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Accessibility of online product and disease-state information has paved the way for a new era of patient interaction—and a new era in branding and communications.

Well-known brands once offered a beacon of light in a complex problem/solution world. Brands such as Claritin or Allegra, Zocor or Lipitor, Viagra or Levitra, helped patients open the “what ails them” discussion with their doctors and clarify drug choice. Now, tiered co-pays, generic selection, pharmacy incentives and Part D plans are diminishing the importance of “brand” in the heads, hearts and wallets of the consumer. And pharma marketers are experimenting with a less brand-specifi c approach to online patient communication. Suddenly, non-branded “disease-awareness” is back in marketing mode. Do consumers notice or care any longer?

The model may seem counterintuitive for an industry so steeped in brand names, but brand managers who want to be more than mere spectators in driving online patient dialogue are going behind the brand. Their tack involves communications geared toward treatment discovery for small patient groups, commitment to achieving greater compliance and conveying pharma’s societal benefi ts.

The patient is inDTC and Internet access have given permission for patients to con-nect 24/7. While content is still king, patient-to-patient communica-tions are enjoying newfound credibility. Online disease communities enable patients to consult fellow patients as one might consult a clinician. In the wake of diabetes and heart treatments under siege, who is more believable—physicians or peers?

Nonprofi ts can be a fi rst line of outreach for pharma to connect with a smaller patient base. Patient support and advocacy groups are a trusted source of information on disease states. Focusing on building relationships with these groups can give companies a seat at the table. It works both ways—pharma companies should allow these patients to have a voice within the corporation on decisions

that impact patient care. Recently, breast cancer groups have lauded Genentech for engaging in a dialogue.

Online adherents, of course, also include scores of people with mainstream conditions, searching for information about diseases that

PATIENT MARKETING REPORT Social Media

SOCIAL ETIQUETTE

Just as it followed other sectors into CRM, the pharma industry must fi nd entry points into the online patient conversation. Gil Bashe explores some of the issues, hurdles and opportunities of Web 2.0

Pfi zer sponsored a 10-part series of scientists’ video diaries on BigThink.com (left) while Johnson & Johnson created a YouTube channel featuring information videos

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PATIENT MARKETING REPORT

had once been a mystery. But there’s potential and peril. “The danger is that if you search hard enough, you can fi nd anything you want,” says Mike McDougall, director of corporate communications, Bausch & Lomb. That’s why specifi c forums moderated by a respected third party have an advantage over generic chat rooms with unverifi ed information. “In the moderated rooms, that information becomes more authoritative. That’s the way organizations with a potential to brand can become beacons of trust in this realm.”

Reality showJust as pharma followed other industries into customer-relationship management (CRM), industry is following other sectors into Web 2.0 and using the web to reinforce compliance messaging.

Moderators on GlaxoSmithKline’s Alli Circles Community counsel that Alli is a program and requires patients to rethink eating habits, choose food with lower fat content, eat three meals a day, do physician activity and not to take anti-diarrhea meds—steps designed to man-age side effects. GSK leverages the engagement to affect confi dence and minimize the number of patients stopping treatment.

As the host of Alli Circles, GSK must report adverse events to the FDA. Once, sponsoring a site run by a third party might have mitigated some of the “credibility” hurdles. Today, that’s not always the case…being the hidden Wizard of Oz can diminish a site’s cred-ibility and bring congressional inquiry. That’s one of the reasons pharma leaders are prepared to go it alone.

Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) YouTube channel, where users can download health information videos featuring Nancy Snyderman,

MD, is an example. Comments are welcome, subject to approval. Through the videos, J&J communicates about topics people care about, and becomes a partner in promoting good health.

In a similar vein, Quest Diagnostics has used Web 2.0 in its aim to up compliance with annual colorectal cancer screening. Its disease intervention awareness and prevention campaign tugs at the heart-strings of people by asking them to e-mail a cancer screening aware-ness video to their friends and loved ones. The video garnered nearly 200,000 views, targeting a variety of demographic segments.

One new venue for distributing content—the video interview portal BigThink.com—uses its idea showcase as a way to engage with potential customers in a non-brand-specifi c way. BigThink is an online idea lab that streams a daily stew of philosophers and PhDs, professors and poets. Now add pharma to the mix.

Earlier this year, BigThink landed its fi rst pharma sponsor: Pfi zer, for a 10-part series featuring company scientists sharing their personal histories and refl ecting on challenges. Just a few clicks cue up a Pfi zer pharmacologist’s view of developing drugs for the global community and a scientist’s advice for the next generation of researchers.

Like its consumer-generated counterparts, BigThink has learned the importance of holding a transparent forum. Sponsors may worry that their social-media effort may be commandeered by naysayers, yet feedback is a vital part of the Internet. This is a good fi rst rule for the industry in general: If you go forward with candor and honesty, making clear your support and why you’re doing it, you don’t have to worry as much about negative comments.

Pharma should also choose a moderator carefully: Pick someone who will understand an issue and speak to it authoritatively and out-side the sponsors’ interests. Also, rethink the metrics beyond unique clicks and time spent within an area. Sometimes bringing together the right people, who in turn host their own sites and blogs, creates the tipping point of patient knowledge and understanding.

Pharma can establish a bigger footprint in this evolving terrain. That could mean the kind of engagement longed for by industry—a truly collaborative connection with patient advocates and info seek-ers. If pharma can fashion itself as a partner in health, providing all supplementary information to guide fair-balance choices and the path to living well, it’s going to loom large in the minds of consumers.

Gil Bashe is EVP, director of the health practice, Makovsky + Co.

Connecting with micro-patient groups online The Scleroderma Foundation sees its role as that of information champion. “Not to endorse any specifi c treatments,” explains Foundation CEO Frannie Wal-dron (pictured), “but to inform our patients of every-thing out there.” That includes conveying information on new treatments and clinical advances.

There are about 300,000 scleroderma patients in the US, one-third of whom live with the systemic kind—the most serious of the two forms of the

autoimmune disorder, affecting internal organs like the lungs and kidneys, as well as skin, and causing gastrointestinal, circulatory and other issues.

Orphan illnesses like these, with fewer than 200,000 patients, often form the basis for tightly knit online communities. Once connected by irregular snail-mail newsletters, these groups have found the web to be an equal-opportunity, 24/7 connector. Patients, their families and physi-cians are creating support groups to share breaking clinical informa-tion, news on helpful therapies and new clinical trials.

Waldron urges companies to consider foundations a prime route for outreach. “With organizations, there’s an opportunity for companies to educate the patient base about information and support,” she says.

Specialty company Actelion, maker of the drug Tracleer (bosentan) for treating pulmonary hypertension, works with the Scleroderma Foundation to raise awareness of its Sure Steps patient support program. To get the word out, Actelion advertises on the foundation’s website, scleroderma.org, and in its e-newsletter and print magazine. While maintaining distance from the Foundation and its patient base, it enables patients to fi nd out more about the medication their physicians use to help manage symptoms. Collaboration helps place patients a few clicks away from the information they seek.

As the host of online weight loss community Alli Circles, GSK is required to report all adverse events to the FDA