Pharma-Bytes

Pharma Marketing: What Are We Measuring and Why?

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:39:00 +0000

Metrics and measurement are more important than ever. Management is increasingly focused on accountability and ROI, and metrics dashboards powered by multiple sources ensure that we can measure anything.

Google Analytics tallies, rolls-up, drills down and dissects whatever you tag. Internal data like rep territories, sales calls, patient databases, etc. can be married with external databases like physician prescribing data, census data, disease incidence, allergy indices, etc. Add it all up and you get data soup.

The Dashboard Trap
Just because your dashboard can measure everything doesn’t mean you should. We’ve become so obsessed with what we can count that we’ve lost track of why we’re counting. You need a carefully thought-out measurement plan that’s tied directly to your objectives, one that provides only actionable information that drives decisions.

An account manager asked me, "How should we code the various opt-in vehicles to track how many patients opt-in from each?" My question back was, "Why do you want to know? What decision does it drive? You won’t eliminate any opt-in vehicles because you want to give patients the opportunity to opt-in at every touch point."

The manager replied, "Well, don’t you think that would be nice to know?"

As you evaluate what data to collect ask yourself: What is nice to know vs. need to know? Is the information actionable? Does it relate to my objectives?

4 Key Measurement Questions
When putting together your next pharmaceutical marketing or advertising campaign, here are four questions to ask that will streamline your measurement plan:

1. What are we trying to accomplish? Clearly define your objectives and get management’s buy in.

2. What are the key metrics? Only track metrics related to your objectives. You’ll find you need less than "everything but the kitchen sink".

3. Where do I get the data? Be selective with data points, especially online metrics. Of course you’ll need more metrics to define website engagement than you will just to count opt-ins, but focus on the most important points of engagement. You don’t need to track every possible navigation path and page view.

4. How quickly and how frequently do I need the data?
Some things you need to know right away; others can wait. A basic tenet of decision analysis is calculating the value of information. The cost of obtaining information should be less than the value of the information itself. You’ll pay a premium to get IMS Rx data earlier, and staff hours add up quickly to generate daily or weekly reports across all metrics, so choose wisely.

Why Less Is More In Pharma Marketing
You might think it’s best to collect all the information you can get just in case you need it. If you think that senior management appreciates all this data, you may want to reconsider. Efficient measurement is tied to objectives. Management will appreciate your concise focus when you report back only the metrics that are related to your objectives.

If this post got your analytics juices flowing, go here for the blog post I did last year on unbranded DTC promotion and measuring the ROI. Or. access the full article published in PM360.

How are you measuring your pharma marketing and advertising campaigns? Email me or post a comment below.

By Chuck McLeester, Senior VP Planning, Metrics & Analytics
Roska Healthcare Advertising

For Pharmaceutical Advertising It’s Time to Think Inside the Box

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:21:00 +0000

Out of the box thinking is gold. It can differentiate me-too brands in competitive markets and increase profits. Clients demand it. Awards laud and applaud it. But it can also be a double-edged sword, often pushing the boundaries of what can and can’t be said, leading to an overstatement of efficacy, omission and/or minimization of risk information and making unsubstantiated superiority claims (the three most common violations sited by the FDA in 2009 – 2011).
Agency creative teams often complain that creativity isn’t possible within the box (confines) of regulatory guidance. However, what if we change the focus? Instead of trying to push the boundaries “out”, we push them “in”, focusing on advertising that falls well within the government and FDA guidelines. This sea change requires us to do something counter-intuitive. Think inside the box.
Inside – The New Outside.
Let’s start with the understanding that creativity isn’t defined by the size of the box, but how our solutions resonate within it. Here are a few of my thoughts about how to start thinking “inside the box”:

Ensure the agency’s creative team is rooted and grounded in the scientific rigor of the product and disease state. A deeper dive into the data and science will uncover hidden gems and opportunities. As a result, creative concepts will be more compelling, convincing, and a well-supported source of authority.
Foster an innate connection between the medical and creative teams. Bring them together early in the process and have them joined at the hip through the conceptual stages. Medically relevant creative solutions will soon outshine those ubiquitous, clichéd, formulaic offerings that fail to communicate substantial messages.
Engage the medical/legal/regulatory team early in the creative development. Ask them to review initial concepts. By doing so, you often avoid the situation where sweeping wholesale judgments must be made at the eleventh hour.

When the agency team truly embraces change and understands the parameters of “the box”, they’ll find opportunities galore (and the need to rewrite marketing claims to comply with warning letters will be a thing of the past).

Do you believe now is the time to focus on brilliant “in the box” thinking? Or do you think the existing model is doing just fine? Email me your thoughts and start a positive dialogue.
By Jay Bolling, President & CEO
Roska Healthcare Advertising

4 Mobile Marketing Must Haves

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:07:00 +0000

The mobile revolution is here. While the word revolution gets overused, the point is, you need a mobile strategy to reach audiences on the go (whether they are healthcare professionals, patients or caregivers). For this post, I boiled down the mass of information and strategies out there to create a quick, insider’s guide to mobile. So, here you go:

1.Right-size Your Content. DON’T take your entire brand.com website and try and make it mobile friendly. It won’t be. Instead, serve up pared back content that gives your audience only what they need—while they’re on the go.

2. Integrate Into Everyday Life. Physicians, nurses, patients and caregivers are not technologists. They just happen to be people who use technology as a part of their everyday life. Ensure your content, app, whatever—make their jobs easier. Make the management of their disease easier. Make their discussion with one another easier and more productive.

3. Make It Easy to Find. You put a lot of time and money into your solution. But nobody’s going to use your great solution if they can’t find it. So, market it. Optimize it for mobile search. Promote it using mobile media and traditional/digital channels.

4. Measure Your Success. Put the metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) in place to know if you hit the mark (or more important if you just released a dud). Prove the value not only to your audience, but the senior management team that funded that puppy. It’s how you’ll know you made an impact in the lives of the people you touched, and also have the data to secure the funding for your next big initiative.

And, don’t lose sight of the core foundation for building any solid strategy (digital or otherwise).

Gather Insights. You need to truly know your audience, whether HCPs, pharmacists, patients or caregivers.
Make it Relevant. Understand what’s important to your customers. It’s not about shouting out your message or app, it’s about giving them what they want and fulfilling their needs.
Provide Value. Whatever you’re offering—content, dosing apps, co-pay offsets—provide value. It’ll create connections and establish relationships that will pay dividends big time.

Think I missed any major steps or buckets? Email me or post a comment below.

By Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer
Roska Healthcare Advertising

Apple iPad Killed the Flash Video Star: H.264 May Offer Video Across All Devices

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:24:00 +0000

Broadband access to the Internet has become commonplace. And, the desire to view online video by healthcare professionals only continues to increase. Until recent, Adobe Flash (flv format) has been the industry standard for viewing online video; however, its popularity with marketers (and their tech teams) have dropped over time for a variety of reasons. One key reason is that Flash is not compatible with the most popular mobile devices (iPhone, iPod, and iPad). While Apple rocked as the device leader for the past 3 years, it’s kept Flash from being the video star of mobile.

Last September, Adobe saw the writing on the wall and announced their media server (Adobe's Flash Media Server 4.5) will have the ability to detect any device visiting a website and determine the best format to stream content. Sounds great, but two concerns with the Flash Media Server still exist:

1. It currently only supports Flash video formats (flv)

2. In some cases, it’s cost prohibitive to install and maintain

While interesting from a technology and ‘geek’ perspective, what does all this mean to marketers? How can one user experience be created that’s as seamless as possible, cost effective to deploy across all devices, and not give design and tech teams fits?

So, I assessed the present situation and came up with a realistic approach to serving video across the majority of browsers and devices, with as little duplication of effort an assets as possible, making the marketer, creative, tech team, and client happy.

Present Situation
Whether you’re marketing to healthcare professionals or consumers, most are consuming video on various devices. Whether performing research, viewing testimonials, watching presentations, or just plain hitting Netflix or YouTube, video consumption is becoming more popular every day. And, if your online/digital campaigns don’t or can’t display video across the majority of desktop and mobile devices, you’re missing big opportunities to connect with your audience.

Potential Solution
The good news is there’s a format called “m4v” available that uses “H.264” (the same compression used for BlueRay DVDs). When used together, they create a neat little video format that will play across virtually any mobile/tablet device and in the Flash player itself. Based on our tests, it performs well on mobile and may offer a potential solution for overcoming the limitations of Flash video formats.

