[I'm talking pharma here. But just swap in your industry and the argument will likely apply!]

Here in the highly regulated prairies of pharma-land, there is a fair amount of fear and trembling about drug companies getting involved with social networking.

Many of the discussions start and end with the perceived potential pitfalls (lots of which are actually red herrings). What if a patient talks about an adverse event with our drug? How can we “talk” directly to patients? What if there is off-label discussion? Is it a form of marketing? What’s the ROI? What will the FDA think? How do we know what we can or can’t say?

All the pitfalls come to the surface – which are convenient excuses to do nothing.

But what few realize is that the biggest danger is the pitfall of doing nothing.

Not being involved where the discussions are already occurring is choosing to be irrelevant. And people ARE talking about your drug and your company – and their conditions, and their needs, and their desire to know more. Why shuffle your feet on the sidelines when the game is being played at midfield?

Not learning to communicate using new media is choosing to get and stay behind the eight ball. There are many safe, shallow-end-of-the-pool proven ways to begin to use blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube – and more importantly than any particular tactic or platform – there are straightforward ways to communicate and get involved. You don’t need a rulebook from the FDA to get started. You need to grow a pair.

Not moving forward when your competitors are learning the ropes is choosing to look regressive and out-of-touch. Social networking isn’t some alien passing fancy that will disappear overhead while your head is planted in the sand. It is now a normal and expected part of everyday communications. Some pharma companies are using it. Others…content to perch on the fence.

Doing nothing is not a strategy. It’s a cop-out. When discussing the potential pitfalls of social media, don’t forget the opportunity costs of the biggest one of all. Doing nothing.

TODAY’S NEWS

Takeda buys into Amylin’s weight-loss drug portfolio – Takeda will pay $75 million upfront for medicines including Amylin’s pramlintide/metreleptin and davalintide, in the second phase of testing needed for U.S. regulatory approval, Osaka- based Takeda and San Diego-based Amylin said in a statement…more Plus, quickie update on three other anti-obesity drugs being developed by various companies.

New lupus treatment (HGS/Glaxo) looking promising on pathway to approval – Human Genome Sciences Inc said its experimental lupus drug Benlysta was successful in a second large clinical trial, paving the way for approval of the first new treatment for the disease in 50 years…more

Vertex HepC drug cures 80% – The hepatitis C cure rates of greater than 80% across all four patient groups of the study are also the highest ever recorded in any telaprevir study to date and exceed the cure rates reported in separate studies of boceprevir, a competing hepatitis C drug under development by Schering-Plough…more

Let’s investigate: Amgen and Shire are the latest.

RECOMMENDED

Meetings. Event planning and execution, logistics, training. We can match you up with the ideal partner(s). Contact us (stevew at impactiviti dot com, or phone at 973-947-7429) for recommendations.

PLUS

Not counting on blockbusters – changes, and the future, at Sanofi-Aventis.

JUST FOR FUN

I was in downtown Philadelphia earlier this week for the inaugural ePatient Connection 2009 conference, a first-time event by the relatively new Kru Research (headed up by Kevin Kruse). I’ve known Kevin for years through our mutual work in pharma training/eLearning, but this was his first venture into organizing a conference.

Count me impressed.

Unlike last week’s Digital Pharma conference, which took encouraging steps in the direction of a more “unconference” format (review here), ePatient Connection had a more traditional, structured format. But unlike others – and I’ve been to MANY over the years – it was fresh, interesting, and basically…it rocked. The two days each flew by quickly.

