Social Media Branding: Roche, Novartis and Weleda

Social media relationship quality of three Swiss brands

Roche – Novartis – Weleda

Course: Digital Marketing

Professor: Andreina Mandelli

Submission date: 22. November 2012

Group:

Maria Zhukova Emilie Høyer Laura Pelizzari Mengyue Zhai Shan Qing Wang Miaomiao

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Executive Summary

In this report, an analysis of the quality of relationship building in social media for Roche,

Novartis and Weleda will be carried out and be evaluated by seven variables which are social

presence, dialog/customer engagement management, sentiment/advocacy management,

support/value, innovation, leadership and linking value/community.

A vote (between 1 and 10) will be assigned to the brands on each variable, based on our

subjective evaluations. The aim of this report is to establish an overview of social media

branding for Roche, Novartis and Weleda, and to provide the readers with a good

understanding about the impact of social media branding in the healthcare industry.

Finally, we compare the ratings between the different brands, and sum up with a conclusion.

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Table of Contents Executive Summary.......... ……………………………………………………………………......2 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………4 Roche………………………………………………………………………………………………………4 Social presence………………………………………………………………………………………….…4 Dialog/customer engagement management…………………………………………………...……5 Sentiment/advocacy management……………………………………………………………….……6 Support/value……………………………………………………………………………………………...7 Innovation…………………………………………………………………………………………………..8 Leadership.…………………………………………………………………………………………………10 Linking value/community………………………………………………………………………………11 Novartis……………………………………………………………………..……………………………12 Social presence……………………………………………………………………….……………………12 Dialog/customer engagement management………………………………………………...………13 Sentiment/advocacy management…………………………………………………………….………15 Support/value…………………………………………………………………...…………………………17 Innovation……………………………………………………………………………………..……………18 Leadership.………………………………………………………………………………….………………19 Linking value/community………………………………………...…………………………………………………20 Weleda…………………………………………………………………………….……………………….21 Social presence……………………………………………………………………….…………………….21 Dialog/customer engagement management…………………………………………………….…………….22 Sentiment/advocacy management………………………………………………………………………………...24 Support/value………………………………………………………………………………………………25 Innovation……………………………………………………………………...……………………………26 Leadership.……………………………………………………….…………………….……………………27 Linking value/community……………………………………..…………………………………………28 Conclusion………………………………………………………………..………………………………29

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Introduction The analysis of social media in public relations is one of the most popular research topics today

(McCorkindale, 2010)1. However, while many top corporates are using social media, they are not

using their sites efficiently to disseminate information about their brand and, most importantly, they

are not actively engaging their customers with relation-‐building strategies (ibid).

Through social media many healthcare stakeholders have the ability to discuss treatments; patients

are using social media sites to share and compare their experiences with pharmaceutical treatments

(Baldwin et al, 2011)2. Leading pharmaceutical companies could embrace this opportunity to engage

with their many different stakeholder groups, in particular their patients, to keep them at the centre

and see them as partners rather than as a distant and insignificant part of their target audience.

In this report, an analysis of the quality of relationship building in social media for Roche, Weleda

and Novartis will be carried out and to be evaluated by seven variables which are social presence,

dialog/customer engagement management, sentiment/advocacy management, support/value,

innovation, leadership and linking value/community.

A vote (between 1 and 10) will be assigned to the brands on each variable, based on our subjective

evaluations. The aim of this report is to establish an overview of social media branding for Roche,

Novartis and Weleda, and to provide the readers with a good understanding about the impact of

social media branding in the healthcare industry.

Finally, we compare the ratings between the different brands and sum up with a conclusion.

Roche

Social presence: 8 points On Roche’s webpage a list of different social medias are listed in which the brand is present. The list

includes some of the most popular communication platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube,

LinkedIn, Xing and Blog3, which prove that Roche puts a lot of effort in trying to be broadly present

on social platforms. Roche argue, that the aim of using the many community platforms is an attempt

1http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/PRJournal/Documents/content_analysis_of_the_fortune_50s_facebook.pdf 2 Baldwin M, Spong A, Doward L, Gnanasakthy A. Patient-‐Reported Outcomes, Patient-‐Reported Information: From Randomized Controlled Trials to the Social Web and Beyond. The Patient: Patient-‐Centered Outcomes Research 2011;4(1). 3 http://www.roche.com/socialmedia

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to change the way of communication, interaction and doing business. This attempt is done both

externally and within the Roche network.

In our opinion Roche’s current presence on the platforms shows that Roche understands the

importance of being presented in social medias. On Roche’s webpage a document regarding “social

media principles” is accessible (see picture below), in which Roche proposes the following guidelines

for using social media. This statement supports the impression, that Roche makes a lot of effort in

being aware of how social medias should be handled and used:

Source: http://www.roche.com/socialmedia

When considering other platforms that could be relevant for Roche’s business and relation strategy,

we suggest web pages like PharmPro and Healthcare Today, which are news-‐platforms about

healthcare and technology development in the healthcare industry. As Roche already uses these

webpages for press releases about new product, but they could consider using such platforms more

widely, e.g. providing critical research-‐articles about future technological development of healthcare

products, to seem more pro-‐active and consumer-‐oriented.