Recommendation
Implementing the solution above is not that hard. And, it let’s you leverage a single video asset (as opposed to creating different videos for different devices). All you need to do is tell your agency, creative, or tech team to have your website detect the device and web browser hitting your website before it loads. If the browser can handle HTML5 and on an Apple device, play the H.264 video right through the browser. On the other hand, if the browser is older and the device is anything other than an Apple product, load Flash and play the H.264 video through Flash.

The end result? With a few lines of code, and one video file, you can unify the video user experience across virtually all browsers and devices.

If there’s anything I’ve missed or you want to continue the debate, leave a message in the comments or contact me directly.

By Dennis Hatcher, Director of Technology

Cheat Sheet for the New FDA Social Media Guidelines

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:51:00 +0000

I’ve read countless blog posts, POVs and articles discussing the new FDA social media guidelines released in December of last year (cleverly worded as “Responding to Unsolicited Requests for Off-Label Information About Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices.”)

Most people reading this blog don’t have the hour in their day needed to read the actual document, decipher it (let’s face it, the title alone is somewhat cryptic), and most important figure out what to do with it.

So, I created the cheat sheet below that can easily be read over your next coffee break or between meetings.

Point 1. The FDA is expressing trust and faith in us. (so let’s not screw it up). In writing, the FDA recognizes:

Firms are capable of responding to requests about their own products in a truthful, non-misleading, and accurate manner
It can be in the best interest of public health for a firm to respond to an unsolicited request about off-label use of its products (after all, who knows the most about the product than the manufacturer?)
If a firm responds to unsolicited requests the FDA does not intend to use the firm’s response as evidence of intent that the product be used for unapproved or unclear use (reading between the lines…no FDA warning letter if you follow the rules)

Point 2. There is finally FDA draft guidance on what we can do – respond to unsolicited requests for information about off-label use. For this point I’ll focus on public requests only (those viewable on a website, YouTube channel, Facebook, etc.) The same principles apply regardless of whether the information was posted to a digital property you own, or on completely independent properties on which you choose to inject/respond.

1. Your medical team should respond, not your marketing team.

2. Your answer should be tailored to the specific request (don’t go broader or you’ll receive the letter you wish you hadn’t). To be completely safe, it may be best to pull information straight from your PI.

3. Information provided should be truthful, accurate and balanced (see point 2 above).

4. Information should help direct people to the right information and right resource. Give them an appropriate number for medical affairs to properly discuss their request. Be proactive and state that the request is for a use that has not been approved or cleared by the FDA. State your actual indication and provide a link to the full prescribing and safety information in your response. And, make sure you provide adequate risk information so your response is truly balanced.

Point 3. Read between the lines. Nowhere in the guidance does it state off-label statements or requests must be deleted. Read this point 3 times out loud at your next med/legal review. Then, enlightening the group by stating that if one person is requesting this information, many people are requesting it. Leaving the post visible, with a properly-worded response would not only help the original poster, but all those having that same request (just remember – those responses are of an enduring nature, so keep an eye on your label and track your responses to ensure you update everything if your label changes). Another interesting point is that nowhere in the document does the FDA provide guidance around on-label requests. This, in conjunction with Point 1 above, is a little cue that we should keep innovating and exploring (responsibly) in the on-label promotion/conversation space.

Point 4. Maintain and file your records. You should always maintain and file all responses. Not only is is good for you (and provides a proper audit trail), but submitting them on a regular basis to the FDA will also show good faith and keep the agency at the forefront of technology and consumer health.

Summary
This is a first step by the FDA. I’m hopeful there will be future hearings and additional guidance that allows us to innovate and better connect with physicians, patients and caregivers.

Remember what I said in Point 1. The FDA is expressing confidence in us. Let’s not screw it up.

If there’s anything I’ve missed or you want to continue the debate, leave a message in the comments or contact me directly.

By Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer

2011 Holiday Pharma Fun in Social Media – Sort of…

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:31:00 +0000

‘Tis the season for…social media in pharma? Well…sort of. This year the developers at the company I work for, Roska Healthcare Advertising, decided it would not only be fun to create an interactive holiday card (the likes of JibJab), but also to serve me up as the geeky poster child shamelessly promoting the fun (I had nothing to do with this).

While I had nothing to do with the card this year, other than be the token geeky elf of the office, I was pleased to see that the creative team of misfits – as well as the development team of elves – really gave thought to this year’s fun and games and made sure our promotion still held true to the core position that really makes our company different.

Without any prodding by Santa, Mrs. Claus, Jack Frost, Frosty the Snowman, or any other Yule Tide character…the team at Roska Healthcare made sure this year’s interactive activity put our money where our mouth is and incorporated the 3 P’s of pharma marketing into our own seasonal promotion.

I invite you to interact with the card, upload some of your greatest photos, and pass along loads of cheer and well wishes. During the process, look for the 3 P’s we seek to embody in all out strategic communications: Personalization, Personification, and Projection.

It was a great 2011. I wish everyone all the best for 2012. And, if you want to have a bunch of fun at my expense, please utilize our agency’s interactive holiday card.

4 Things Pharma Can Learn From PepsiCo to Avoid FDA Warning Letters and FTC Fines

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:25:00 +0000

Pharma marketers and manufacturers can add a few more government agencies and watchdog groups to their growing list of ‘reviewers’. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) to name just two.

I’ve been covering the debate over online data mining and behavioral targeting for some time. If you need a refresher, want to see what sparked a fire last year, and read a lively exchange in the comments section with Jeff Chester, executive director of the CDD from my post go here.

The FTC and the watchdog groups rightly state that consumers should know what data is being tracked while they’re browsing various web/mobile properties and/or clicking ads. I have no issue with this. Where I do have an issue is the assertion that mining data and behavioral targeting is bad. When done properly, it can actually help patients find therapies indicated for them. It can help caregivers find support programs to help them keep their loved one compliant so they achieve a better outcome. Why on Earth would we ever want to put legislation in place, or create yet one more obstacle to achieving superior care in an increasingly challenging and stressed healthcare environment?

Let’s get smart. We still have the opportunity to do a good job policing our industry and putting best practices in place, before legislation mandates a suboptimal set of rules for us.

And, we can learn a lot from the recent spanking PepsiCo received from the watchdog groups and complaints filed to the FTC regarding their recent shenanigans.

1. Accurately Describe Your Online Activity. If it’s a game, call it a game. If it’s a promotion, tell people. If it’s a persistency program, make sure people understand for who it’s intended, the medications used, and the approved indications.

2. Develop Campaigns With Full Transparency/Disclosure. Tell your consumers what your program is about, what you want them to get out of it, and why they should care. Transparency and disclosure builds trust and social currency you can’t get any other way.

3. Succinctly Describe Your Data Collection And Use Policies. Tell people what data you’re collecting, how you will use it (for their benefit), and more importantly…how you will not use it/protect it.

4. If You Didn’t Follow 1-3…Fix It…Now. Look at your own campaigns and then read the complaints against PepsiCo again. If you made any of these mistakes, fix them now. Be proactive. It will pay dividends in the end.

There is still time for pharma to police itself. If we pay close attention to other industries, the warnings, the filing of complaints, we can write our own best practices that will benefit everyone – marketers, manufacturers, healthcare providers…and most importantly patients.

If there’s anything I’ve missed or you want to continue the debate, leave a message in the comments or contact me directly.

By Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer

Forget FDA’s Social Media Guidance…Bring Real Life Stories to Patients Using the 3Ps

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:05:00 +0000

While pharma companies wait for the long-delayed FDA Guidance on the use of social media, patients and caregivers share information about diseases, drugs and treatments on Facebook, Twitter and numerous online forums devoted to specific conditions.

733,000+ people like StandUptoCancer on Facebook
40,000+ like Gluten FreeVille
Rheumatoid Arthritis Warrior has 10,000+ likes

The reason that healthcare is so alive in the social media space is simple — people want to connect, interact and share information about their health. They want to know that they’re not alone, and to learn how others in their situation are feeling and coping. Caregivers of patients with serious diseases also want to share and seek information about their patients. One caregiver on a liver cancer forum put it well:

We're the place to vent. These forums are designed to be a safe place where people can feel comfortable saying things or asking questions that they never would dare say to the people around them. Others not on a cancer journey don't really understand what runs through the minds of those dealing with tests, diagnoses, or treatment for their loved ones. No question is off limits and there is not judgment of anything you want to express. Likely we've
seen it all before —sadly.

