Who Are The Pharma Social Media "Wright Brothers (Sisters)"?

I just received an email from MM&M announcing that the Finalists for its 2010 Awards have been chosen. When I clicked on the link in the email, I was taken to a Web page where a silent video showed the "rigorous judging process" (see screen shot at left).

Looks like a Day at the Museum in which works of dead artists are displayed! Is this any way to judge a person's accomplishments?

Personally, I think people deserve more than a non-personal perusal of images or screen shots of their work. Of course, the MM&M Awards do not claim to be personal: "The only way to get your hands on an award," says MM&M "is to impress the judges with the quality of your work."

I doubt the judges even communicate with the people behind all that paper hanging on the wall.

When the Wright brothers started on their quest to build and fly the first successful motorized flying machine,  their work product would not have won any awards. "The Wright brothers built seven flying machines in their quest for a practical aircraft, each a test bed for untried theories and assumptions. When they guessed wrong, they crashed -- and the Wrights crashed each one of their aircraft more than once. However, knowing what doesn’t work points the way to what does. After each failure, they rebuilt and modified their aircraft, incorporating what they had learned in the new design. In less than a decade they taught themselves to fly" (see "Inventing the Airplane").

The Wright Brothers story is a good metaphor for building the first successful pharma social media campaign. No pharma social media campaign has yet flown without failure. Rather than look at these failures like the villagers looked at the king with no clothes and say how wonderful it is, I choose to look at the people behind the campaigns and reward the pioneers. That is what the Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award is all about.

My award is PERSONAL because social media is personal. Therefore, I plan to personally "meet" each nominee (find them here) and have each one tell me his or her story. I also plan to collect the opinions of their colleagues and ask them why nominees deserve an award. I've already collected many comments.

You can vote for nominees and write-in other candidates using the online form here. Not only your vote, but the comments you add will go a long way towards influencing me, especially if you offer details that back up your choices. Thank you for your help.

How DO You Pronounce "Boehringer Ingelheim"?

Yesterday, while at ExL's 6th Annual Public Relations & Communications Summit, I discovered that I was NOT the only person who had difficulty pronouncing "Boehringer Ingelheim," the name of a well-known, but difficult to pronounce German pharmaceutical company. At a roundtable discussion (see here), Kate O'Connor, Executive Director, Public Relations at Boehringer Ingelheim, corrected someone else who mispronounced her company's name. She then told us that she heard of a funny YouTube video that can help us with "Boehringer Ingelheim Pronunciation." Here it is (pretty funny):



Here's a little rebus/word pictogram that may help English-speaking readers better pronounce "Boehringer." Close enough, anyway. You're on your own with "Ingelheim," which seems easier to pronounce anyway.

Using Social Media in a Crisis: Distribute a Product Safety Widget Is One Idea

The "Social Media During a Crisis" roundtable discussion lead by Deborah Sittig (@GreenRoomMedia), Partner at Green Room Public Relations, was one of the most interesting events for me at ExL Pharma's 6th Annual Public Relations & Communications Summit. The question posed for discussion was "How can digital communications be utilized to best support patient safety during a crisis situation."

Also of importance was how to best protect the company's image during a crisis.

Needless to say, Sanofi-Aventis and Johnson & Johnson were the two most discussed case studies during the roundtable (see "Disgruntled Patient Shuts Down sanofi-aventis Facebook Page" and "Despite Its Social Media Expertise, J&J Fails to Use It Effectively to Communicate to Consumers").

Here's Sittig's summary of the discussion, which she is presenting right now at the conference:

Key Learnings:
Anticipation and preparation are critical

• No such thing as a “social media crisis plan”; social media should be incorporated as part of a larger crisis plan
• Create social media infrastructure (dark sites) in advance; have a plan in place so when a crisis happens, you are prepared

Relationships rule

• The right time to start blogger relations is now; waiting until after a crisis is too late and will make it more difficult
• Involve bloggers in identifying potential issues and developing a plan
• Bloggers will report on the facts in real time; treat them as you would a top-tier journalist

