavior

The web has been continuously evolving since inception, responsive to changes in technology, innovation, and market dynamics. From the birth of email to the earliest websites, from the first portals to the ascendancy of search and multimedia, and from wireless and smart mobile to the skyrocketing popularity of social networks, these trends have all been driving to the same ultimate goal: creation of a user experience that best reflects how human beings naturally communicate.

Primarily visual, instinctively social, always on the move, people now demand their channels be similarly interactive, connected, flexible, and dynamic. According to the Cybercitizen Health 9.0 report from Manhattan Research, more than 39% of consumers make health decisions and actions strongly influenced by the web. As healthcare communications experts it behooves us to acknowledge these revolutionary changes in where and how our audiences choose to find and share health information, and ensure that the tools and resources we provide reflect a comparable level of sophistication.

As even a quick glance at Ignite Chief Innovation Officer Fabio Gratton’s FDASM mash-up attests, the buzz around social media for health-related communications is vibrant and ongoing, spawning a dedicated community to follow its twists and turns. With assurance from the FDA that some form of official guidance can be expected before the end of 2010, the industry is eager for a mandate through which to better and more safely explore this channel. When that enthusiasm will find full expression remains to be seen; nonetheless, the momentum behind making the inevitable possible is a force few deny.

Revelation B: Despite that Trend, Conventional Healthcare Websites Retain More Traction

As additional Manhattan Research suggests, conventional brand.com’s and social media sites currently rank about the same in terms of influence on consumers health actions and decisions:

Percentage of Consumers Whose Health Decisions and Actions Are Strongly Influenced by Various Online Sources

Although overall Internet user behaviors are trending toward the enthusiastic adoption of social media, the data here reveals that the influence of health-related information instead follows a different hierarchy of importance: From specific unbranded disease sources through government-sponsored, advocacy, and insurance company sites, and finally to branded properties and social networks, which score comparably.

Whether the relatively low influence of social media is caused by a lack of health-related social media websites, a lack user engagement, or suspicions about transparency begs the question—unbranded and branded pharma sites get more traction than social media sites. The question then becomes, all things considered: If healthcare/Pharma social media initiatives are more difficult to create, approve, implement, and maintain than conventional brand.com work, then why bother?

Implication B: Keep the Momentum Going, and Learn from What Works

As the web continues to “socialize,” and the ePharma industry continues to work together and with the FDA for the creation of social media guidance, our clients meanwhile demand safe, practical, and effective communication solutions. Knowing how effective social media can be, yet mindful of the current roadblocks, it becomes our responsibility to discover what can be done now to optimally reach, engage, and sustain relationships with our diverse audiences.

Disease education and brand.com websites might be more influential than social networking websites for the time being, but strategic insights and even tactical recommendations can and should be extracted from social media. Although open fields and true user-generated content are either too risky or subject to rigorous filtering and delay for ePharma, the functional qualities that make social media so powerful are nonetheless at our disposal. The only limit is our creativity and ability to understand and even internalize

our audience points of view.

Specifically, the astonishing popularity of social media is fueled by several high-level strategies and numerous tactics, ones that, when possible, should be integrated into our general communications approach. These imperatives include:

· Create an Immersive Experience
The passive display of information is always less compelling than open, two-way communication because interest is directly proportionate to involvement. Flash animation, dynamic content, and focusing attention on the audience benefits instead of the product features are proven strategies for heightening user engagement.

· Get Users Directly Involved
Techniques such as interactive, user segmentation-driven navigation, patient profilers, dynamic therapy guides, survey and rating tools, dosing calendars, treatment algorithms, patient and physician video testimonials, and key opinion leader “Ask the Expert” roundtables are all compelling and help create a resonant user experience.

· Connect Online and Offline Worlds
Facilitating and encouraging physician-patient conversations lies at the heart of most healthcare communication initiatives, and can be stimulated with the same elements that make social media so powerful. For example, interactive dramatizations and dynamically generated “Questions to Ask Your Doctor” tools add resonance and meaning.

