 Bill Drummy Heartbeat Digital CEO Visit Website |
Bill Drummy is CEO of Heartbeat Digital, an independent interactive marketing and software company he founded in 1998. Heartbeat is headquartered in New York, with offices in Brussels, Geneva, Paris and London.
Named one of pharma’s “100 Most Inspiring People,” by PharmaVoice, Bill has provided strategic guidance at the highest levels for Amgen, GSK, sanofi-aventis, UCB and many other leading pharma and biotech companies.
Bill’s reputation as a strategic thinker is well-known; he’s regularly published on industry issues and has been a featured speaker at major industry conferences, including DTC National ePharma Summit, and the Conference on Marketing.
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Digital Expert Q&A
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Can pharmaceutical marketers effectively use social media, and how should they go about entering the social media sphere?Answered March 13th, 2009 by Expert:No question is generating more attention (and confusion) these days than this one: “What is our social media strategy?”
More often than not, the question is coming from senior management, usually after the CEO observes his teenage children holed up in their bedrooms through weekend mealtimes on something called Facespace, or MyBook, or … something.
But there are serious reasons to take social media seriously. Facebook boasts 175 million active users, and is growing at the rate of 5 million new users … a week! And it’s not just the traffic numbers that astound: according to ComScore, Facebook users average more than 2½ hours on the site every month. Marketing nirvana, you would think.
Well, not quite. While the audience is huge, it is singularly uninterested in your advertising. Click-through rates (CTR), a standard measure of online ad effectiveness, are gnat-like. CTR on Facebook have been reported to be 0.04% – dramatically lower than the online industry average of 0.21% listed by MarketingSherpa.
So what’s a pharma marketer to do? Rethink your approach. When you place an ad on my page, you are seen as an intruder on a conversation to which you have not been invited. You need to respect the conventions of the social media universe and ask to participate.
Brands that have taken this approach have done well. The best pharma example is “Take a Step Against Cervical Cancer”, sponsored by Merck in support of Gardasil, its cervical cancer vaccine. This is not an ad campaign – it’s a lightly branded Facebook mini-site that encourages people to help end cervical cancer, and along the way, learn about the Merck vaccine. The site has been friended by more than 100,000 Facebookers, by far the largest community built by a pharma company in the Facebook universe.
Alas, the good examples are rare. To create the next social media success story, keep three things in mind:
1) Social media is about engagement, not advertising
3 comments
2) The user is in control
3) As your mother would say, be polite when you’re visiting someone else’s place3 responses to to “Can pharmaceutical marketers effectively use social media, and how should they go about entering the social media sphere?”
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Do you think that social media is appropriate for all brands? For example, Tripilix is a drug for renal impairment, is Facebook an appropriate channel?
Nicole, here is Bill’s answer to your question:
“Without knowing more about the brand strategy, it’s difficult to say.But the quick answer is that I would not envision Facebook for a
condition like this. It would make much more sense to focus on more health-centric social media sites, where there is already a community
interested in the topic.Facebook has not yet emerged as a place where people think to go first when talking about a serious medical condition.”Thank you for your question, and thanks, Bill, for the answer!
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Amber Nicole Cannan October 15th, 2009 at 14:37
Bill, in response to your response to Nicole, I offer this thought.
I suffer from endometriosis, and it is difficult to find people in my area with it, and especially those willing to talk about it. I just completed my Senior Thesis in Medical Illustration and this disease was one of my focuses (within the realm of the adolecent and pre-adolecent female and menstrual pain) Every girl I interviewed said they would prefer an online space to speak about things like cramps and complications. Many of them do speak in groups and pages on FB. I know it is where I find my support for it, it seems there are many shy women out there who use the anonymity of online to discuss what they feel is sensitive.
In addition there are other groups on FB where people can get together and talk about medical conditions and find support, which for rare diseases or diseases with social stigmas associated with them can be difficult in real life. My best friend growing up does this a great deal for her Crohns disease and living with a stoma. If endometriosis is not serious enough for you, I submit that Crohns is.
I enjoyed your article a great deal, and being in the art/advertising side of pharmaceuticals, appreciate the insight you provide. -
Aron Caplan November 3rd, 2009 at 11:39
I think the beauty of the online space in addressing personal healthcare issues is the ability for the consumer to remain anonymous. By and large, Facebook is there to publicize yourself and to ensure a constant stream of connectivity with friends, family and peers. As such, I think the Facebook brand is just not right for the pharmaceutical industry or for the patient.
No-one can doubt the potential importance of social media to the healthcare of consumers or to the pharmaceutical industry. So the opportunity is there for a new independent social networking site the be the first line of consultation for the patient. As critical, the pharmaceutical companies need to make sure they are part of those social conversations (not advertising ‘at’ those people) in order to be trusted.
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