Own your space

• Familiarize yourself with all third party groups’ social media capabilities and cultivate relationships
• Consider credibility of third party relationships; many times their word is more credible than yours
• Corporate blogs are a great way to consolidate crisis communications, reach a global audience and minimize rumors/speculation
• Do not expect readers to “find” your blog but consider widgets and RSS feeds to maximize reach
• “Own” the conversation; create hash tags; plan before the big moment
• Compliment traditional news (ex. Press conferences) with a social media element (ex. Tweet during the press conference, engage in conversation)

My contribution was the idea of involving bloggers (like me) when developing your crisis scenario planning and deftly using widgets and RSS feeds to bring readers to your voice rather than relying on the "build it and they will come" strategy. There are plenty of stakeholders such as physician societies, online communities, patient blogs, etc. that would post a pharma company's widget on their sites -- especially if it was devoted to product recalls and drug safety information.

Not too long ago, Fabio Gratton (@skypen) proposed a similar kind of widget that pharma companies could sponsor that allowed patients to easily report adverse events to the FDA (see here).

If the goal of crisis management is to support patient safety and if the time to start managing a crisis is BEFORE it happens, then pharma needs to be more creative in pushing safety information -- even if it is bad news for their products -- out to stakeholders.  A drug safety widget is just one simple idea.

Media Blackout Imposed by Media People!

I spent yesterday at Pfizer headquarters in NYC attending and speaking at ExL Pharma's 6th Annual Public Relations & Communications Summit.

I met some of my Twitter pals there including Ray Kerins (@RayKerins), Steve Woodruff (@swoodruff), Mario Nacinovich (@nacinovich), and Zoe Elliott Dunn (@zelliott), among others. I didn't tweet very much while at the conference, but you can use the hastag #prsummit to see what other people were saying during the conference.

One issue many people Tweeted about was the "off the record" rule imposed by Mike Huckman (@MikeHuckman), SVP, Director of Media Strategy at MS&L, during the panel discussion "Exploring How Increasing Demands Placed on a Shrinking Number of Sector Reporters are Affecting Coverage of Health Care Issues."

Huckman also ordered us to shut off our mobile devices and pay attention, which was difficult to do after he imposed the rule that all comments were off the record.

"No quoting... Does anyone know how bizarre this all sounds?" said Len Starnes (@lenstarnes), a nominee for the Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award (see Len's bio).

Christiane Truelove (@ChristianeTrue) said "Still disappointed media panel here was made off the record. Some interesting things were said." She was being polite, as always.

During the Q&A, I noted that all my Twitter buddies were all atwitter about the blackout Huckman imposed and I asked him a simple question: "Why?" His answer was: XXXXXXXXXXXX (redacted).

In a followup tweet to Nacinovich, Huckman said: "Apologies ... 2 those disappointed it was off the record."

"Does 'off the record' exist now a days?!" asked Paulo Machado (@pjmachado). I guess it does for Huckman, who, BTW, is not a candidate for any SM Pioneer Award that I know of.

Professional "Hired Gun" Pharma Tweeters. Is It a Good Idea?

Pixels & Pills Blog's recent post, "Pharma Jobs of the Future: Professional Tweeters", got me thinking of a way to supplement my income. That is, hire myself out as a "professional Tweeter" to a pharmaceutical company.

Of course, freelance or contract professional pharma Tweeters is not what Pixel & Pills had in mind. They were talking about an employee of a pharma company assuming the role of professional Tweeter. Such a person, said P&P, "likely ... understands the company and its culture, the complaints and compliments shared by customers and, quite frankly, is invested in the success of the organization."

But this leads me to ask "Is there, right now, a professional pharma Tweeter who has been hired from outside the company to manage and write for the company's Twitter account(s)?"

I suspect that there are such people.

When @pfizer_news first started, many industry watchers wanted to know who was the person behind the Twitter wall so to speak. We were beginning to suspect that it was a hired gun.

At a conference last year I was glad to be introduced to the real person behind Pfizer's Tweets: Jennifer Kokell, Communications Specialist at Pfizer (see her LinkedIn profile).

Jennifer even has a photo of herself on the @pfizer_news Twitter page (see right). Several other pharmaceutical Twitter accounts also show who is the person who does the Tweeting.