And while pharma can’t provide that type of open forum, we can certainly use other tactics that are acceptable in the current regulatory environment to connect patients with the experiences of others in their situation. You can invite patients to tell their story and clean up anything that’s objectionable to medical, legal or regulatory. Once you have an acceptable version you can use your digital properties to post patient profiles, showcase real-life caregivers and their coping strategies, tell success stories, motivate people to continue with their therapy, and more.

Don’t limit yourself to brand.com to reach out to patients and caregivers. Create a YouTube channel. Consider an unbranded site that you optimize to reach patients and caregivers with a particular condition and do a branded hand-off once you have them engaged. Whichever, tactics you employ, the key to success is incorporating the 3Ps into your communications.

Personalization acknowledges their condition, provides empathy and emulates
the “loved-one connection” as defined in the Edelman Health Engagement Barometer.
Personification uses life moments to allow patients to see themselves, painting a realistic picture of the potential problem and solutions.
Projection provides a ‘roadmap’ for action and empowers patients to take responsibility for their health/well-being.

The 3Ps create acceptance — an integral part of moving patients from awareness to action. They form the basis of Roska Healthcare’s Catalyst Brand Acceptance Model. For more information on the Catalyst Brand Acceptance Model.

If there’s anything I’ve missed or you want to continue the debate, leave a message in the comments or contact me directly.

By Chuck McLeester, Senior VP Planning, Metrics & Analytics

Why Facebook’s August 15 Comment Policy Shouldn’t Impact Your Pharma Brand

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 03:58:00 +0000

The fact that Facebook’s new policy going into effect August 15th – where admins of pharma pages will no longer be able to disable commenting (with the exception of branded Rx drug pages with fair balance and ISI) – has been well covered in the press. Go here if you need a refresher.

Rather than writing about the mechanics behind the move, providing advice to brand managers or agencies that are pulling their hair out trying to work around the inevitable, I thought I’d focus on why the new Facebook policy should NOT impact your brand.

That statement might sound a bit odd, but if you created your Facebook strategy correctly, the August 15^th change shouldn’t impact you at all for two simple reasons.

You already know your pharma brand pages shouldn’t expect to be ‘liked’ because it goes against the psychosocial behavior of patients. We published a post previously on A Different Perspective about the challenge of getting patients to reach the point of acceptance, that their lives are forever changed upon diagnosis of a chronic disease, and they are living a ‘new normal’. Do we really think they’re going to declare public support for a medication that’s helping them hide their condition from public display, or not continually remind them they have the disease? Consumers may feel gratitude the medication is available, they may feel better physically taking their medication, but do they ‘like’ it? No. It’s a continual reminder that they are flawed in some way and must take their medication to achieve their ‘new normal’. Regardless, you don’t have anything to fret over in August, because your pages are exempt. And, the good news is there are a few recommendations for how you can create greater engagement and a reason for people to like your Page farther down in this post.
You’re already ahead of the curve and have a social media policy in place that allows for open commenting. Yes, I said it. You’re progressive enough to have processes and procedures in place to respond to off-label discussion and have a solid system (and resources) for following up on potential mentions of adverse events. I’ve never seen a company receive a warning letter for honestly trying to do right, responding appropriately, being transparent and doing it’s best to comply with existing regulations.

With the August15^thchange looming, the position you’re in may well be water over the damn at this point. Here are a few suggestions that might help never put you in this position in the future.

For Product Brand Pages
Develop a content strategy that appeals to the Facebook audience. You’ll probably still have commenting turned off, but your content strategy should give the audience as much value as possible. Build into your Page interesting, dynamic and responsive interactions like:

Video stories from real patients (not canned scripts and hired actors)

Provide patients with access to co-pay cards/discounts (who isn’t interested in saving money in this economy?)

Link to your patient support programs (the Facebook Universe is enormous. If people are seeking support, help them find it)

Repurpose your valuable assets and make them available (take all of the assets you worked so hard to create an provide a way to access the via the Page)

Are you going to see a huge bolus of ‘likes’ when you alter your brand Page? Probably not, but it also won’t cost you a fortune to capture a few thousand extra ‘likes’ and enrollments in your patient support programs – driven largely from the assets you’ve already created. Go here to visit the TOBI Page and see an example from Novartis that is moving that direction.

For Disease State/Lightly Branded Pages
Open commenting is coming (in less than two weeks), so you need to deal with it, understand the psychosocial behavior of the Facebook audience and build your social currency. Here’s a few things to think about when developing your next strategy:

Establish your social media policy and rules of engagement. Without clear internal guidelines, you can’t effectively develop an external-facing strategy. Take the time, consult experts, get it documented and internally approved. We’re getting more social by the day, so time is of the essence.

Give people a reason to ‘like’ your Page. Give them value. Provide them support. Offer up exclusive access to a coupon by participating in an interactive activity, or host an upcoming event.

Engage in the conversation. With your social media policies in place, engage in the conversation. Monitor the conversation and interject where required by present regulations. Do your best to follow-up on what might be an adverse event and provide a link and phone number to the FDA site to help consumers report side effects they may be experiencing. Put the processes and people in place to do this right. Your consumers and bottom line will appreciate it.

DON’T create a faux experience. In my opinion, creating a “custom wall”, that does not allow commenting goes against the intention of Facebook. You need to align your content and strategy with your visitors’ expected experience. If you look at your strategy and think you can’t do that, then you probably shouldn’t invest in building a Facebook Page.

The Final Word
View the August15th deadline as a wake up call. Unless you own and fully control your digital property, you’ll always be subject to policy changes of others. When building digital strategies keep this in mind and also don’t lose sight of your customers and what they want/need. Give them support, provide them value, and do it on their terms.
If there’s anything I’ve missed or you want to continue the debate, leave a message in the comments or contact me directly.

By Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer

Unbranded DTC Advertising: Where’s the ROI?

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 18:22:00 +0000

Multiple choice – Unbranded DTC advertising is a:

a. Market expansion strategy that only benefits the category leader

b. Regulatory inevitability that will be the death of DTC

c. Waste of money

d. First step toward engaging patients with your brand and generating a measurable ROI

e. None of the above

If you answered anything other than d, then read on. Unbranded advertising is not what you think. It has the power to bring patients into your brand’s franchise in a cost-effective way – patients who might not otherwise pay attention to your message. Read the full PM360 article here: http://www.pm360online.com/f1_Unbranded_DTC_Advertising_ROI_Pharma_Healthcare_0511

Estimates have put the ROI on branded DTC advertising at about 2:1.

Properly planned, executed, measured and managed, unbranded advertising can do much better. More on the ROI metrics later, but first, here’s why unbranded advertising can work for you whether you manage a new, first-in-class brand or a later entrant to an established category.

Awareness Isn’t Enough

Branded DTC is based on the traditional consumer marketing assumption that brand awareness leads to increased sales; that awareness leads directly to action. The assumption is that just like hearing about a consumer brand on TV entices people to buy that brand at the supermarket, hearing about a pharmaceutical brand will entice them to ask for it at the doctor’s office.

Except that it doesn’t work that way. Simply increasing awareness of a disease state is not enough. There’s a big step between awareness and action in consumer behavior around healthcare – and that’s acceptance. Consumers need to understand and accept their need for treatment before they take action about a specific brand. Telling them about your brand before they’ve internalized the need for it is futile.

Making Unbranded Work for Your Brand

Using a combination of online and offline vehicles you can engage consumers to assess their risk and find out more about a disease or condition, not your brand. When they respond you need to carefully manage their journey toward acceptance. Don’t take them directly to Brand.com – they’re not ready for that. Instead, create an online presence where they can explore and assess their potential risk. Make it easy for them to link to brand information when the time is right for them.

As you manage this dialog, it’s important to understand that acceptance is not a single event, but rather a process. There are three steps on the path toward acceptance: Avoidance, Assessment, and Acknowledgement. These three phases of acceptance are defined in the Catalyst™ Brand Acceptance Model developed by Roska Healthcare Advertising in consultation with Wharton School behavioral psychologist Talia Myron-Schatz, PhD.

Find out more about the stages of acceptance here.

Where’s the ROI?

Here are two ways you can prove the ROI of this approach:

Isolated market testing
Patient value vs. patient acquisition cost

Isolated market testing

Pick a group of markets and pilot your unbranded effort for an 8 to 12 week period. Measure NRxs in those markets from the onset of the campaign through 3 months post campaign (the extended time gives patients a chance to evaluate their situation and see their physician). Compare the NRxs during that period against NRxs in non-test markets for the same period, and against NRxs in the same markets for prior periods. Did your brand grow more (or lose less) in the test markets vs. the control markets? Calculate and extrapolate the incremental revenue from the test markets and compare it against the cost of rolling out the campaign. The analysis will show your ROI from the unbranded effort.

