Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18366
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: Electronic Source
Meyer R
Overvaluing social media
World of DTC Marketing 2010 July 6
http://www.worldofdtcmarketing.com/files/ee0357a35ac86fe910b3c02e5baa0fcf-1140.html
Full text:
There’s a growing list of people with titles like social pharma or social media strategist who have never developed any kinds of strategies in their entire career. They know enough about social media to talk themselves into a position that has no real objectives or success metrics and three months in, everyone is miserable. Here are some excerpts from an article on the Social Media Bubble on iMedia and it applies to pharma who once again missed the crest of wave.
In simple terms, a bubble just means that we overvalue something. Sometimes that thing we overvalue has no real value at all, and sometimes it’s wonderfully valuable and a victim of too much hype. It’s the latter that probably best describes the way we presently view social media relationships, especially where pharma is concerned.
Those relationships do matter, but probably not as much as the FDA or other social media band leaders would have you believe. Or, put another way, we value them with a universally high appraisal while failing to dig deeper and realize that not all social media relationships are 1) the same and 2) worth very much.
In fact, according to Jim Spinello, SVP for digital services and youth culture at rEvolution, the strength or weakness of a relationship isn’t created by social media at all. “The viscosity of the relationship is derived from a formula of trusted sources and mutual interests,” Spinello says. “These are easily weeded out or nourished on the web via social media.” The key here is trusted sources and right now pharma is NOT a trusted source and using social media is NOT going to lead to trust it is being consistent with your actions and being transparent with information.
Today, most brands are using social media. But use is a pretty low hurdle to jump. After all, having a Facebook page — even if nobody monitors it — is considered a use of social media. My sense is that there are a lot of brands that are doing just that. That is, they’ve created a Facebook page in response to a meeting where the terms social media and strategy were smashed together so many times that the marketing team came out talking gibberish and everyone else in the company got a clear message: Drink the social media Kool-Aid or don’t bother coming in tomorrow.
For brands that pay lip service to social media and expect earth-shattering results, there most certainly will be a day of reckoning. And that day will come when there’s a consensus that social media hasn’t moved the needle. Of course, in all likelihood, those brands won’t say, “Our social media efforts failed to move the needle.” They’ll just blame social media altogether. For those brands, there probably is a social media bubble. Or, more correctly, from an industry perspective there are lots of little social media bubbles out there. Whether they all pop at once, and to what extent those brands will own their mistakes, will determine whether that “bubble” bursts all over everyone else. And then the question will be: Will the brands that were making good use of social media overreact, or will they remember that the bubble question really does depend on how you use social media?
Kudos to the author he has hit the nail right on the head. Social media is not the answer to DTC marketers who wonder what to do next. If you’re going to be an effective marketer you need to be able to understand what patients want and need and that your marketing is now shared marketing with microsegments of people.
