Are Branded Pharma Tweets Banal?
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- June 24th, 2009
John Mack of the Pharma Marketing Blog hosted a fascinating, by invitation only conference call today to discuss the first-ever pharma branded Tweet for Novo Nordisk’s Levemir™. Never one to mince words, Mack suggested in the invitation that:
- Novo Nordisk’s Branded (Levemir) Tweet is Sleazy Twitter Spam!
- Novo Nordisk Selectively Copies & Edits Kimball’s Tweets
With such a provocative invitation you can imagine that the call consisted almost entirely of health care advertising, public relations and promotions agencies. Until each of the speakers listens to and approves the recording, the podcast is embargoed. In the meantime, here are some of the highlights and lessons learned from the discussion:
- Branded tweets are nothing new. But there is an expectation of both transparency and salience. If patient advocate Charlie Kimball has two accounts – one personal and one on behalf of Levemir – attention needs to be paid to the overlap between the two.
- Learn before using. Health care marketers should be careful not to engage with social media tools until they are first fully familiar with the tools and community expectations. For example, duplicating tweets between user accounts is perceived by some to be spam. Tweeting but not following likewise suggests a lack of engagement by the spokesman.
- A community of one? There is no clear consensus of what constitutes “community” on social media sites. Must there be a two-way dialogue? How can that dialogue be vetted by Legal and Regulatory Affairs in anything approaching a timely manner.
What can we learn from this? Is it a good model for other brands to follow? Is the lack of clear FDA guidelines and the threat of adverse event reporting too daunting to permit anything more daring than the “old message, new medium” approach?