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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How DO You Pronounce "Boehringer Ingelheim"?

How DO You Pronounce "Boehringer Ingelheim"?

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key Learnings:
Anticipation and preparation are critical

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

Relationships rule

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

Own your space

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

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

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

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

Media Blackout Imposed by Media People!

Media Blackout Imposed by Media People!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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