I’m not going to attempt a content overview – that has actually been nicely done by Eric Brody here. And PharmaExec on-line gives a nice quick scan here, including some of the juicier quotes. Suffice it to say that the speakers were diverse, knowledgeable, and well-chosen. I’m saving my two thumbs up for the following:

This event was tight. By that, I mean it was run incredibly efficiently and smoothly. Sessions started on time, ended on time, did not drag, and the speakers were clearly prepped with directions to keep it focused and well-structured. The audio/visual setup was one of the best I’ve seen, even to the point of having a photographer going about the entire time taking a tremendous variety of pictures (immediately uploaded to Flickr). The Wi-Fi was strong. There were outlets/extension cords along one entire side. There was a Twitterscreen. Sessions were captured on video. The attendee goodie bag was one of the best ever, including several books, and even an iPod Touch! There were standard presentations, panels, interviews, open forums, 1-on-1 sessions, and even a Pecha Kucha (20 slides, each for 20 seconds) slot. Vendors had a chance to briefly show their wares up front, which is a great way to give them exposure without turning sessions into sales pitches. All in all, other conference organizers could learn a lot from this freshman endeavor. Kudos to Kru & crew for pulling this off.

This event was well-targeted. It’s way past time to start bringing together people from the pharma/device industry, the ePatient community, and other stakeholders in healthcare. Hearing from bloggers with medical conditions, and getting their perspectives (not only on stage, but actively throughout the conference on Twitter), was both inspiring and enlightening. Folks on the business side and on the consumer/patient/people side need to better understand one another, and this was a very helpful format to move the dialogue forward. The fact that we had a late entrant show up from FDA/DDMAC (Paul Loebach, a really nice guy) was a huge bonus.

I had the privilege of co-facilitating, with Jack Bilson and John Mack, two lunchtime discussions on Developing Guidelines for Social Media. Those sessions could have gone on for hours – very rich interaction and a high level of interest among the participants. But, of course, everything was running on time (I told you it was tight!), so we had to move along by 1:45 pm!

It does seem to me, after the last few weeks, that we really have turned the corner when it comes to use of Twitter in pharma/healthcare industry conferences, as there was an incredibly active and informative Tweetstream (hashtag: #ePatCon). Many, many people were “tuned in” to parts of this conference from around the globe, and participating virtually. And, of course, we enjoyed social occasions and a tweetup, where many of the pharma “early adopters” renewed friendships or met each other for the first time – always very rewarding.

This event was an exhausting and exciting pleasure to be a part of. Looking forward to the sophomore edition!

———-

Pharma Social Media resources: SocialRx

Subscribe to the Impactiviti blog via e-mail (which will bring you Impactiviti Daily – a brief of the day’s top pharma news)

Sign up for the Impactiviti Connection twice-monthly e-newsletter (see sample)

Connect with Steve Woodruff

I’m enjoying a two-day conference on the empowered health consumer (ePatients 2009) – one of the most enjoyable aspects being hearing directly from people with diseases (such as diabetes) who are living out the management of their conditions on-line.

I was taken aback late yesterday when one of the diabetes bloggers mentioned the constant GUILT that they labor under – and others chimed in to confirm this. This had not occurred to me before – just take your meds and manage your diabetes, right? Umm…no. It’s much more complex, apparently, and impacts people on many levels.

Later, while chewing on this, I realized that I did understand – I labored for decades under the relentless assault of undiagnosed and untreated depression, and sure enough, I lived with the guilt of it every day – not feeling the things I knew that I should, and constantly pushing the stone uphill every day in an unending cycle of self-doubt. Feeling like a burden to others. Feeling like I’m not overcoming.

So now this has me wondering – is this a regular “feature” of these long-standing, somewhat-manageable diseases? Even when you’re being treated? I’m very curious about the experiences of others with diabetes, or CF, or MS, or other conditions – are you taking your meds with a dose of guilt each day? Please give your insight in the comments. Your voice is important.

[and read this related post from Kerri Sparling, who has first-hand experience. The last sentence is the payoff]

(Image credit)

———-

Pharma Social Media resources: SocialRx

Subscribe to the Impactiviti blog via e-mail (which will bring you Impactiviti Daily – a brief of the day’s top pharma news)

Sign up for the Impactiviti Connection twice-monthly e-newsletter (see sample)

Connect with Steve Woodruff

You know how everyone wants to claim that they were physically present for earth-shattering historical events?

Well, in 20 years or so, pharma people across the globe will all claim that “I was there!” for Digital Pharma 2009.

OK, that’s a bit of hyperbole. But I WAS there this week, and so it’s time for a re-cap. Was it earth-shatteringly historic? Perhaps not. But did we move outside of the normal pharma conference comfort zones? Yes, I believe we did.