Some pharmaceutical companies have hired "celebrities" as professional Tweeters. Racecar driver Charlie Kimball, for example, was hired by Novo Nordisk to Tweet via its @racewithinsulin Twitter account (listen to this podcast: "Novo Nordisk's Race With Insulin Campaign: It's Not Just About Twitter"). I suspect that some of Charlie's Tweets are edited before being sent out (see "Novo Nordisk Selectively Copies & Edits Kimball's Tweets"). If so, is this editing done by an outside "professional Tweeter" (ie, agency) or is it someone inside Novo Nordisk?

There are many ways in which outside agencies and consultants can be hired by pharma companies to help manage their social media accounts. Pharma has always outsourced many marketing functions. Should social media be handled differently? After all, social media is supposed to be the "true voice" of the organization. It's more personal than other forms of corporate communications.

I would be very disappointed, for example, if @JNJBTW was written by anyone else than Marc Monseau. I have established a personal rapport with Marc via this account. I understand that Marc may not be employed at J&J in that capacity forever and that someone else will eventually take over the @JNJBTW Twitter account. When that happens, I hope it's another person inside the organization and not a hired gun.

BTW, I am not seriously considering become a clandestine "hired gun" Tweeter for a major pharmaceutical company. Of course, if I was, I wouldn't tell you!

On Being Voted Off the Social Media Island

Here's a bit of irony. Today, I was virtually "voted off" the social media (Twitter) island of #hcsmeu by @FarmerFunster for being too promotional. The irony is that many of the topics discussed via #hcsmeu concern how the pharmaceutical industry can get more involved in interacting with consumers via social media, as if that interaction is NOT promotional!

BTW, this is not the first time I've been "voted off" a social media site. See "Banned from CafePharma!" In that case, however, it was a badge of honor :-)

The issue prompting @FarmerFunster to vote to kick me off #hcsmeu was a question I submitted for discussion: "Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award. Who should be nominated?" @FarmerFunster said "principle of it is OK but disagree with #hcsmeu being used as a promo channel within the hour tweet-up."

WARNING! PROMO AHEAD: Learn more about Pharmaguy's Social Media Pioneer Award here.

OK, so I wasn't really "voted off" the island. Only one disgruntled participant felt the topic was inappropriate. But one disgruntled social media participant can have a major impact -- go ask Sanofi-Aventis about that (see "Disgruntled Patient Shuts Down sanofi-aventis Facebook Page") or read "Social Media: Ask Permission to Join the Conversation First or You Just Might Get Your Ass Kicked!"

What @FarmerFunster doesn't realize about me is that "I am all promo all the time. That's what a SM Pioneer shld do." My goal is to promote what I consider good pharma marketing practices. To do that, I need to promote myself and also promote colleagues and sometimes paid advertising clients.

I decided to get involved with awarding excellence in pharma social media leadership because I wanted to promote what OTHER people are doing, not me.

DISCLAIMER: I also am not making one red cent from this effort. There are no PAID sponsors. ExL's Digital Pharma East conference is a sponsor and has offered to provide a venue for the award winners ceremony during the conference. While ExL Pharma is an advertising client of mine, this sponsorship is an unpaid cooperative co-promotion.

Meanwhile, I did get some interesting insights and opinions from other #hcsmeu participants in this morning's discussion. I will review these in another post. Right now I have to avoid the sharks as I swim away from the island.

Is This the Fate of Pharma Social Media Pioneers?

Recently, I announced the Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award, which recognizes excellence in social media marketing leadership (see announcement here and latest list of nominees here). The Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award is sponsored by ExL Pharma and the 4th Annual Digital Pharma East Conference. Winners will be announced at the conference in October, 2010.

While reading this week's issue of the New Yorker magazine, I came upon a cartoon that got me thinking about the fate of the people who may "win" this prestigious award.

Could it be that a similar fate awaits the ePharma Pioneers on my list?

I certainly hope not! I also hope that my readers will nominate and vote for candidates here and include some great comments about why such innovators should not be lead to slaughter :-)