Content Marketing Today

Big Pharma Reluctant to Embrace Two-Way Content Marketing

Johnson & Johnson is a rare exception.

BrandWeek explores a surprising marketing reality that is holding drug companies back from engaging in online conversations with their customers.

Although they are spending enormous amounts of money on television advertising designed to get consumers to specify individual drugs for their doctors, the major pharmaceutical companies are afraid to engage in online dialogue with those same consumers.

In an October 19 BrandWeek article, author Jim Edwards explains why:

Marketers fear that user-generated content will include complaints about injuries caused by their drugs’ side effects. The law requires these “adverse events” to be reported to the FDA. The FDA’s adverse-event databases are regularly combed by lawyers looking for potential class-action suits.

Thus, drug marketers stick with the Web 1.0 approach of talking at rather than with their customers.  Although their digital agencies are encouraging them to engage in online conversations, teams of lawyers and old-fashioned brand managers have been winning the day.

Although their concern about “adverse events” is understandable, it ignores the fact that their customers are using the Web to find what they desperately want to know about their diseases and how to deal with them.  Big Pharma is missing the opportunity to be part of an important conversation in which they are seen as a trusted source of information that will help their customers solve very big medical problems.

Johnson & Johnson takes a leap of faith

a very rare exception to the one Web 1.0 approach is J&J.  Perhaps their roots in consumer marketing make them more comfortable engaging their consumers.  In 2008 they acquired a community website, childrenwithdiabetes.com.

This appealing site is loaded with information for parents who are trying to look after their afflicted children–and for the kids who actually have the disease.  The site includes:

• chat rooms
• forums
• information about upcoming conferences
• best practice care
• scholarships and financial aid
• parent humor (we all need to get through tough times)

Although Johnson & Johnson needs to patrol a site looking for instances of adverse events that would need to be reported to the FDA, they have determined that, for now, the value they offer to their 10,000 monthly visitors more than compensates for that expense and effort.

It is likely that Johnson & Johnson won’t be a lonely pioneer much longer.  Industry blogger and marketing executive, Peter Pitts of Manning, Selvage & Lee offers an admonition quoted in the article:

Drug companies need to begin embracing ways to look for adverse events instead of hoping they don’t stumble across them.  I think the attitude of ‘there’s safety in ignorance’ or active ignorance, is no longer actionable or responsible.

Conversation builds trust and trust builds business

television advertising from big Pharma must be effective because they spend so much money doing it.  On the other hand, a fraction of the dollars spent pitching products on the boob tube would power the creation of a meaningful community website such as childrenwithdiabetes.com.

As senior executives from big Pharma debate how to reinvent themselves in a less profitable and possibly more hostile world, they will find that sincere efforts at building online communities that encourage two-way communication can play a pivotal role in their survival.