First, some background. My co-conspirator in the Pharma Social Media Aboveground, Shwen Gwee, decided to put on what (I believe) was the first pharma-focused “unconference” this spring, up in Cambridge, MA, in conjunction with HealthCamp Boston. It was an experiment, as pharma folks are not used to less-structured approaches to conferencing together. While it did not go “all the way” into true unconference format, it was a great taste of the potential for a more crowd-sourced approach to content and discussion. Jason Youner of ExL Pharma (conference organizers) attended, saw the benefits, and had the vision to transform Digital Pharma 2009 (DP 2009) into more of an unconference format (ironically, Shwen and I had originally met at DP 2008, when we found each other twittering the conference in the obscure old days when that was not a common practice). Shwen was asked to chair the event, and a group of us started brainstorming the how-to….

For those not familiar with the pharmaceutical industry, the air we breathe there is full of centralized, controlled, regulated, measured, one-way communications. Get the picture? We’re still in the evangelistic phase of encouraging social media adoption, and you can imagine that the informality of an unconference approach might be just a bit of a stretch. Nonetheless, a growing group of passionate early adopters has banded together (on-line and off-line) to try to move the industry into this century. And that core group, the Social Media Aboveground, has developed quite a camaraderie in the process.

So here’s what happened at DP 2009. Short story – we made good progress. Long story, with highlights:

- Most of the presenters made efforts to adopt a more informal style – walking into the audience, little use of podium, asking more questions to gain feedback and create discussion. My perception was that the relative success of this depended mostly on the charisma of the session leader, and also to some extent on the relevance or controversial nature of the content. Not all speakers can pull this off easily, and most pharma audiences are going to go through an adjustment period to loosen up and fully engage.

- Some speakers just gave their spiel, and some panels were just…panels. It’s going to take a while for both presenters and audiences to “get” a new way of interactive presenting.

- DP 2009 had the most active Tweetstream (outgoing & incoming) that I’ve seen yet at a pharma conference (see previous point for why that matters – deficient presentations did generate some snark!) As opposed to one year ago when Shwen and I were just trying it out, this conference was loaded with people using laptops and smartphones, and tweets were flowing freely. Some sessions had the chance to address questions from the Twitter (external) audience.

- Two panels were live-streamed on video. The regulatory panel had about 300 unique logins. This was a great step forward and I hope to see much more of this in the future.

- A couple of the sessions were experimental. One, featuring 2 Novartis employees (Erik Hawkinson and Melissa Clark), was a point-counter-point discussion. It was a bit stilted, and they ended up mostly agreeing after all was said and done, but it was a nice change-up. Another, featuring Fabio Gratton (IgniteHealth) and Xavier Petit (Shire), was an absolute hoot and had the audience laughing throughout. The two worked off of a soccer motif (Italy vs. France) and the accompany slides* to their point-counter-point discussion were hysterical. This was a great morning kickoff session.

- Another fabulous morning kickoff was Craig DeLarge’s (Novo Nordisk) engaging discussion on the Spirituality of Relationship Marketing. Craig has done a lot of work in the eMarketing and social media space and is one of the leading thinkers in the industry (besides being a really nice guy!) The audience interest was keen and the interaction (in-room and on-line) was quite robust. It was refreshing to have someone step back from the usual talk of metrics, compliance, and process, and focus on deeper, philosophical issues – such as are we seeking to build relationships, or just sell?

- Marc Monseau of J&J made a very compelling case that social media can, in fact, be done by pharma safely and effectively. Pharmaceutical companies that want to see how to move into social media really need to follow the lead of companies like Johnson and Johnson. This theme came back to the surface with a vengeance during the town hall meeting later (see below)!

- Heidi Youngkin (J&J) and Cynthia North (Bayer) were highly effective in provoking discussion and gaining audience interest. One of the surprises, however, came from outside the industry – a young diabetes blogger (Allison Blass) gave very valuable perspectives about patient/consumer engagement, and the audience clearly appreciated her contribution to the group. Allison’s involvement underscored something that came up multiple times during the 3-day event – we need to start bringing a wider range of people together for these conferences, from other divisions (like legal/regulatory) and even other industries.

