Blogger in Chief?

A long, long time ago, in a Presidential administration far, far away (okay, about 7 months ago), social media was just another thing on the “Internets.”

But now we have a White House that understands through firsthand experience what a powerful tool Facebook is for building brand advocates. Nary a day goes by without a few missives from the Oval Office to its nearly 253,000 fans currently on the network. And now they’ve even added live video chat.

But President Obama isn’t the only government official who has wholeheartedly embraced Web 2.0.

His troops are now marching to the same beat. Wired.com reports that the Army has ordered its U.S. bases to stop blocking soldiers’ access to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. The intent is to share the Army experience in a more authentic way, through the eyes of the soldiers, themselves.

And NASA, not to be lost in the web space, has recently launched something other than a shuttle or satellite. Concerned that Facebook may pose a security risk, but recognizing the need for some kind of online outlet for their employees to engage and collaborate with each other, it has introduced a secure social network of its own.

Not to be presumptuous, but can you imagine the State Department’s interest in the role of Twitter and Facebook in the organizing and reporting on of the unrest in Iran?

-Mark

Pew's Numbers are Whew! Numbers

The Pew Foundation recently issued another of their insightful studies on the Internet and Health entitled, “The Social Life of Health Information.” It is chock-full of amazing numbers:

• 61% of adults now look for health information vs. only 25% in 2000 (Pew calls these people e-patients)

• 60% of e-patients said they or someone they know has been helped by following medical advice or health information found on the Internet vs. only 31% in 2006.

• 45% of Internet users have looked online for information about Rx or OTC drugs vs. 34% in 2002

• 60% of e-patients (37% of US adults) have done at least one of eleven social media activities related to health care such as reading blogs, posting comments or consulting on-line rankings of physicians

While the absolute numbers are impressive, it is the rapid pace of change that really grabbed my attention. According to the study, we can expect this forward momentum to continue, particularly in regards to the adoption of social media based on two trends they spotted:

• Mobile technology is associated with deeper engagement in social media” and is expected to rise in the coming years

· •• , • Adults, 18-49, are more likely to engage in social technologies related to health than other demographics and will inevitably start experiencing health issues in the next few years

Hopefully, Pew’s numbers will help strengthen marketers’ resolve to start experimenting with social media. So often I hear, “My target isn’t using social media yet. When they do, I’ll think about a social media plan.” True, there is a lot of hype around social media. We may well be in what the Gartner Group calls “the Peak of Inflated Expectations” phase of their famous technology Hype Cycle, but that doesn’t mean marketers can’t wade through the hype to produce meaningful results.

Consider adopting the approach of “serious experimentation/managed expectations” that C.S. Rollyson describes in his socialmedia.biz post. Using lessons from the Web 1.0 bust/boom cycle, Rollyson predicts that social media will start gaining significant traction in 2011 and beyond.

And just like Web 1.0 before it, he predicts that the techniques of Web 2.0 will become mainstream. The time is now for innovator companies to begin an aggressive, yet thoughtful approach to building their social media competency. As Rollyson points out, “Imagine if you had realized the Internet’s full potential in 1995, and you had invested with that purpose in mind. This is the opportunity that executives have today with Web 2.0.”

1) The experiments are strategically relevant to the brand

2) Clear expectations are set about how the initiative will change consumer behavior

In the case of health care, will your initiative encourage positive talk about a brand? Increase patient knowledge about a condition? Or, drive the consumer to ask a particular question about the availability of a new treatment option?

Certainly, it makes sense to think critically about all the hype surrounding social media. Social media alone won’t solve all the problems healthcare marketers face. And it won’t be a wholesale replacement for today’s media or even take the place of other important sources of healthcare information, such as physicians, family and friends.

But if the Pew study teaches us anything, it is that consumers have an insatiable interest in health information and are rapidly embracing Web 2.0 to satisfy their non-stop need to know.

Marketers just have to match that passion with an equally strong conviction to provide the right information.

-Dorothy

My French Connection

One way to reach out and really connect with consumers like never before is House Party. It’s what we at Extrovertic call a “bricks & clicks” social media solution and we’re very excited about it. Companies engage House Party to organize 1,000-15,000 consumer parties nationwide, on a single night, centered on a product-related theme. The idea is to get the hosts and their guests to talk about their experiences on and off-line.

There have been “Alli” low-fat food tastings, Hersey “Bliss” pampering parties and SC Johnson spring-cleaning parties.