If there are other variables at play, factor them into a regression analysis to determine the relative weight of those factors against the unbranded DTC.

Patient Value vs. Patient Acquisition Cost

This methodology compares a patient’s lifetime value to the brand against the cost to acquire a new patient. It requires that you know the average length of therapy in days for your brand and the wholesale average cost of your brand per day.

Monitor each key metric in your pilot markets – cost to get a response, conversion rate of responses to Rxs, and cost to acquire a patient. Managing your online or offline DTC efforts to the cost per response requires ongoing tweaking to the media buy, but ongoing adjustments can yield improvements of 70% or more in cost per response. Conversion to Rxs takes longer to measure, but you can do it with a combination of incentive redemptions and incremental Rxs in the test market (as measured above).

The Bottom Line

Unbranded advertising can give your brand an advantage when it comes to reaching people who are not yet ready to take action. It allows you to start a conversation and insert your brand into it after you’ve led the prospect through the assessment phase – when they’ve moved beyond avoidance and denial and they’re ready to take action.

If there’s anything I’ve missed or you want to continue the debate, leave a message in the comments or contact me directly.

By Chuck McLeester, Senior VP Planning, Metrics & Analytics

IMS wins Supreme Court ruling, an important decision for the future of Rx marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:04:00 +0000

The recent IMS ruling is an important decision for the future of pharmaceutical marketing. Rx data is used to target, segment and measure the effectiveness of sales/marketing efforts. State legislators have made a move to block access to data on privacy grounds, but the Supreme Court has recently ruled in favor of the industry:

Vermont further argues that detailers’ use of prescriber-identifying information undermines the doctor patient relationship by allowing detailers to influence treatment decisions. But if pharmaceutical marketing affects treatment decisions, it can do so only because it is persuasive.

Fear that speech might persuade provides no lawful basis for quieting it.

Vermont law currently restricts the sale, disclosure, and use of pharmacy records that reveal the prescribing practices of individual doctors. But on June 23, 2011, Justices Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Sotomayor delivered the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court that speech in aid of pharmaceutical marketing is a form of expression protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. As a consequence, Vermont’s statute must be subjected to heightened judicial scrutiny. In their opinion, as it relates to practical operation, Vermont’s law “goes even beyond mere content discrimination, to actual viewpoint discrimination.”

Branded pharmaceutical promotion is one of the most regulated forms of communications of any industry. Every word is scrutinized by lawyers, regulators, medical professionals, and the FDA to ensure its accuracy and ‘fair balance’ in presentation of the supporting data. As a result, I’m continually astonished by the apparent short-sightedness of individuals like William Sorrell (Attorney General of Vermont) and other outspoken industry critics who attempt to limit the dissemination of this information based on its ability to “influence prescription decisions that are not in the best interests of patients.”

Why isn’t ‘accurate information’ in the best interest of anyone who is making treatment decisions? If a physician sees a significant number of diabetes patients, isn’t it a benefit to her/him for the industry to provide accurate information specific to diabetes. On one hand, our industry is criticized for disseminating information that consumers may not need (e.g., in broadcast DTC advertising) and, at the same time, we’re criticized for using data that allows us to target messages to those who it most benefits (e.g., The Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog, U.S. Public Interest Research Groups and World Privacy Forum’s 144-page complaint in late November, and current state regulations such as Vermont).

Consumers and healthcare professionals need more information about pharmaceutical products, not less. And the more targeted it is to their specific interests and needs, the better. When will legislators and certain ‘public interest’ groups stop trying to tell us what’s best for us, and let us evaluate this ‘accurate information’ so we can make a decision for ourselves. I’m curious to know how many of the Vermont legislatures actually asked physicians what they want, before making decisions in ‘their best interest?’

What’s your take on the ruling? Drop me a line in the comments or email me to continue the discussion.

By Jay Bolling, President of Roska Healthcare Advertising

Usability and Utility Considerations for Mobile (A Healthcare Marketer’s Perspective)

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 23:24:00 +0000

Last week I had the opportunity to attend iPharmaConnect and hear Meg Walsh of Augme Mobile Health and other thought leaders share best practices for connecting with patients and healthcare professionals via the mobile web. Walsh pointed out that we’re reaching a tipping point where healthcare marketers are realizing the urgency of mobilizing their digital assets. We know that the mobile internet isn’t just for the young or affluent, and increasingly our customers are accessing mobile content at the point of care or at the point of decision making. Walsh’s talk got me thinking about mobile web strategy considerations for pharma and healthcare marketers.

Typically, the logical place for marketers to start in mobilizing digital assets is with their product websites. In my experience, there are two incorrect assumptions that are often encountered at this stage:

1. That your product website needs an app. In most cases, an app is absolutely not needed. (But, if you do create an app, you better have a damn good plan to promote it.)

2. That your mobile website should contain all of the content of your existing product website.

Number two is all too common in pharma, and I get why. A lot of effort went into developing and gaining approval of those 60+ pages of DDMAC-compliant website content. It’s understandable that there’s this knee-jerk reaction to want to port all 60+ pages of paragraph piled onto paragraph of copy over to a mobile website. But that’s not what optimizing for mobile is all about. Mobilizing digital assets means designing for usability and utility on a mobile device. It’s about making sure your customers can access and comprehend key information with as few clicks (or taps) as possible.

In short, mobilizing digital assets requires a different content strategy than your desktop site. The mobile web demands a simplified approach to design, layout, navigation, and copy. Below are basic principles for pharma/healthcare marketers to adhere to in producing a customer-centric mobile website.

Focus on the content that will be most useful for your mobile customers. At the point of care, dosing and reimbursement info might be most valuable to your HCP customers. Patients on the other hand might want info about product benefits and whether there is a patient assistance program available to them before they decide to fill an Rx. This will of course vary by product and ultimately your business objectives, but the key is to identify how customers want to interact with your brand on a mobile device and what will be most useful to them. Your mobile website should then be designed to reflect these customer insights. And there are number of ways to get at this information, like analyzing the navigational paths of your existing mobile traffic, using tools to discover popular mobile search queries relevant to your product and therapeutic category, and ultimately, asking your customers what would be useful to them.

Design your mobile website with the mobile reader in mind. A recent usability study reported that it’s twice as difficult to read content on a mobile device than it is on desktop. The smaller screen impairs reading comprehension for two reasons:

1. Users see less at any given time (less context = less understanding)

2. Users must move around the page and scroll to refer to other parts of the content (this takes time, degrades retention and diverts attention)

This data uncovers a need to modify and shorten copy to ensure your customers can easily read and comprehend it on a mobile device. This principle applies to any industry, but it becomes especially important when we’re communicating critical health information. Again, your mobile site doesn’t need to contain all of the content of your desktop site. It’s best practice to present the key information, and then offer a link to the expanded desktop version for those who have the time and inclination to delve further from their mobile device. You can also consider adding an option to email the site link so that way, once on a desktop, your customers are reminded to check out the expanded content.

Got any other mobile tips you want to share or topics you’d like us cover in an upcoming post? Leave a note in the comments or contact me directly.

By Arly Iampietro (@arlyi), Digital Campaign Strategist at Roska Healthcare Advertising

Peer Pressure: Patients are talking about you. Have a say.

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:46:00 +0000

1 in 4 patients living with a chronic condition turn to the internet for peer support according to Pew Research. This is a compelling statistic, but what can pharma marketers do with this knowledge? Ultimately, we want to ensure patients find the right answers to their questions and have an ability to access the support they are seeking online -- all while remaining in compliance with present FDA guidelines. Though DDMAC announced they intend to issue draft guidance before month’s end, we can’t sit around waiting for direction which may be delayed or incomplete. What we can do is grasp opportunities to connect patients and promote advocacy within the current regulatory environment.

Two different levels of peer-to-peer involvement are currently possible and are already being implemented while conforming to present-day guidelines: Indirect influence of the conversation and direct control of the connections.

1) Indirect Influence

One option is to provide patients with the resources they need in order to ignite meaningful conversations. For example, you can provide patients with brochures, fact sheets, and information which helps them have an informed conversation about their condition and your product. You can also assist them in finding the appropriate venues where they can converse. This provides indirect positive influence of user interactions, as materials can be carefully crafted and delivered with compliance in mind. Epilepsy Advocate from UCB is one example of this type of program which offers patient stories, webcast events, and advocacy information. These benefits provide a sense of community and guide patient conversations without the risks associated with an open forum.

