1. Gregg Feris says:

   June 10, 2009 at 9:04 am

   Jon,

   I enjoy reading your insights at dose of digital & look forward to your posts here too. My question is other than more traditional non-personal promotion activities & sampling programs, how can a pharma marketer use technology to innovate non-personal promo? Is edetailing the only option? What about handheld alerts like epocrates does? Where do you think is the sweet spot for these efforts?

   Thanks in advance and keep up the good work.

   - GF
2. Jonathan Richman says:

   June 12, 2009 at 4:54 pm

   Gregg,

   Thanks for the question and for being the first to get the ball rolling with the Q&A on the site.

   Great questions here and not really simple answers. There really is so much more that pharma can be doing with technology and digital marketing that really has yet to be touched. Other industries have struggled with very similar problems for a long time and have found solutions. My challenge has always been for pharma to look at consumer packaged goods (CPG) or entertainment brands and see what they are doing to attract customers to their digital programs. You’re question actually says it best, as pretty much everyone in pharma is using “traditional” approaches.

   One thing we have to remember is that the competition for the doctor’s time isn’t simply against the drug in your class or even all pharma products, it’s everything else. Doctors are very much like everyone else when it comes to how they spend their non-research time online. They laugh at the same stuff, are annoyed by the same things, and engage with certain programs just like everyone else. So think about your competition is YouTube and not drug brand X. What is going to make your program compelling enough that a doctor takes time away from something they find interesting and fun elsewhere to visit your site?

   And, yes, this can all be done in a compliant way. I’m not a big fan of interuptive messages like you see with some of the ePocrates programs (I like a lot of their other offerings). No one likes interuptive marketing that’s why we fast forward through commercials. Online, it’s even easier, you just click somewhere else.

   So, my answer is actually going to be a question. How can pharma look at this problem in a completely different way? Instead of trying to beg doctors to participate in our non-personal promo, how can we create something they actually WANT to do and participate in? Here’s an example from the CPG world that our company (Bridge Worldwide) did: http://workinglunch.msn.com/

   For ConAgra Foods’ new product Fresh Mixers, we figured out that many people were actually eating lunch at their desks (at browsing online for interesting non-work things to do), so instead of interupting them with ads specifically at that time and all over the internet, we created Working Lunch. It was live improv comedy show where visitors could vote for the next activity (kind of like yelling out suggestions at an improv show). It worked great. Millions of viewers, countless hours spend on the site (10+ min. per user on average), and huge lifts in key brand message recall (can’t share the sales data). We created something people cared about and found interesting. Why can’t pharma do this?

   Okay, okay, maybe not the same thing, but you get the picture (the reg. people would flip at the live portion of the plan). So, I think we need to look at this differently. Instead of begging doctors to participate in programs they don’t like or want, let’s give them what they do want. Think about them as people for a minute and start coming up with ideas. Maybe non-healthcare focused digital agencies need to help lead this by pulling in their other industry experience. We can tailor it to pharma and make something different.

   So, a call to action really, if not a direct answer to your questions. Let me know what you think.

   Best,
   Jonathan
3. Gregg Feris says:

   June 18, 2009 at 5:13 pm

   Jon,

   Thanks for the in depth reply. I like the idea of looking to other industries to see how they are using digital marketing. Unfortunately, most of those are not regulatory inhibited as we are. But I think you touched on the key - we have much more latitude with doctors & can build relationships with them by delivering what they want instead of forcing messaging & disconnected campaigns at them. We should know what docs want more than anyone so maybe more time should be spent addressing that than chatting about digital marketing as a discipline. Then we have a better story to take through legal than “hey everyone’s doing it.” We can say Doctors want this, we’ve created this program and deal with any FDA guidelines from there but we need to approach it as it IS possible, not we can’t do it. As one of the headlines today says, enough with the social media whining. Onward and upward.

   Grateful for the discussion. will look for more from you.

   GF

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