At Extrovertic, we think House Party is a perfect venue for generating positive talk about Rx and OTC products. If you can get 18,000 women to apply to host a party to generate talk around cleaning products, surely you could get them interested in osteoporosis products, sleep aids, children’s and pet medicines, or even dermal fillers?

One of the questions clients always ask is, “Why on earth would someone want to host one of these house parties?” So I decided to find out for myself and host a “French Wine and Cheese” party that House Party was organizing on behalf of the French government.

Turns out I had a lot of fun doing it, gained some knowledge about French wine & cheese, and reignited my love of entertaining. My husband and I used to entertain a lot, but between kids, dogs, house and jobs, all that socializing went by the wayside.

As a House Party Hostess, you get the feeling of “being in the know” and for some of us extroverts, that is a part of our identity (sometimes an annoying part. I admit I once got a prize for “most knowledgeable” at a company sales event, which wasn’t meant to flatter me, I am afraid!).

One of the things I discovered on the company’s blog for party-givers is that there are many repeat hostesses, so I am not alone in my compulsive “need to share.” The French “concierge” who answered people’s pre-party questions on the national online party page was also a valuable resource. What an engaging and personal way to get consumers connected to a company or product.

Further knowledge could be obtained by downloading “party favors”–tip sheets and signage. As a hostess, you earn points for each activity that puts you in the running for a prize. In my case, a French vacation. (Or maybe not. I was a relative slacker who earned 344 points versus the national leader who blew me away by wracking up 169,669 points.)

I found that my guests really wanted to talk about the company/government sponsorship and the products being offered (in the case of wine & cheese, the appeal is obvious). I spent at least 30-45 minutes explaining the concept and answering my friends’ questions. And even though some of our talk was “tongue in cheek,” I bet that the next time my friends visit a wine store, they’ll find themselves checking out the French wine section.

Some people may worry that a party centered on a health condition or medication could be trivializing. I would argue the opposite: what better way than a party to help bring healthcare front and center in our daily lives?

And imagine the power these newly engaged brand advocates would have when let loose to chat about their their great experiences online.

And, as health guru Dr. Roizen, suggests, the only way spiraling healthcare costs will be brought under control is to emotionally engage consumers in making needed lifestyle changes, including taking prescription medicines.

So how about a healthy lifestyles party for the Woodstock generation?

Any takers?

-Dorothy

Another Kind of Healthcare Revolution

Pharma Guy ‘s recent post about his experience on a social media panel struck a chord. While the panel was certain that social media would change the consumer communication landscape, it also concluded that for social media to experience dramatic uptake in the pharma world, marketing as a whole would have to make sweeping changes.

Similar thoughts had recently been percolating in my head. Certainly, there are a number of ways that the traditional marketing framework in which we operate (AIDA) should change to leverage the power of social media. Shifting our objectives from generating awareness to creating talk-worthy programs is one example.

The most necessary change however, is that marketing departments have to reorient themselves from being responsible for creating messages to receiving them. A company’s ability to respond to a crisis has been proven time and again to increasingly shaping the public’s perception of it. Consider Domino’s swift and effective response to the unfortunate employee escapades on YouTube (see Mark’s 4/16 post).

Currently, social media is the sole providence of corporate communications, which for many pharma companies exists in a completely separate silo from marketing. In fact, Mark and I have visited a few companies where the people with whom we met were flabbergasted to learn from us that their corporate communications people already had made some forays into social media.

What’s needed is some sort of “Customer Advocacy Department” within Marketing. It should include people skilled in marketing, medical, communications, alliance development and customer service. This department would be responsible for monitoring, responding and engaging with the online communities that are so crucial to shaping a brand’s digital footprint.

This idea has its genesis in a Customer Advocacy Department I was part of at Pfizer in the late ‘90s. While the idea was solid, our department’s mission was vague – the staffing was wrong and the group was kept separate from Marketing. Perhaps the concept was also a bit ahead of its time. Our department did, however, accomplish some important work, particularly in the area of health literacy.

Pharmaceutical marketing departments have traditionally altered their composition to meet the changing communication opportunities. When the DTC regulations changed in 1997, Consumer Marketing departments started springing up everywhere.

With the growth of social media, particularly in the older demographics that are the heaviest users of pharmaceutical products, the need for departments that are “programmed to receive” will grow exponentially. According to a recent study from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, "Nearly all of the recent growth in social networking has come among older people." Yesterday’s New York Times had an article about the positive role social networking sites play in the lives of home-bound seniors.