2) Direct Control

A second option which offers increased control of the conversation (yet requires significantly more involvement) is to offer patients support by directly connecting them with peer mentors or advocates. The PEER Network from United Therapeutics and BETAPLUS from Bayer are two patient support programs which use this strategy. Both programs include peer mentor opportunities in which patients can connect with trained mentors via email or phone -- as well as a variety of other patient resources.

Patient conversations will continue to happen online whether or not these peer-to-peer resources are available. It’s in the best interest of both marketers and patients to ensure that support is available which includes the right information. Many have already taken steps to guide patient interactions online by offering mentoring programs, advocacy materials, blogger summits, story sharing, and more.

Regardless of the tactic used, we have to act now in order to make an impact. It’s possible to remain compliant while exploring new mediums to connect patients with the accurate information and support they are already searching to find online.

Check out the Dose of Digital Pharma & Healthcare Social Media Wiki for additional examples of existing peer-to-peer initiatives. Please share your top picks and best practices in the comments below.

By Kate Gomulka (@gomulks), Integrated Media Specialist at Roska Healthcare Advertising

PDFs: The Redheaded Stepchild of Pharma Website SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 15:27:00 +0000

Too often PDFs are overlooked in a pharma website SEO strategy.

If you’re like most pharma marketers, you’ve poured a lot of effort into developing PDF materials like treatment journals, patient brochures, self-assessment surveys, doctor discussion guides, and more. You’ve made these materials available for download via your website so that the appropriate audiences can access them, but it’s not enough to just put them out there and hope that the appropriate patients/caregivers and HCP audiences will stumble across them. Just like other valuable assets on your website, PDFs need to be optimized for search engine visibility.

Historically, PDFs have been a tough nut for search engines to crack, and because of this, extra care is needed to increase their visibility in search engine results pages.

An often overlooked method to help search engines understand the contents of a PDF is editing and optimizing the document properties. Document properties essentially function like metadata on an HTML page and are able to be read by search engines. This technique improves the likelihood that a PDF will be returned/displayed in search results for relevant queries, ultimately increasing the visibility of your content. Digital asset optimization is of increasing importance in today' search landscape where blended or mixed media search results are served up to meet the content preferences of various user types.

So now that you’ve got the ‘why’, here’s the how. Your PDF optimization checklist should include the following mandatories:

1. Search-friendly file names: Use keyword-rich names with individual words separated by hyphens.

2. Keyword-rich titles: Provide a keyword-rich title, similar to an SEO-friendly HTML page title (approx. 90 characters).

3. Informative descriptions: Add an informative but concise (approx. 180 characters) description, similar to how you would approach writing a meta description for an HTML page.

4. Keywords: Provide a list of relevant, comma-separated keywords, similar to how you would add meta keywords to an HTML page.

Here’s a cheatsheet you can use for making sure your PDF document properties are optimized:

For more pointers on optimizing PDFs for search, check out this great ‘how to’ guide from SEOmoz: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-to-optimize-pdf-documents-for-search

There are additional opportunities for optimizing PDF assets for search visibility. PDFs can be hosted on platforms like Slideshare, Scribd or Docstock, a strategy we’ve talked about previously on this blog. The use of these ‘social media’ sites (I use that term lightly because I consider these to function more as content sharing services than true social media) bring about additional regulatory and technical considerations for pharma marketers. The PDF optimization technique which has been the focus of this post is not necessarily more effective, but rather can be thought of as a diamond in the rough – it’s a technique which, for most brands, is more immediately applicable in that it can be implemented in the absence of any new FDA guidelines.

By Arly Iampietro (@arlyi), Digital Campaign Strategist at Roska Healthcare Advertising

Implications of the FTC "Do Not Track" Bill for Pharma Marketers

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:19:00 +0000

Last Friday, federal “Do Not Track” legislation was introduced in the House which, if passed, would require the FTC to create standards for a method of allowing consumers and patients to opt-out of online data collection used for behavioral ad targeting. While this is the first bill of this Congress to call for “Do Not Track” regulation, the FTC has previously spoken out in favor of a consumer choice mechanism that places control of online behavioral advertising in the hands of consumers.

So what does all of this mean for pharma? To answer the question, you have to first understand a bit about how behavioral ad targeting works.

A Word About Behavioral Ad Targeting

Behavioral advertising allows for segmentation based on clicks, cookies, and user behavior in an attempt to serve ads that are most relevant to the user and the information or product for which he or she is searching. In short, it allows advertisers to more effectively communicate with specific audiences (eg, HCPs, patients, consumers, caregivers, and care partners) about a specific product, disease state, or topic that is relevant to the information in which they are interested. For example, a patient or caregiver who had previously researched diabetes information may later be served a banner ad for a diabetes support program, additional disease information, or even relevant product information when viewing another website (eg, WebMD, news websites, etc.) which employs behavioral ad targeting.

3 Key Reasons “Do Not Track” May Not Be A Good Idea

While in theory I agree with the idea of privacy and consumer/patient protection, has anyone thought about the negative implications of implementing such a universal “Do Not Track” mechanism? Pharma marketers and industry take note. Below are just 3 implications you should take into consideration.

This type of ad targeting can benefit HCPs and consumers/patients, and decrease the incidence of off-label or potentially inappropriate advertising by providing a greater degree of assurance that the right information will be presented and served up to the right (and intended) audience.The “Do Not Track” feature must be easy to understand and enable by consumers.
Behavioral advertising is responsible for keeping most of the Internet services that we, including HCPs and patients, take for granted free of charge. If we over-regulate advertisers, we can expect to see fees charged for what are presently free services.
Increasing government regulation of the Internet will limit growth in the fastest-growing sector of our struggling economy, potentially slowing the expansion of online healthcare information and services, at a time when they are so desperately needed.

Why “Do Not Track” May Not Work

Internet users already have the ability to stop this type of behaviorally-targeted advertising if they choose (can you find the features built-in to your present browser? If not, chances are most patients and consumers can’t either). And all future versions of the major web browsers offer or have proposed a next generation variety of ways to block ad targeting. Microsoft’s IE 9 allows users to manually manage which websites are allowed to track their browsing behavior. Mozilla’s Firefox 4 includes a feature which, if enabled, adds information to HTTP requests, letting websites know not to track that user. Google’s Chrome offers a “Keep My Opt-Outs” browser extension which, once installed, relies heavily on self-regulating efforts of the companies responsible for the tracking.

Without a universally agreed upon and browser-wide adoption of the approach, “Do Not Track” progression and adoption will continue to face challenges and move slowly.

What Patients and Consumers Really Need

The real question we need to answer is what do patients and consumers really need? What items should the “Do Not Track” bill include to guarantee advertisers can continue to work effectively while ensuring consumer privacy? As a first step in answering this question, we offer 3 key strategies that can get all parties to the end goal.

A consortium should be assembled (think about when the W3 consortium, which was formed to provide some level of consistency to HTML and web standards) to create guidelines which are universal and consistent in terms of policy and functionality – across all browsers.
The “Do Not Track” feature must be easy to understand and enable by consumers.
A clear data collection privacy policy must be a part of websites/programs, and must radically simplifiy language to let consumers make truly informed decisions rather than further confuse them with techno-babble.

What other items should be included in this legislation? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

What Pharma Can Learn About Social Media From Comcast

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 14:56:00 +0000

Frank Eliason became a social media cult hero in 2008 when he started using Twitter to respond to online complaints about Comcast’s customer service. Eliason moved on to Citibank this summer to help the bank with social media and customer service, but his legacy has been felt across several industries, for example:

Major retailers use Twitter for promotion and customer service; think Best Buy’s Twelpforce who answer customer questions, offer product suggestions and field service complaints
The airlines, notorious for customer service issues, are all using Twitter to proactively communicate weather-related scheduling issues and respond to customer service complaints
Hospitals are using Twitter for community outreach— e.g., Methodist Hospital in Houston, TX was tweeting about flu season months in advance, and Innovis Health. in Fargo, ND used Twitter to communicate with staff, emergency personnel and the public during the 2009 flood crisis

What about Pharma?
Because of concerns about the potential for adverse event reporting, and other possible liabilities that can arise from communicating directly with patients, pharmaceutical companies have generally used Twitter at the corporate level, only to push news or for personnel recruitment. But what if pharma started using social media the way Comcast started using it—to counteract the negative? Monitoring the social media landscape can uncover a variety of misperceptions about therapy that can be corrected at the individual patient level.

