Diabetes Opinion Leaders Paid by Roche to Curate Content on New Twitter-based Social Media Site

Diabetes Opinion Leaders Paid by Roche to Curate Content on New Twitter-based Social Media Site

Diabetes Nest, according to its "About" statement, "is a Twitter-based diabetes network designed to help people discover the best conversations from the most meaningful voices. The Nest was created by Ignite Health and sponsored by Roche Diabetes Care, makers of ACCU-CHEK® products and services."

Ignite Health, an InVentiv Health agency, maintains the site. Fabio Gratton, chief experience officer at Ignite Health, said:

"Few argue that social media has transformed how patients and their caregivers share healthcare information and find support. But the sheer volume of content can be overwhelming. 

"So we asked ourselves how we could best help the diabetes community find and engage in the most timely, relevant and important conversations. The result is a simple, intuitive, compelling and ultimately self-sustaining diabetes social media community.” Diabetes Nest aggregates, sorts and ranks tweets from a curated list of diabetes experts" (read more here: "Roche Sponsors Diabetes Nest Twitter-Based Social Media Site").

All five of those "diabetes experts" are long-time patient bloggers who are "compensated for their time, effort and invaluable guidance." Caretakers include:

• Amy Tenderich (Diabetes Mine blogger)
• Gina Capone ("gina - your diabetes BFF" blogger)
• Kerri Sparling ("six until me" blogger)
• George Simmons (co-host of DSMA Live on BlogTalkRadio)
• Scott K. Johnson (co-host of DSMA Live on BlogTalkRadio and blogger at Scott's Diabetes)

Roche "has no control or influence over the content or frequency of the Caretakers' tweets."

Roche Diabetes Care has long been wining and dining diabetes bloggers at yearly "Roche Social Media Summits" held in nice places like resorts in Orlando, Florida. When I learned of the first summit held in 2010, I blogged that "Some Social Media Patient Opinion Leaders Want to be Paid Pharma Professionals." Diabetes Nest is, to my knowledge, the first such time that bloggers have been paid to be "consumer opinion leaders" in a manner similar to how pharma often pays physicians to be "key opinion leaders."

At a patient panel discussion during a 2010 conference, Allison Blass (Patient Blogger, Diabetes Activist, Lemonade Life), said "You need to pay some one's full time salary," referring to the desire of some pharma companies to interact with patients in online communities. "The only way to sustain growth and involvement in a [online] community," said Allison, "is to have someone who actually does it [manage social media interactions with patients] as their job... to become the person who is known and loved by the community."

Not that there is anything wrong with being compensated for your time, but pharmaceutical companies have to be careful how they provide compensation. In the case of Diabetes Nest, Roche probably supplies an "unrestricted grant," which is supposed to specify that the grantor (Roche) has no control over the content created by the grantee. The "grantee" in this case is probably Ignite Health, which owns Diabetes Nest (see NOTE below). Ignite Health is an advertising agency that works with pharmaceutical companies.

NOTE: Doing some WHOIS snooping, I learn that the domain diabetesnest.com is registered to "TWTCLK" and the administrative contact is Fabio Gratton, both located at the same address in San Clemente, CA. 

A pharmaceutical company providing unrestricted grants or other funds to an advertising agency in support of a patient site related to a product line is a bit controversial, IMHO, especially if there intends to be a "Chinese" wall between the funding and advertising interests. This kind of thing got pharma companies into trouble with the likes of Senator Grassley when "unrestricted grants" were provided to ad agencies to run independent accredited CME programs for physicians. ACCME, which accredits CME, now requires that CME providers to be independent of ad agencies to avoid conflicts of interest.

Disclosure: Fabio Gratton is a friend of mine and a very nice guy who deserves a lot of credit for his high quality, ethical work with pharmaceutical clients. He has been a frequent guest on my BlogTalk Radio show (eg, listen to "Facebook Timelines for Brands: The Implications for Pharma Companies"). He is not a client of mine, but he could be in the future. Knowing Fabio, I am sure he would welcome a discussion of "conflict of interest" in pharma-sponsored social media. The timing of this post may be a problem for him as he and his wife are expecting their first child any day. He must be very busy. Any way, I hope some day I get to visit him in San Clemente! 

The Big C in the Big Apple

The Big C in the Big Apple

I just received this tweet from Fabio Gratton (@skypen), Co-founder & Chief Innovation Officer of Ignite Health: "Have you seen the C in NYC? (disclaimer: client) http://t.co/8CmVJOun?"

No, I didn't "see" the C in NYC, because I haven't been there lately. So I clicked on the link. This lead me to HepC.tv, a YouTube channel sponsored by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which coincidentally recently received approval for INCIVEK for the treatment of Hepatitis C (aka HepC). I believe Fabio's company was involved in either creating the video and/or the HepC.tv YouTube channel -- but not the Cs themselves (Fabio deals in the purely digital realm).

HepC.tv is featuring the video "Man-on-the-Street: New Yorkers' Reactions to the Big Yellow C." The big Yellow Cs (see image below; looks more "orangish" than yellow to me) appeared in well known locations in NYC starting on September 13, 2011. The video shows people's reactions and what they think the Cs are supposed to represent. One person said "vitamin C," another said "cholesterol," and another said "cauliflower."

Surprisingly, no one said "Cancer!" At least no-one shown in this video. How can that be? The plaque on every big C says "4 million Americans have this disease. 3 million don't even know it." Sounds like cancer to me. Maybe I'm conditioned to think that because I am a fan of the ShowTime series "The Big C," which is about a woman living with cancer. Maybe Fabio et al did not want to promote the show, so they edited out any mention of cancer in the video, which, after all, is part of a campaign designed to "raise awareness among New Yorkers about hepatitis C and provide information on testing."

The Big Yellow C HepC campaign is what I would categorize as "guerrilla marketing," which according to wikipedia is "unexpected and unconventional, potentially interactive, and consumers are targeted in unexpected places." The Big Yellow C HepC campaign is interactive because each C includes a QR code imprinted on it. You have to get up close to it to scan that code and see where it leads you. Where does it lead? Maybe the QR code should have been on the closing screen of the video so us non-New Yorkers (or ex-New Yorkers) can scan it without getting on the A-train to 125th Street! (I'm guessing, however, that the QR code leads to the FindHepC.com web site, which is shown on the last screen.)

I have many questions about this campaign similar to the questions I had about other such campaigns (see "Zyrtec Telephone Pole Ad Campaign: Guerilla or Gorilla Marketing?"). Here are some questions I posted in a comment to the video:

• Is this sort of thing scaleable? I mean, in how many cities can this be implemented? 
• Are the C's on tour around the country? What about in rural areas? 
• How do you measure how effective this is? Via the QR code? 

As you know, I am a big fan of QR codes -- I have three of them on my new business card (see here)! But how many people in NYC have smartphones with a QR code reader app? Do they even know what a QR code is?

In fact, Vertex is planning many live events in the boroughs of NYC and elsewhere to increase the awareness of Hepatitis C and get people to be tested so they can sell oodles of their new treatment.

Another question I have is How did Vertex get permission to put these Cs all over NYC, which is very skittish about possible terrorist attacks? Remember that guerilla marketing campaign in Boston that went awry, causing panic among the public? I guess the Cs look too colorful and friendly to be considered dangerous.

What I am waiting for, however, are the graffiti artists to tell us what THEY think the Big C stands for. Also, we New Yorkers (and ex-New Yorkers) are known to treat anything not bolted down as "found art," available for  taking home to your loft for kitschy display! I'm betting, however, that Vertex doesn't leave these things hanging around 125th Street or Herald Square overnight.