Conclusion
Remember the Apple Newton? Compared to today’s iPhone the device was clearly a mobile computer for Neanderthals—the concept itself was spot-on, however, only years ahead of its time. And if Apple hadn’t started there and continued to develop the technology, the iPhone never could have come into existence.

The same can be said of healthcare social media. As the web continues to evolve and social media eventually envelopes all media, people will be digitally conversing as actively and openly about their health as they do now about consumer products, entertainment, and sporting events.

Until that happens, healthcare communications experts can adapt the learnings from social media to create immersive user experiences that achieve optimal results. By evolving to better meet the changing needs of our audience and their unique points of view, we can safely and effectively help fulfill Pharma’s goals of stimulating physician/patient conversations, providing the right information to the right targets at the right time, and demonstrating the level of transparency required to engender trust.

The Impact of “Tweetvertising” on the ePharma Space

by Ross Fetterolf
SVP, Brand Strategy and Channel Innovation, Ignite Health


Advertising has come to Twitter in the form of “promoted tweets,” and copywriters everywhere will now set their sights on new 140 character messages that drive consumers to action. We’ll examine what the experts think this means for the future of advertising, as well as the basic rules and potential limitations of this new medium, and then turn our attention to what impact this could have on the ePharma space. Ultimately, we’ll reveal that this new, streamlined successor to the mighty PPC ad could be the breakthrough format that makes our brands part of the dialogue.

Background

A wide range of pundits has weighed in on what Tweetvertising could mean for the popular start-up. From the New York Times, who highlights the advertisers who will be part of this inaugural crew (it’s no coincidence that the initial list is made up mostly of hip retailers and caffeine purveyors) and the concept of letting businesses, “insert themselves into the stream of real-life conversations of Twitter,” to the business community, that gets to the heart of why companies advertise (to “help them achieve business objectives”), to Twitter itself, where we learn about how this advertising model came to be, why it’s happening now (it was their mission to “optimize for value before profit”), and the rules of this “simple service.”





The above “promoted tweet” from Starbucks, which is being offered up as the standard, speaks volumes in terms of the actual potential for this medium. In the span of a simple tweet, they manage to encapsulate the essence of advertising while providing a strong message (ditch your paper cup), an equally strong offer (free coffee on 4/15), and a link for more info (with the capability for every click to be measured). Better still, this ad manages to transcend even the untouchable PPC ad in its ability to, with one click of the “retweet” feature, be infinitely sharable within your extended network. The future of advertising has been distilled down to its purest and most actionable form.

Key Findings


Here are some key details about promoted tweets from this wide spectrum of sources:

• “Promoted tweets” will initially appear when people search for particular terms and be clearly labeled as “promoted”


• A single promoted tweet will appear alongside search results


• The tweet will appear as long as it demonstrates “resonance” with the audience by being clicked on or re-tweeted


• Twitter won’t charge companies whose sponsored tweets don’t generate high resonance, but tweets with high resonance scores will likely pay price premiums


• Later these promoted tweets will find their way into user feeds both on Twitter.com and a vast number of services that access Twitter (like TweetDeck, TwitterBerry, and Tweetie)
  

Based on this basic list of details, here are a few potential limitations that could impact Pharma’s adoption of this new medium:

• One Click Rule 2.0
  o Not again – another medium that will try the boundaries of this now infamous “guideline.” Who is going to be the first Pharma to test the compliance of branded tweets run on disease search terms?


• Establishing Your Brand’s Twitter Voice
  o Tweets showcase a person’s voice, while many PPC ads just showcase a call to action. Are you ready to decide what your brand’s voice should be in this medium? Starbucks clearly is….

