Heroes and villains or the smokescreen of regulation

When framing a story for the media it is well known in the communications community that a successful piece must have a number of components.

First we must have the challenge, the mission at the heart of the narrative. We then need a hero, the shining figure at the centre of the action battling for the force of good against, well evil, obviously.

For this we need a credible villain. They are probably more important to the success as the hero themselves. In our lives we often secretly find ourselves emotionally drawn to them, whether we are watching a Hollywood blockbuster or a simple TV soap. This is because the truth is often more complex than it appears.

Maybe this explains why recently I have begun to think that for those of us responsible for pharmaceutical company engagement in social media, regulators have become the evil smokescreen.

This is often a displaced complaint against our own medical and compliance teams, people we should have carried with us.

They have become the Lex Luthor to our creative Superman, the Cruella Deville to the large community of marketing and communication's cute Dalmatian puppies.

Unfortunately the truth is much more complex than this.

The Health 2.0 revolution is now too important for any of us to make excuses. The latest 'Cybercitizen' survey from Manhattan shows that across Europe patients are flooding into health communities to find information and support.

This engagement ranges from the cosmetic to people managing a chronic long term condition such as Diabetes. The highest level of engagement (70 to 80%) is from people caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's or Cancer.

On top of this nearly three quarters of health care professionals regularly use online communities to help them better manage their patients health.

It is absolutely essential that pharma takes its place in this discussion and steps up to its responsibility to provide the high quality information and dialogue it is capable of. Not only to help health care professionals support and add value to their patients (50% would like to recommend websites and communities to patients) but also to directly speak with our end users. The patients who now represent the new KOL's.

The real challenge of the new media revolution does not depend on changing the regulatory environment. There are two sacrosanct guiding principles that underpin the ABPI code of practice in the UK: One is that we must not promote prescription only medicines to the public and the second is that we protect the safety of patients by collecting adverse events.

If we get our objectives right we can tackle both of these head on.

This definitely depends on a change of corporate behaviour that is more open and engaged with patients language and concerns. If you will allow a moment of platform gazing there are a few examples of things we can do right now.

People do not enter a social network in order to be sold something and I am sure that most patient forums would not appreciate a pharma medic jumping into the conversation to request more information on a possible AE, or to put a poor unsuspecting blogger straight about a products efficacy profile.

If we get the objective right we can add value through twitter, placing a human face on the company-not pushing company brand or product. We can develop disease focused communities on Facebook where we have the credibility and the relationships.

Even more important is overcoming the obsession with adverse events online and developing real world data programmes. This will not only enable us to open a new channel to understanding the safety of our medicines but could also enable a more focused form of patient support.

Lets stop blaming other people and start to put patients and health care professionals at the heart of our communication strategy.

Patients the genuine key to Market Access, not a NICE to have.

Market Access has become the most important strategic pillar in pharma and with this the most overused business cliche.

When you look at the focus, experience and expertise of most Market Access teams in the UK it is not difficult to see who the important stakeholders are; Health Technology Appraisal and the dreaded 'Payor' (is it just me who hates this term?).

In order to look like we are tackling this key challenge we have developed a whole new KOL landscape based around 'commissioning'.

This translates in the field as forcing our pre and post marketing messages on overworked 'Prescribing Advisors' and 'Medicines Management' (both hilariously ironic job titles that could come straight out of 1984). If we are lucky we get to work with more senior, genuine commissioners.

It is very difficult in these circumstances to communicate the true value of our medicines to society and even harder to translate this into the dramatic personal impact this could have on someones life.

Unfortunately it often means high level sales teams renamed and re-skilled, interacting with cynical under informaed NHS Management and Pharmacy Staff who should be ashamed of their respect and understanding of the pharmaceutical industry in the UK.

The funny thing is that in the new environment the most important people to Market Access are the patients and carers themselves. How many MA teams have the expertise to deal with that? Because of the understandable focus and talent set to work on HTA, they are often not even on the radar let alone part of a strategy.

The explosion in new media has completely changed the way we interact with each other and the world around us. The NHS has always managed resources through Demand, if people did not know about a drug or service then their local GP wasn't going to be the one to tell them about it. Google, Facebook, Twitter, PatientsLikeMe has changed all of this.

If you are not getting the best treatment then you will know about it and probably do something about it.

NHS, Nice, SMC and AWMG have one thing in common, they are scared to death of the patient voice.

Bring on the new world, I would not want to be the one telling a person caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's they are not worth the investment in new therapy, or crushing new hope in a patient dying of cancer.

The Real Social Media Question for Pharma

There is a tremendous amount of discussion at the moment about how trust is now the key to corporate reputation. That is fine. The trouble is that you can't buy trust. Even more frustratingly it is about behaviour and communication over a long period of time, i.e. there is no quick fix.

Trust is something that has frustrated and fixated the pharmaceutical industry for years. The latest Edelman Trust Barometer suggested that about 53% of educated top quartile participants trust pharma-thank God for bankers and the insurance industry.

The ABPI is currently engaged in a very laudable project called VITA (Value, Innovation, trust and Access). A part of this Trust stream has involved engagement with stakeholders through social media. I obviuosly support this development, I just have one problem.

Developing a twitter presence or constructing a facebook page is not a strategic objective. I wish people who are desperately trying to catch up with the social media revolution (like an elephant on roller skates) would stop talking platforms and start thinking about what actually lies behind this dramatic change in communications-open and transparent dialogue.

If you don't change how you listen to your customers or stakeholders and you continue to push out the same messages, hoping you won't get any difficult questions, you have completely missed the point. "How can we develop a presence on twitter while minimising the risk?"

The risk that people may start to understand how important their opinions really are?

If large pharma can hide behind regulation and good practice to subvert the social media conversation and remove any interaction that is uncomfortable, we will do even further damage to our industry. An industry I am proud to work for.

I was pleased to have been involved in the Q&A document being produced by the PM Society for the PMCPA, outling recommendations for the pharmaceutical industry in digital media. We have to understand as an industry that control is dead, the next great challenge is to have influence. If not, how can we be a force for good in the future?

When people care, they want to be part of an interactive community. If people want to ask about what really constitutes value in medicines? why we have withheld clinical data for a differential marketing positions? Or how much money we have given to the recent Haiti disaster? We should make sure we have a good answer.