- The highlight of the entire conference, however, was the true unconference Town Hall session at the end of the third day. This session was so lively that it carried right through the scheduled next session, which was folded in. Jon Richman wrote an excellent summary of this session, along with one of the key lessons that came out of it – read it here on his Dose of Digital blog (one of the best blogs in our industry, by the way). This session validated the entire approach – we moved through the event, by baby steps, into a growing comfort level with greater informality, and this final gathering showed that we can do “unconference”, even in pharma (note: I was there!)

Before I move on to a brief suggestion of what I’d like to see in the future for an IDEAL conference structure, a few other small notes:

- The Bridgewater NJ Marriott facility was pretty decent for this event. Easy to get to, perfectly adequate and convenient meeting rooms. The victuals were not quite up to the standard that I’ve seen in other events, but I’m sure that can be fixed. Wi-Fi was present and simple to login to, though I think we overwhelmed it a bit, esp. when the video stream was active.

- We had a great tweetup at the Maggiano’s restaurant across the street, sponsored generously by PixelsandPills. This was, to my knowledge, the biggest pharma tweetup  ever, and the discussion was loud and lively. Non-conference attendees traveled, in some cases, quite some distance to be there.

- The two pre-conference workshops (disclosure: I co-led one of them, with Zoe Elliott and Denise Barrett Quigley) helped set the table by incorporating creative table brainstorming exercises, to move away from the more traditional strictly didactic approach. This was very popular, and there was some Twitter back-channel trash-talking going on between the rooms as to which session was really better (note: ours was, of course! :>} As much as I really like Jon Richman and Fard Johnmar, who were leading that “other” session).

Now – based on this experience and the many other conferences I’ve attended in recent years – what would be the ideal conference structure for a pharma conference as we try to transform the way we gather and learn? Here are some of my ideas for a 3-day format that will incorporate both traditional and unconference elements:

:: Mornings: Mix of didactic sessions, with panel and audience discussions, addressing specific themes.

:: Afternoons: Conference organizers/advisors gather the main themes that arose and weave them into guided Town Hall discussions (unconference style)

:: Live video-cast of one or two key sessions daily

::Tracks:

Day 1 – Track: (traditional) eMarketing and integrated marketing. Track: Social Media. Keynote: Newest Trends. Combined Town Hall in afternoon. Evening: Social Mixer with some sort of fun event woven in (encourage informality)

Day 2 – Track: Regulatory/Legal/Gov’t issues. Track: New Technologies/Vendor Presentations. Keynote: ePatient Perspective. Combined Town Hall in afternoon. Evening: Tweetup

Day 3 – Track: eMarketing & social media in other industries. Track: Semi-structured Person-to-Person Networking opportunities. Keynote: Major Pharma Executive Industry Perspective. Combined Town Hall in afternoon.

…or something like that. The format should allow us to draw a wider audience, hopefully including regulators for part of the time, and by providing on-line streaming and interactive opportunities, to reach a broader audience with specific professional (and thematic) interests.

Someone grab these ideas and make it so. Because I guarantee – I’ll be there!

Thanks to Jason Youner of ExL (and his crew), Shwen Gwee for organizing, and all of the many participants who decided to engage in this experiment together. It was a blast!

Picture credits for Erik Hawkinson, Marc Monseau, Craig DeLarge, and table group: Jay Bryant.

* OK, so here’s a sample of soccer slides :>}

Oh – and we must not forget this hilarious video about the collision of social media and Legal/Regulatory from Nalts!

———-

Pharma Social Media resources: SocialRx

Subscribe to the Impactiviti blog via e-mail (which will bring you Impactiviti Daily – a brief of the day’s top pharma news)

Sign up for the Impactiviti Connection twice-monthly e-newsletter (see sample)

Connect with Steve Woodruff

Today, Pfizer is in the news for completing its acquisition of Wyeth. It’s a big day for the company, marked with the standard press releases and all the usual communications methods.