For example, in April, Scanfeld D et al. published a study in the American Journal of Infection Control that examined Twitter status updates mentioning antibiotics. They reported:
“…mining the 52,153 status updates for terms likely to be correlated with misunderstanding or misuse and then reviewing them to confirm evidence of confusion or mishandling. The most popular word combination in this category was ‘flu 1 antibiotics,’ with 345 status updates including misinformation reaching a total of 172,571 followers.”
Source

Misperceptions about colds and antibiotics reached over 385,000 followers.

A Foot in the Social Media Door
Clearly there are opportunities to monitor, uncover and correct misperceptions about diseases, therapies and brands through social media. These applications can be the first step toward a more robust patient-centric social media strategy.

Uncovering and correcting misperceptions and promoting proper medication use may be the keys to initiating a patient-centric social media strategy that can meet the requirements of internal medical, regulatory and legal reviews. And it begins with the simple premise that Frank Eliason started with at Comcast—monitoring the social media conversation and interjecting a simple, “I can help.”

Is it measurable?
That’s always my favorite question. You can certainly employ the standard metrics people use when talking about Twitter measurement, like followers, mentions, and influence, but how do these tie back to your objectives? Or more importantly, how do they translate to ROI?
Think about Eliason’s initiative at Comcast. How many hours of live customer phone rep time were saved through his Twitter campaign? How many hours of disgruntled customer on-hold time were avoided? What impact did Twitter have on customer retention? I don’t know if Comcast ever quantified these answers, but over the past 2+ years they’ve expanded their social media initiative to 10 full-time people.
When undertaking this type of initiative, you will probably have to create a rationale that addresses similar questions in order to quantify your social effort. Some of the things you might look to quantify are:

What are the costs of patients misusing your brand?
What are the costs of negative brand perceptions arising from misuse or misunderstanding?
What are the benefits of clarifying questions and correcting misperceptions about brand use?
How many patients or prospective patients can we gain or retain as a result of correcting misuse and misunderstanding?

Can this type of strategy be deployed within your organization? Are there other “outside-the-box” metrics you can think of to create a rationale?

By Chuck McLeester, Senior VP Planning, Metrics & Analytics

Creating A Killer Pharmaceutical Digital Campaign Begins With Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 23:43:00 +0000

I’ve talked a lot recently about new technologies and even shown some examples of what I think are solid implementations in the pharmaceutical marketing and healthcare spaces.

QR (quick response) codes, for example, are gaining traction. Nonprofit organizations like the American Cancer Society and the Oral Cancer Foundation have effectively used QR codes to promote disease awareness, and now other healthcare marketers are beginning to take note. We are even using them as part of branded product programs designed to engage young mothers and provide them with educational content served right to the device they use most: their smartphone.

Now here’s the catch.

All of these successes began with a solid strategy, not with the technology. All too often marketers get caught up in the glitz and glam of the next hottest technology (or what they’ve heard from others) and then look for a product, brand or initiative in which to find it a home. This usually ends up with a campaign that’s a dud, get’s executive management upset, and usually reduces your budget the following year when you haven’t been able to deliver the goods in terms of ROI.

I recently received an email as part of a product campaign I subscribe to (which shall remain nameless to spare them the shame), with a QR code at the bottom as a call to action. When I snapped the code it did nothing more than take me to an existing page on the product website I could have gotten to by clicking a link in the email. Not only did it not provide me with any tangible value, it made me work harder to get to the same place I could have reached had I just clicked the link in my email.

Maybe if it delivered a coupon or rebate to my phone that I could redeem at a register when I went to the pharmacy I could somewhat rationalize the approach. But nothing more than a link to existing web content? Are you kidding me?

That’s why we really need to get people thinking differently. And to that point, it was a main driver behind an initiative we’re launching with PharmaVOICE this month called “A Different Perspective.” In 2011, we’re on a mission to publish content each month designed to provide brand managers, pharma marketers, and agencies alike with viewpoints and guidance that help get the industry thinking differently.
In the January 2011 edition titled, “TECHNOLOGY FAD OR RAD?” I talk about the need for a solid digital strategy, citing data from Accenture and John Mack from Pharma Marketing News.

And, if you want more information that answers the question, you can access my presentation from the ePatient Connections 2010 conference on YouTube.

Want to engage the people behind the blog to learn more about how to formulate a killer pharmaceutical digital strategy that gets results? Email me and tell me more about your pain points.

FDA Delays Internet & Social Media Guidance, Don't Expect AE Reporting to be Addressed

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 16:41:00 +0000

DDMAC has delayed guidance until Q1 (or beyond) regarding new Internet and social media guidance. An excerpt from Eye on FDA, which first broke the story on December 21, 2010:

The Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications (DDMAC) has been researching draft guidance topics on the following issues related to Internet/social media promotion of FDA-regulated medical products:

Responding to unsolicited requests
Fulfilling regulatory requirements when using tools associated with space limitations
Fulfilling post-marketing submission requirements
On-line communications for which manufacturers, packers, or distributors are accountable
Use of links on the Internet
Correcting misinformation

Our goal is to issue one draft guidance that addresses at least one of these topics during the first quarter of 2011, but we cannot comment any further at this point as to exactly when any draft guidance will issue or any specific order in which the topics will be addressed. The public will be notified officially when any guidance is issued via Federal Register announcements.

Source: http://www.eyeonfda.com/eye_on_fda/2010/12/breaking-its-official-fda-delaying-social-media-guidance-until-at-least-q1-2011.html

Interested in a bit more detail, I decided to give DDMAC a call this week and had a good conversation with a contact there regarding the delay and draft guidance. The information shared with me is that the goal is to get a guidance document out in Q1 2011 (but as we can see from the present delay this is a goal, not a commitment).

Most interestingly, the contact fielding my call communicated that their intent was to provide guidance that answered some of the questions posed as part of the public record (5 total) during the public hearings of last year (you can access the 5 questions here). I asked the simple question, “Which of the 5 would be addressed? Or, would all 5 be addressed?” The interesting response was that they are seeking to address the first 4 and will not be addressing the issue of adverse event reporting (question 5).

This is very interesting as adverse event reporting is one of the largest challenges faced by the industry (that and off-label promotion/unbalanced promotion).

What do you think about FDA’s decision not to address AE reporting? Share your opinion in the comments.

FTC Online Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing Consumer Protection Goes Too Far

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 21:59:00 +0000

Last week the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) filed a 144-page complaint (you can download the full report here) before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) demanding injunctive relief to allegedly protect patients from medical “condition targeting” and other online behavioral profiling and tracking that – as Jeff Chester, executive director of the CDD states “…take advantage of consumers…as consumers face growing personal costs for health services…they should not be subject to unfair, deceptive, and non-transparent techniques designed to encourage them to seek out forms of treatment…”

Back the truck up Francis. Are you kidding me?

Who knows more about a specific disease state than the companies involved in studying, developing and marketing the products that treat these devastating diseases?

As a patient myself, I want to receive specific information only to my condition (and not be blasted to using a shotgun approach, left on my own to weed through all the noise, hoping to find a nugget of helpful information).

And the last I heard, it’s actually beneficial to ‘listen’ to patient conversations, concerns and needs so we can offer them what they want and need. Public online conversations are just that…public. And, how is that ‘eavesdropping’? Shouldn’t we be listening to the conversation and responding? No different than we do at a support group or even a cocktail party?

John Kamp, executive director of the Coalition for Healthcare Communication went one step further, publicly commenting on the recent Vermont ruling around commercial use of data relating to physician prescribing patterns, stating “These types of laws do nothing to advance public health and in fact pose a risk to patients by arbitrarily delaying information on new medicines or warnings on existing medicines.”

I’m encouraged to see the FTC has a more balanced approach outlined in their December 2010 Preliminary Staff Report. And, that the report acknowledges the important use of consumer data not only to help create personalized, customized and relevant patient communications, but to “allow businesses to innovate and develop new products that offer consumers convenience and cost savings.”

One thing is clear, we must not be influenced by zealots like the CDD who are more interested in furthering their political cause, than helping ‘real-life’ patients – we must take a ‘balanced’ approach.

My first choice would be to personally talk to each of the millions of patients who suffer from chronic health conditions. Unfortunately, since that’s not possible, I rely on digital data capture, targeting, customization and communications to reach and positively affect these people’s lives.

The minds behind Pharma-Bytes will be compiling a presentation to submit during the public comment period (before the January 31, 2011 deadline.).

If you would like your voice heard, please comment on this post, or email me your point of view and data.