In it, Joseph F. Coughlin, Director of the Age Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says, “The new future of old age is about staying in society, staying in the workplace and staying very connected. And technology is going to be a very big part of that, because the new reality is, increasingly, a virtual reality.”

Despite the growth in social media, it may take the issuance of social media guidelines by the FDA to kick pharmaceutical social media usage into high gear (as it did for DTC advertising). However, business (and more importantly someone’s health) slips away a little every day that the promise of social media is ignored.

I can’t tell you how many times I have read posts on message boards like, “Wow, after reading about all the side effects everyone here has had with Drug X, I am stopping my medicine now!”

A Customer Advocacy Department – if such a thing existed today– is where these patients could obtain some useful balance and perhaps not delay going off their medicines until speaking with their healthcare professionals. Maybe listening and responding to customer concerns can help flatten out those precipitous drops in adherence every drug experiences, particularly after 3 months. What about reconfiguring our databases to be programmed to receive email rather than to simply send out the latest blast?

Maybe social media is the compliance tool that we have all been waiting for?

-Dorothy

The Missing Link?

My wife and I had dinner at our neighbors’ house and our host mentioned that he has made it his mission to clear out all of the clutter in his home. The task has become somewhat of an archeological dig as he pulls out relic upon relic from deep within his closets.

One found object was his now grown son’s ham radio set – the radio itself and all of the “QSL” cards that had been sent to him over the years from people he had spoken to from all over the world.

Having gone to sleep-away camp as a kid, I remembered the camp’s ham radio shed and how such cards took up virtually every available inch of wall space within it. These cards with their official call signs and operator numbers were proudly displayed for all to see. One couldn’t help but be impressed by the collection of messages from the USSR, China, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

The ham radio operator actually chatted with the sender of each and every one of them!

It suddenly dawned on me:

Was connecting with ham operators from around the world back then much different than connecting with people on FaceBook or Twitter today? Were QSL cards much different than “Friends” or “Follower” lists?

Can you think of any other antecedents of today’s social networks?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Until then, over and out.

-Mark

Tweet to Remind: Social Media for Memorial Day

I wish I had learned about this sooner. 

Tweet to Remind is a creation of the Bob Woodruff Foundation and the ad agency, Porter Novelli.

To use their own words, "If every person who visits tweettoremind.org donates $5.25 in time for Memorial Day weekend, we could raise $1.65 million to help America's heroes as they return home."

Woodruff, you'll recall, is the reporter who was slated to take over the anchor chair at ABC News, until he was gravely wounded by a land mine while covering a story on the Iraq War. Tweet to Remind is only the latest project of his ReMIND.org, an organization dedicated to raising money and awareness for service members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as their families.

Woodruff asks bloggers and tweeters to post a simple note answering, "Who is your hero?" and encourage readers to do the same. Also to set up a link to your blog post from your Twitter account. 

For the record, my hero is my grandfather, Nathan Solomon. He was an officer and physician in the Medical Corps stationed in France during WWll, but his real heroism surfaced during his years in private practice in the Bronx as the neighborhood around him burned. He refused to leave the patients who depended on him even after he was beaten and robbed on numerous occasions. He also showed his valor as both his children died at tragically young ages. And as the wife who he was married to for an eternity passed away. He was the guy who taught me all the right values. He was such a great character and had so strong an effect on me that no day goes by that I don't think about him. Thanks, Grandpa.

Sorry to post this so late, but there's still today.

-Mark

The Island of Social Media

I just read a great story on MSNBC about the power of social media.

Tourism Queensland, an Australian state's tourism bureau, invited entrants to submit videos explaining why they should be chosen as the caretaker of an island on the Great Barrier Reef.

The winner of "The Best Job in the World" is to spend six months exploring the reef and report on the experience via blogs, a photo diary, video updates and interviews.

As if that's not enough, he also gets about $110,000 in salary.

Nearly 35,000 video entries were received and news of the event was amplified throughout the blogosphere.

And while the number of entries was impressive, consider this: Tourism Queensland calculates that the $1.7 million it spent on the campaign translated to about $110 million in global publicity.

"This is probably the first time that a campaign has achieved this sort of reach with so little advertising spend other than a few strategically placed job ads around the world," said Australian marketing analyst Tim Burrowes, editor of media and marketing Web site Mumbrella.

"This has all been about the power of people passing things on, largely through YouTube. The main lesson to be learned here is that if you have an original, exciting idea that gets people talking you don't need to spend huge on advertising."

The winner of the contest is Ben Southall, of Britain (shown in the photo above).

But the real winner may be the allure of social media.

-Mark