Jonathan at Dose of Digital talks about pharma’s fear of Facebook pages centering around 2 issues that pharma thinks require 24/7 monitoring: Adverse Events and negative publicity.
I hear the same excuse on why pharma companies are so scared to look at patient comments on blogs: adverse events.
I’m sorry, but adverse events are happening whether pharma companies are monitoring or not, and this is different from monitoring whether someone’s posting something “bad” about your company (newsflash: not everyone’s going to like you, better to expect it and have rules to address it than bury your head in the sand).
Adverse events are crucial for patient adherence and avoiding Facebook comments for fear of posts on AE is a missed opportunity for pharma to engage with patients in an issue that they all care about.
Patients expect drugs to work — rarely will patients want to get on a pharma page to thank the company for making a product that works. You may have a cancer patient who will do this if the company has gone above and beyond the call of duty to help the patient gain access to the drug that the patient otherwise cannot afford. But for the most part, patients have a “love-hate” relationship with pharma companies that is more “hate” than “love”, and I can’t blame patients for feeling this way.
What patients gripe about, and fear, and dread, are the adverse events.
Adverse events chip away a patient’s hope of getting better.
Adverse events erode a patient’s quality of life.
Adverse events make patients wonder, “would I rather stay ill, or deal with this horrible side effect?”
Then they look at companies avoiding discussion about something that is so key to their treatment experience, they naturally assume “profits before patients”. Never mind the realities of bureaucracy in adverse event reporting, I know it’s a bitch… the FDA knows it too.
That’s how pharma companies come across in their being so scared about Facebook.
Funny… I rarely recall pharma companies coming across scared when some of their sales and marketing teams find creative ways to fly under the radar to promote off-label. Somehow these companies are fine with breaking the law to “expand” usage of their drugs, but now they’re claiming they can’t deal with lack of guidance where Facebook pages are concerned.
Better companies pull their pages off Facebook if they are hard-headed about not allowing comments. Leave those who are more enlightened to get those patients’ eyeballs and possibly gain some goodwill.
Companies who want to control the message and behave hypocritically are doing the right thing by leaving Facebook: they aren’t adding value on the social network anyway.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice post, Jane.
I completely agree with your perspective – if companies are not going to engage, then there’s really not a lot of point being on Facebook. We’re all tired of push marketing practices. Social media is social by definition, doh!
Thanks Sally! I’m interested in @FDALawyer’s tweet about reasons for AE problems.
I think what the Facebook page requirement is showing is pharmaco’s true intention in social media. If it is about engaging and connecting and having a meaningful conversation, then requiring comments is prerequisite for this to occur. Yes, sometimes it means an adverse event will pop up, that pharma has to deal with.
I also love your tweet:
“@FDALawyers @JaneChin the number of reportable AEs that meet the criteria are v low but the excuses are relatively high”
Agree on the excuses!
Patients aren’t stupid, neither is the FDA (although yes it may be sloooooooooooooow and equally avoiding of hard issues).
Hi Jane,
I’d like to think the mass Facebook exodus of Pharma companies that some are anticipating is not going to fully materialize. Call me an optimist, I suppose.
It may simply be a case of Pharma needing to regroup and formulate a new plan of attack. Many Facebook withdrawals may be temporary until new strategies (eg. dealing with Adverse Event reporting) are ready to roll out.
It seems a shame for a company (in ANY industry) to spend time cultivating a following on a popular site like Facebook only to step away when the going gets a bit rough.
Good post!
Jason Boies
Community Engagement, Radian6
@Radian6
Thanks Jason!
@FDALawyer brings up a good point about difficulty in establishing causation of adverse events:
https://twitter.com/#!/FDALawyers/status/103215178488889344
I don’t dispute this. The problem is that patients are already “sharing” their adverse events experience all over the internet. I’ve seen this in my own blog. Avoiding the difficulty of establishing causation by turning a blind eye (not just with Facebook, but by instructing employees not to monitor the internet or social networks for patient experience with the drug, for example) looks like it makes sense right now, but you end up encouraging pockets of negative user experiences that are never addressed or acknowledged. Patients can more easily do an internet search for an experience with a drug than call their doctors.
Another problem pharma faces is “why are we here” — anywhere on a social network. Some companies may get on just because other companies are getting on a social network, they don’t want to “miss out” even as they don’t necessarily know why they want to participate in social media. So they don’t really “participate”, they disseminate.
This is a problem that no amount of regrouping is going to solve. It requires companies to become willing to engage on the internet that can’t be scripted all the time, which means companies become vulnerable to gaffs, mistakes, and appearing all too human.
{ 1 trackback }