In early May, we attended the Social Communications & Healthcare: Case Studies and Roundtables. There, we saw some great presentations on the use of social media by the AstraZeneca, The Centers for Disease Control, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, among others. While we didn’t agree with all of the tactics presented, we were glad to see the case studies and the progress that pharma has made in the past year. 

The primary lesson for pharma? Social media is just another essential marketing tactic. Either use it or get left behind. 

Social media not the be-all, end-all. It won’t necessarily transform the pharmaceutical industry’s image overnight. And it won’t necessarily help sell more product.

But social media gives the pharmaceutical a new marketing channel. A very important marketing channel that requires thinking about marketing differently. It’s not top-down marketing. It requires listening. It requires interacting with customers. It requires being able to handle negative criticism. And for now, it requires being able to regulate yourself because the FDA still hasn’t given any guidelines and probably won’t for a while.

I had an amazing experience last Friday at the CBI “Next Generation Rx Sampling Strategies” conference. Michael DePalma (Senior Director at Healthbridge) and I sat down the night before we were to give our 8:15 a.m. speech on “360 Degrees of Sampling”. We had the unsettling realization that our speech was not that groundbreaking and we were even using many of the same statistics others had presented the previous day. Most people would have panicked, stayed up late and re-written it. We dumped the whole presentation and decided to take a different path. We KNOW the hot topics, the taboo topics and the have a pretty good view of the future of sampling, so we decided to lead the audience in a spirited discussion on those topics, offering everyone in attendance an interactive learning forum. That was the plan, anyway. So, we created 3 slides and went to have dinner with colleagues.

When I woke up at 6:45 a.m., I realized that this presentation would either soar with the eagles or drop from the sky like a wounded buzzard – it was about 50/50. Fortunately, both Mike and I are strong speakers and good on our feet – it went beautifully, the audience was really engaged, we ended up having a completely different conversation – and we had a blast.

I give great credit to Mike – who gamely went along with my idea and was the catalyst that made it work. Thanks, Mike!!

Our CEO, Janet Carlson, served as Chairperson and gave a presentation at the HCMA Regional Forum in Manhattan on May 7th, 2009 along with Bob Brooks (WEGO Health), Dan Hoffman (Medcafe) and Hugh Jediwell (Mobile Anthem).

View Janet’s Presentation