Promoted Tweets vs. Comprehensive Twitter Strategy
o We’ve gotten comfortable with the PPC ad over the past decade, and the reality is nobody is following the dramatic arc of your PPC efforts on Google. Do you just want to test the unexplored waters with a tweet or two, or are you committed to creating a larger communication plan for your messages, and Twitter in general?


Potential Actions for Pharma

Given the details and potential limitations of this new ad model, what’s an ePharma marketer to do next? Here are a few considerations regarding how this offering could transform the future of Pharma brand and social media planning:

1) Utilize promoted tweets as a way to get brand offers and information out to your users

This concept of the “resonance” of promoted tweets is a novel one, which I will simplify as follows: create offers that provide value to your potential customers, or your offers go away. While I know the concept of a “free trial offer” or “free device” doesn’t apply to all brands, this approach alone could make Pharma sponsored tweets popular. Product offers would have a great opportunity to be re-tweeted, since it’s clear that everyone likes to pass on the savings. (Note to my Ignite colleagues, please stop sending me e-mail discounts for Starwood Hotels. So what if I travel a lot?) And they could even result in the fulfillment of offers via the Smartphone device (where we know a lot of users are interacting with Twitter), as users can click through to coupon codes that could be presented at the point of sale.

To follow through on this concept, imagine the simplicity and impact of seeing this statement when you picked up your next prescription or visited the website of a product you are taking: “follow us on Twitter for money saving offers.” This platform could be utilized to power the next opportunity:

2) Launch a Twitter account for your brand

Brand Twitter accounts, traditionally ignored by Pharma in favor of corporate accounts or disease education efforts, would now gain relevance and could utilize “promoted tweets” as a way to build a strong following. Someday I will find the time to do an analysis of Pharma Twitter account followers, and I’m guessing that this will reveal that many followers of Pharma Twitter accounts are actually Pharma and Agency people, not the patients at whom a lot of these efforts are aimed. If a brand Twitter account is utilized to push out coupons and offers, it also presents the opportunity to present education and resources to an engaged audience, thereby helping users be more successful with your brand (new term – Twitter Relationship Management, TRM?). And yes, of course you could throw in the occasional safety-focused tweet to provide a healthy sense of balance and FDA friendliness.

3) Leverage promoted tweets to help your ranking on search engines

While I consider myself a pretty avid Twitter user (check out @DigitalBulldog to judge for yourself), I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I have actually used the Twitter search feature to find something. But recent information [link to: http://mashable.com/2010/04/14/Twitter-registered-users/] from Twitter’s Chrip development conference tells us that there are almost 600 million searches per day on Twitter. Top Twitter search lists reveal that a large portion of this search activity is dedicated to celebrities, gossip, and entertainment (evidenced by “Twilight” being the top searched term about one year ago).

My instincts tell me that for more serious business like health, people will use Google (sorry Bing) to search for information; a real opportunity for Pharma therefore will be for their “promoted tweets” to start making their way into true Google search results listings, which seem to be pulling in tweets with much more regularity. This appears to be entirely achievable through the principles of the retweet, and when performing a search for “Starbucks” on Google you still see people tweeting about the 4/15 free coffee offer being indexed in the Twitter feed that is pulled into search results. Well, what if coffee didn’t really do it for you as much as an alertness agent like Nuvigil; couldn’t this same offer permanently embed itself within the “latest results” section of a search on “sleepiness”?

Conclusions

Like all new technologies, the “promoted tweets” we have seen starting to show up recently within search results are but a 1.0 version of what will likely evolve over time. These new tweets have the potential to change the way we view Twitter in the same way that AdWords transformed Google from a stark search site with a cool logo to one of the most powerful companies in the world. For Pharma this represents another unique opportunity for consumers to develop a relationship with our brands, be it in the form of brand offers that serve up savings and education, a branded Twitter outpost that provides critical brand updates, or simply as another method for getting brand information to show up on the first page of classic search results. All these directions deliver us one step closer to the new goal of advertising in the Web 2.0 world - having our brands be an important part of the dialogue.