Social Media Marketing in Pharmaceuticals: Unclear regulation prevails

Companies that go looking for reasons not to monitor and engage with social media sometimes wind up with what sound more like excuses: rigid cultures, time constraints, organizational siloes, and so forth. But one common objection that is harder to overcome is fairly specific to the healthcare and pharmaceutical space: an uncertain regulatory landscape.

1. Johnson & Johnson Acuvue’s Acuminder Facebook app. Everybody has that absentminded friend who leaves their contact lenses in for way too long. The Acuminder app reminds you when it’s time to change your contacts. It’s available as an email service outside of Facebook as well.Acuvue’s Facebook page also provides a pretty good example of a brand presence on Facebook that mixes conversation with promotion effectively.

2. GlaxoSmithKline’s myAlli is an oft-cited case study in a company harnessing online communities for market research or insights. We’vecovered it here before. Patients using the Alli weight loss drug share their stories with GSK and each other, recording their successes and difficulties with weight loss.

3. Just goes to show that there’s no single right way to use Facebook: McNeil Pediatrics serves up ADHD Moms, a Facebook page with more than 9,500 fans. Not a lot of discussion happens on the Wall of this page, but this effort to share useful information with thousands of mothers of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder serves as a useful resource in an accessible place.

4. Pharma company AstraZeneca maintains a YouTube channel that offers a valuable stream of news about the company’s initiatives such as Hope Lodge Centers, which offer free temporary housing facilities near major cancer treatment centers.

5. Three years ago, Novartis launched a YouTube contest called FluFlix, in which contestants promoted the health benefits of flu vaccines. The introductory video attracted 800,000 views.

Q> Is there any firm guideline from USFDA regarding social media marketing?

​Abs: aren’t any firm guidelines from the FDA. But companies should be be cautious or safe than be very visible in a social media context and have the FDA come after them later.

Traditionally, pharma companies are required to adhere to FDA guidelines in the realm of “adverse event reporting”. In other words, if they discover a consumer complaining about the side effects of a drug, even if those side effects are well known to be associated with that drug, they must report the complaint to the FDA.

​