On Twitter? One boring tweet with a press release link.

The fact is, Pfizer has not been very aggressive with their social media presence. While they have a dynamic communications guy (Ray Kerins) who is shaking up how they relate to journalists and others, I’m not seeing a whole lot of progress on-line. Ray is a great guy; but I’m seeing other companies moving forward more purposefully.

Pfizer is a leading pharma company. They should be leading here, not trailing. What would I do if I was setting direction there?

1. Tweet in a more human fashion. The Pfizer twitter stream is mostly formal one-way communications, with the occasional clarification aimed at resident on-line provocateur, John Mack. Companies like J&J, Boehringer, and some others have gotten past the formal stage and are regularly interacting with other folks, putting a more human face on their companies via social media.

2. Fix the Twitter background. It’s not scaled properly for various monitor resolutions. And start using that sporty new Pfizer logo IMMEDIATELY. Shouldn’t there have been some announcement of that on-line? (I had to break the news of the updated logo, for crying out loud!)

3. Launch a company blog. Yesterday. Follow Marc Monseau’s lead over at J&J. There’s a lot to talk about – start putting your voice out there in the relatively safe confines of a blog. Right now, with the new combined company, is exactly the time to do it.

4. Launch a YouTube channel. Next week. Start telling company and patient stories. Make interesting and engaging videos. You don’t have to have comments or ratings enabled. It’s safe and straightforward. Other pharma companies have already taken this baby step – why not Pfizer?

5. Show up more. Start sending people to pharma eMarketing/social media conferences. If you have a team with more than Ray, then start circulating. Trust is built that way. Communication is enhanced that way. I communicate regularly with pharma networkers whom I see both on-line and off-line. The off-line matters.

These are simple, straightforward steps that any pharma company should take, especially a market leader. This is Social Media 101 stuff – not the more advanced and interesting things that also should be underway.

There are much smaller companies who are being quite pro-active in this space. This would be a very good time for Pfizer to seize the mantle of leadership…

———-

Subscribe to the Impactiviti blog via e-mail (which will bring you Impactiviti Daily – a brief of the day’s top pharma news)

Sign up for the Impactiviti Connection twice-monthly e-newsletter (see sample)

Connect with Steve Woodruff

Note: Impactiviti Daily is going to be published somewhat irregularly over the next 4 weeks, as we’re in the heart of “conference” season and I’m attending/speaking at several events over the next month. We’ll do our best to keep you updated!

TODAY’S NEWS

Pharma sales reps should be paid overtime? This is getting interesting – Novartis sales reps fighting for overtime pay just got a powerful ally. The US Department of Labor filed an amicus brief with a federal appeals court contending that a lower court was wrong to toss their lawsuit…more

AstraZeneca: KY says pony up $14.7M for marketing the spread – The ruling is the latest legal setback for AstraZeneca over the way its pricing. The drug maker was ordered by a jury in Alabama last year to pay $215 million for overcharging that state’s Medicaid program (back story). A judge later reduced that to $160 million, and AstraZeneca is appealing. In 2007, a federal judge in Boston ordered the drug maker to pay $12.9 million for overcharges, and an appeals court last month upheld the decision…more

BMS cuts 25% of Abilify sales force: any insiders have the actual number? – Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. cut the sales force for its second best-selling drug, the antipsychotic Abilify, six months after extending its contract to market the product with Tokyo-based Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. About 25 percent of the positions were eliminated, Brian Henry, a spokesman for New York-based Bristol-Myers, said yesterday in a telephone interview. The move happened this week, he said. He declined to give the number of jobs cut…more

Pfizer completes acquisition of Wyeth; cuts/closings coming; also slips updated logo into the mix!

RECOMMENDED

Managed Care/Account Manager training. Impactiviti’s partner network has a broad range of offerings for managed care training, from off-the-shelf to custom workshops, and more. Contact us (stevew at impactiviti dot com, or phone at 973-947-7429) for brainstorming and recommendations.

PLUS

Time. Talent. And Magic. Be sure to “set your own table” as you develop your career. From the StickyFigure blog.

JUST FOR FUN