American Cancer Society Using QR Codes, Growing Adoption of 2D Codes by the Healthcare Industry

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:48:00 +0000

The American Cancer Society is using QR codes (those funky new bar codes you see popping up everywhere) to promote its Making Strides for Breast Cancer walk. As part of the integrated campaign, ACS has incorporated QR codes into an outdoor promotion for the event (pictured below).

Images courtesy of the 2D Barcode Strategy Blog

QR (short for Quick Response) codes are 2-dimensional bar codes that can be read by the camera in your smartphone through a reader (if you need a reader, you can download one from our website at m.RoskaHealthcare.com/reader) and execute an action to take you to a website, watch a video, download a coupon, or a host of other helpful applications.

While the codes originally appeared in mainstream marketing in Japan and are now more recently being used by a growing list of U.S. marketers like GAP, Calvin Klein, Clinique and Ford…the healthcare industry is embracing the technology at record pace.

In the case of the American Cancer Society, a QR code is featured on a bus shelter ad and links to a mobile site for “Making Strides for Breast Cancer.” Just snap the code above and you’ll be taken to the site shown below:

From the mobile site, you can opt-in for information or reminders about participating in the walk or generate an email invite or reminder to a friend. You can also find out how to donate to the ACS via an SMS campaign (text HOPE to 20222 to make a $5 donation).

As the 2D Barcode Strategy Blog points out, the creative execution of the outdoor unit could be improved through instruction about how to scan the code or download a reader. However, kudos to ACS for experimenting with the technology, and I look forward to seeing how the organization will be integrating it into more materials in the future – including the event itself.

Another cool QR campaign that recently launched in August was sponsored by the Oral Cancer Foundation. The OCF used QR codes to promote disease awareness at a major surf event (Surf City). At the event, representatives of the OCF handed out stickers, T-shirts, and even temporary tattoos bearing a QR code that linked to a web page containing disease information.

If you’re interested in learning more about QR codes and mobile health, I’ll be presenting at the e-Patient Connections Conference next week. The presentation titled "Optical Recognition — Fad or Rad?" will detail how quick response codes, augmented reality and optical recognition are changing healthcare communications. Our agency will also be hosting Innovation Island sessions featuring interactive QR code and Augmented Reality demos – so please stop by, say “hello” and I’ll be happy to demo these technologies live.

Please leave a comment or contact me directly if you’ll be in the area next week and would like to connect.

Google Instantly Changes the Pharma Search Landscape with Instant Search

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:44:00 +0000

Last week Google announced Google Instant, a change in the presentation of search results that will fundamentally change the way we search. Google Instant, which is being rolled out now, uses the autocomplete feature to populate search results that evolve in real-time as you type. So, rather than having to type a complete search query and hit ‘Enter’, Google Instant predicts your search query as you type it.

In the example above, Google instantly displays predictive search results for my query as I type each letter in my search for “Cimzia.” As illustrated here, I have typed “cimz” – with Google predicting and serving up query results for the product before I even complete the word.

Try it for yourself and let me know what you think of the real-time results refreshing with every letter typed (the constant refresh and flashing of results takes some getting used to).

So, what does this all mean for phama advertisers?

Google Instant presents implications for all industries, including pharma and healthcare companies. The feature will change the way that we search for information, affecting both what we search for and how we interact with search results pages. Patients and healthcare professionals will be no exception.

Placement is everything

Google Instant reinforces the importance of appearing on the first page of search results. Greater prominence is now being drawn to the top of the search results page as we’re able to adjust our queries and fine-tune results on the fly. We’ll become less likely to enter a query and scroll through multiple pages of results to find the information we want, making a first page, upper fold position increasingly significant. Typically, Google does not display pharmaceutical product websites at the top of search results for many unbranded disease or condition-related search terms (the top spots are typically reserved for sites like Mayo Clinic, WebMD, Wikipedia and other .Orgs). Now more recently, this has even become true for branded keywords due to the introduction of Medication OneBox. This means that paid search advertising will be critical to sustaining qualified pharmaceutical website traffic as searchers become less likely to sift through results.

Effect on ad impressions and click-through-rates

Expect your paid search ad impressions and click-through-rate (clicks/impressions) to change. Up until now, an ad impression was defined as your ad appearing in a search results page after a user completed a search and hit ‘Enter’. Google Instant demands a new definition of an ad impression now that both the organic (nonpaid) and paid search results are constantly updated as a searcher types. Google has decided to measure an impression in one of three ways:

the users hits ‘enter’ to complete the query,
looks at the search results for over three seconds, or
clicks on a link from the results page.

Long tail impact

Many industry observers are predicting Google Instant to be the death of the long tail keyword. For years paid search advertisers had focused on the more targeted long tail keywords (‘treatment for type 1 diabetes’) as opposed to broad, short keywords (‘diabetes treatment’). Long tail keywords typically result in more qualified traffic at a lower cost-per-click (since paid search utilizes a bid-based pricing model, long tail keywords with less competition are less expensive). Now that predictive instant search results have entered the picture, the long tail keyword strategy may become obsolete as searchers find themselves not needing to type in the complete search query to access the information they’re looking for.

Two Tips for Adapting to Google Instant

1. Make sure you ads appear for disease/condition search terms. Think of it as a reverse long tail keyword strategy. If you’re advertising a treatment for pulmonary hypertension, make sure to bid on ‘pulmonary hypertension’ and not just ‘pulmonary hypertension treatment.’ It may seem like a no-brainer, but up until now many advertisers have reasonably avoided or placed less emphasis on disease/condition keywords. In addition to being more competitive and more expensive, the thinking was that traffic from disease/condition keywords may be less qualified since searchers may have been looking for information about the condition as opposed to a treatment option.

However, in an instant Google has made the disease/condition keyword critical. If patients are searching for a treatment option and begin to type in the disease term, in many cases they will instantly see relevant search results containing treatment options. So rather than needing to type ‘pulmonary hypertension treatment,’ they’ll be able to find what they need by typing ‘pulmonary hypertension.’ As a result, pharma advertisers will need to optimize their campaigns and shift greater focus and advertising dollars to the short tail disease/condition keywords.

2. Perform robust keyword research. Google Instant reinforces the need to conduct ongoing keyword research and optimize campaigns for Google Suggest – the feature in search results that autocompletes with a popular keyword suggestion. Optimizing for suggested keywords is not a new strategy within the SEO landscape. However, this technique is more important than ever now that search results are served instantly, making searchers more inclined to act on a suggested search rather than complete the intended query. This means that the Google-suggested keywords will receive more traffic than ever before, making it critical for pharmaceutical advertisers to optimize their websites and paid search campaigns for these terms.

So, what do you think of Google Instant? Are there any implications or recommendations for pharma marketers that I haven’t touched on? Please provide your feedback in the comments.

Posted by Arly Iampietro (@arlyi), Digital Marketing Specialist at Roska Digital Advertising.

Yahoo Drafts Off Google’s Success In Space Limited Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:15:00 +0000

For those of you following the development of the FDA social media guidelines (or lack thereof) and the issuance of more warning letters (most recently the FDA warning to Novartis regarding its sharing widget), one advance in technology seems to be gaining steam without triggering warning letters.

A recent Yahoo! search this morning for Plavix (boxed warning platelet inhibitor) yielded a sponsored ad for the product using the same beta ad format Google rolled out in the Fall of 2009. The formats on both search engines are nearly identical, featuring the same statement of risk (“Click to see full safety and prescribing information, including boxed warning.”) and “More Info” text linking to the ISI page on the product website.

The Plavix ad as it appears on Yahoo!:

The Google ad format (unveiled last year):

(Click images to view full size.)

Note: The one minor difference between the ads is the placement of the display URL (Plavix.com) – Yahoo always displays this URL after the line of description text.

Since the beta ad format was pioneered by Google last year, several black box products including Cymbalta, Cimzia and Yaz have taken advantage of it. In the past year, no warning letters have been issued by the FDA around this topic even though the format does not accommodate the full product indication and ISI. Is this the beginning of a new guideline format? Time will tell.

Google and NIH - 4 Things You Need to Know About Google Health Search’s “Medication OneBox” Format

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:03:00 +0000

In June, Google launched a new feature in organic search results called “Medication OneBox,” which is part of a larger initiative from the search giant to improve the accuracy and credibility of health-related search results (“Health OneBox”). Through partnering with the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Medication OneBox feature aims to provide more relevant and detailed medication information directly from the search engine results page (SERP).

Now when you perform a Google search for a medication using the brand or generic name, the NIH listing is served as the first organic (nonpaid) listing.

