Institute For The Future

More on Pharma Marketing

IFTF Affiliate Richard Adler has pointed me to "Drug Companies Lag in Adopting Social Media To Communicate With Consumers," at iHealthBeat. Echoing a theme from our recent conference, the author states:

In an era when more consumers are assuming greater clinical and financial responsibility for their health, people are seeking information to manage personal health risks from a broad range of online sources.

Her particular point? " Drug companies aren't necessarily keeping up."

The article references a study from earlier this year by Digitas Health that found that pharmaceutical marketers have not been early adopters of social media:

The survey found a "relevance gap" between how most marketers in the pharmaceutical industry use the Internet in their own lives, versus how they market to consumers and healthcare practitioners. While most reported that they personally utilize social media, two-way communication, personalized content and product comparison, fewer than half are offering those options to their customers.

Bruce Grant, from Digitas, is quoted on iHealthBeat as saying:

The risk to any industry that doesn't take notice of social media and understand it and adapt appropriately is the danger that they become irrelevant to the ongoing discourse.

Sounds about right to me.

 

One last interesting note: Johnson & Johnson is planning to launch a corporate-controlled blog, which should provide greater transparency to consumers. Will other pharma companies follow suit? Will J&J's official blog be as consumer-friendly and responsive as the Dell blog, or will it be an opportunity for it to put its corporate foot in its mouth, as Google recently has? Given J&J's track record in consumer health care, I'll bet on the former.