The information served in the Medication OneBox comes from the NIH’s PubMed Health website (which is licensed from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists [ASHP]). In The new feature also contains various links pointing to specific content sections within the website: “Side effects”, “How to take”, “Precautions”, “Dietary Instructions”, and “Missed a dose”.

The NIH listings are distinguished from other organic results in length and detail, with four dedicated lines of description as opposed to two. An icon of a red and blue capsule is used to designate that the listings are from the NIH, which is in support of the goal of providing a consistent, credible source of health information.

Major implications for pharmaceutical marketers

Medication OneBox eliminates the possibility of an official product website ranked as the first organic listing on Google. Prior to the launch of the Google feature, it was common for properly optimized brand.com websites to maintain the #1 rank. Now, these brand.com websites have been displaced, relegated to the #2 position.

Studies have shown a marked disparity in performance between the 1st and 2nd positions, with the 1st driving twice the traffic of the 2nd (34% vs. 17%, respectively). As brand-related searches are commonly the top driver of organic traffic, the Medication OneBox feature poses a threat to website traffic.

And, there is no present way to get around the OneBox feature, as it Google intends to roll this out for every brand and generic medication search. The good news is you can mitigate potential negative impact on your brand by identifying new opportunities to supplement qualified brand.com traffic and by assessing your current content served by the NIH – ensuring it is accurate and up-to-date.

Recommendations

It is now more critical than ever to have a solid paid search engine marketing (SEM) and organic search engine optimization (SEO) strategy in place. Your SEO/SEM checklist should include:

1. Branded paid search programs
One strategy is to beef up your paid search engine marketing program. Branded paid search ads (also known as sponsored links) can be highly effective in driving qualified traffic to brand.com websites. In our experience, branded ads yield a click-through-rate (clicks/impressions) as high as 8-10% for branded search terms. Further, branded ads typically appear above the organic search listings (and this position can be controlled through bid management). Subsequently, branded ads appear above the NIH listings, as pictured in this Cymbalta example.

2. Optimization of brand.com for targeted longtail brand/generic keywords and disease/condition-related search terms
Now that it is no longer possible to rank in the #1 position for brand/generic search queries, it’s important to take a holistic approach to organic SEO and shift focus to more longtail brand/generic keywords and unbranded disease/condition-related terms.

In optimizing your brand.com site, you should pay special attention to targeted longtail brand/generic terms to maximize traffic from key, commonly searched phrases (e.g., ‘side effects of brand’). The medication search update has not impacted longtail search results, meaning there is still opportunity to obtain the first organic ranking for targeted brand/generic-related search phrases.

In addition, general disease/condition information (unbranded search terms) should not be overlooked. While it is more challenging to optimize your website to rank for unbranded keywords (e.g., ‘treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension’), in some categories such as rare diseases/conditions, this can be an effective strategy to drive qualified traffic and increase awareness and interaction with your brand.

3. Identification of digital asset optimization (DAO) opportunities
To augment lost traffic from brand/generic search queries, look outside of the standard website optimization practices and identify new methods for reaching your targets in the digital space. One method to achieve this is through digital asset optimization (DAO), a strategy designed to increase your search engine real estate (or share of organic search results for relevant queries). DAO involves bringing your content directly to your target audience through the storage of digital assets (video, PDF, image, etc.) on highly trafficked content-sharing platforms (YouTube, Slideshare, FlickR, etc.). In optimizing your content for targeted keywords and leveraging popular web/social properties, you can effectively maximize the exposure to your content and subsequently traffic to your brand.com site.

4. Assessment of current NIH listing
Lastly, just as it is important to continually monitor the accuracy and credibility of organic search results for your brand, it is important to review the NIH listing to ensure it is accurate and up to-date. If the information is not current, there are steps that you or your agency partners can take to ensure that the appropriate information is served. While Google and the NIH have not made an official statement, our contacts at Google have disclosed that in order to update or add a listing you can reach out to ASHP, which licenses the content served by the NIH.

Posted by Arlynn Iampietro (@arlyi), Digital Marketing Specialist at Roska Digital Advertising.

Google Comments Regarding NIH #1 Organic Rank for Branded Drug Names in Search Engine

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 06:05:00 +0000

Thank you to everyone the commented on the previous blog post I did regarding Google force-ranking NIH drug product information in the #1 position for organic searches. I received several good, thought-provoking comments in the blog itself, as well as many more direct emails and DMs to my twitter handle.

One interesting question posed was “How do you know what’s really going on?”. Fair enough.

Rather than assume anything, we went right to the horse’s mouth, called up Google and asked them a few questions. I’d like to pass along the answers to those questions to the readers.

Not an ‘official’ interview…the conversation went something like this:

Roska: Is there an explicit or official partnership between Google and the NIH [or is Google merely pulling NIH content]?

Google: Google has partnered with the NIH to license their information to serve it through Google. The goal is to provide NIH results for all drugs searches [brand and generic], so there is a consistent, credible source of health information.

Roska: Why do some drug searches not currently yield an NIH search result?

Google: The NIH may not have all information yet but Google does intend to roll this out for all drug searches occurring in the US (no exceptions). No specific timeline has yet been released. If a product is not listed, you can submit it to your Google rep and they will hand it over to the proper contact. Additionally, if there is incorrect information for a product, you can work with your rep to update it.

Roska: Are there any future updates planned you can tell us about?

Google: There is a new subset of YouTube policies around pharma manufacturers.

So…back to some of the original questions.

Is there a deal between Google and the NIH? Yes.
Do we know the real motivations behind the deal? No.
Is all of the drub information current and accurate? No.
Are all of the drug products listed? No.
Will pharma pay the price by having to spend more on paid search? Absolutely.

FDA, Government and NIH Seek to Influence Social Media Guidelines and Space Limited Ads

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 03:54:00 +0000

As many of you have noticed lately, every time you search for a pharmaceutical product by brand name in Google, virtually all of the #1 organic ranks link to an associated NIH site with a “pill” icon designating the site is an NIH site (hello…anyone remember the idea at the FDA hearings last year about an icon denoting an FDA-safe (read between the lines ‘endorsed’) site?

Wendy Blackburn recently posted a nice POV on her blog about this issue.

During the FDA hearings, the government was adamant about ensuring consumers get the right information about drug products, with accurate safety/risk information, and that health literacy is a priority so that our consumers have all of the information they need to educate themselves about drug products and therapies so they can have productive conversations with their doctors and make informed decisions.

There are several issues I have with the present Google/NIH deal:

1. Not all drug product searches yield these results (type in Symbyax or Adcirca into Google and an NIH site is nowhere to be found). The bots and spiders may catch up, but for now, many products are missing.

2. The NIH is promoting itself and its (‘self-proclaimed’) authority on the accuracy of drug information through a deliberate business deal with Google.

3. Much of the NIH information is outdated and inaccurate. I ran searches on a few of our clients’ products and one of the NIH links served up outdated information from 2005 (as the most recent, which is laughable). Since 2005 the product has gone through label expansions, updated safety information, etc. None of which is included in the NIH 2005 posting.

So what’s my point?

My point is that the NIH is now acting as a marketer. It has formed a relationship with Google to get into the healthcare marketing game. Plain and simple.

If this were a pharma promotion, the NIH would be making claims that their information is more accurate--and better--than any brand.com site. They are making an implied superiority claim.

Yet, there is no head-to-head. Not controlled trials, no study design to reassure consumers that the NIH information is superior to the information on the brand.com websites. I’d even go so far as to argue that NIH sites are outdated and potentially open up the risk of harming consumers. What’s even worse is this feels like a poor attempt to grab market share from WebMD and other consumer medical resource communities that quite honestly have better marketing models and tighter controls on the quality and accuracy of their information.

When scrutinized under the present FDA regulatory lens…the NIH is in violation of pharmaceutical promotional guidelines. Not only is much of their information wrong or outdated, placing a “seal of approval” icon (the ugly pill) misrepresents to consumers that this is the most accurate, up to date information about drug products. This is dead wrong, and quite frankly (depending on the NIH content) false advertising/information.

Call me crazy…but I’d go so far as to say the NIH should receive an FDA warning letter for making claims and misrepresenting information with no ‘fair balance’, not to mention they are not providing proper indication and risk information within ‘space limited advertising’ (sorry, I had to take that last shot).

I would WELCOME comments on this blog post and like to hear your thoughts. If I receive enough responses, with opinions and data that have merit, I’ll commit to you to send a letter with supporting data down to FDA so that we can assist the FDA in properly compiling social media guidelines that ensure the government lives by the same rules we all have to.

I welcome your thoughts and comments.