In sum we have ranked Roche’s social presence 8 points, due to the high awareness and use of social

platforms. However we believe, that the information and activity could be improved and made more

customer relevant.

Dialog/customer engagement management: 4 points Now that we have an overview of the different social platforms that Roche uses, we will look into

how many users Roche has managed to contact and/or engage. When looking at Roche’s Twitter-‐

profile user responses mostly stem from people linked to the healthcare industry. On Roche’s

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Facebook-‐profile they have less than 10.000 “likes”, and the updates posted by Roche is seldom

commented on. From this data it seems that Roche have some difficulty trying to engage potential

users of their products on the social platforms. It seems that the communication often is information-‐

oriented and lack a sincere attempt to create a real dialog with the customers. This creates the

impression that Roche lacks experience and creative ideas about how to engage the customers more

actively on the platform.

In sum we have ranked Roche’s dialog with customers 4 points, as we will argue, that Roche only

creates limited brand awareness, since they have not so far succeeded in engaging customers on the

social platforms. It is not enough for Roche to be present on the social platforms they also need the

skill of creating customer-‐feedback and -‐dialog.

Sentiment/advocacy management: 2 point Next we will move on to evaluate customer satisfaction about Roche and potential evidence about

positive word of mouth. We will present our assumptions only on the basis of data available on

Roche’s social platforms.

Customer/stakeholder comments, about Roche made on the various social platforms are mostly

positive but we will argue this is not the same as saying there is not negative word of mouth about

Roche. As mentioned earlier, less than 10.000 “liked” Roche’s Facebook-‐profile, which is quit little

compared to the total number of customers using Roche’s products or employees working at Roche.

This fact could indicate that a lot of customers either think that Roche’s Facebook-‐profile is

uninspiring and not worth liking, or that people are unaware of Roche presence on Facebook. A third

explanation could be, that people did not like the profile because of bad experience with or

impression of the brand Roche. Either way, 10.000 likes are not even close to a statement saying that

Roche is widely liked and shared by people all over the world.

We will further argue, that comments and likes on online platforms like Facebook and Blog are

usually positive, since only people with interest and engagement in a brand visit its social platforms.

If someone wanted to express negative feedback or complain, we assume that such

customers/stakeholders would approach the company directly, or participate in critical articles or

research about the issue.

We have not found any data indicating how Roche manage/stimulate positive comments. However,

we found a recent scenario where Roche is not handling customer comments and negative

conversations actively. The webpage BMJ.com – a leading British medical journal by doctors for

doctors and patients, posted a critical article saying that Roche’s flu-‐drug; Tamiflu was ineffective

and that they demanded that all data regarding the development of the product should be released.

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Since the release of this negative statement about Roche, we have not found any responds from

Roche on either of its social platforms.

Using Analytical Tools We have used the program friends.skuttle.com, which is an analytical tool to monitor a brand’s

Facebook presence, campaigns and competitors. The following analysis using this simple Facebook

activity report for Roche shows a number of interesting characteristics:

Source: friends.skuttle.com

To sum up, we give Roche 2 points for handling both negative comments and stimulate positive

conversations, since their efforts seem to be undeveloped and non-‐existing at the moment.

Support/value: 5 points In this section we will explore whether Roche offers free and valuable content to customers.

When looking at Roche webpage, a platform called Responsibility Center shows an impressive list of

different engagements that Roche are involved in. The list includes a lot of activities that are free and

valuable for customers. To name a few Roche provide; campaigns to raise funds to vulnerable kinds

all over the world4, an educational program for African regions about cancer5, a report about

4 http://www.roche.com/responsibility/sustainability/policies_guidelines_and_positions.htm 5 http://www.roche.com/sust-‐educare.pdf

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frequently asked questions about animal testing6 and an attempt to implement Greenhouse Gases to

support the fight against global climate changes7.

When looking at Roche’s social platforms, the Twitter-‐profile supports a steady flow of information

regarding resent research developments and new product launches, whereas the Blog-‐webpage are

used as an online job-‐portal containing available job-‐positions within Roche. In other words, Roche

does not make any obvious attempts to provide free customer value on any of their social platforms,

but rather uses them as a channel through which they provide information and advertising about

their image and/or products.

In our opinion, Roche could benefit from making their social media presence more personalized, e.g.

providing information/answering questions regarding customers’ personal medical experience.

Through such additional services, Roche’s customers could benefit from additional information given

about their personal experience with Roche’s products, and learn more about their health

development.

In total we rank Roche’s additional support/value 5 points, since they engage in a lot of activity

globally, but lack a more local connection with users of Roche’s products.

Innovation: 8 points In this section we will examine whether Roche is engaged in different kinds of collaborations as well

as whether different cooperation have resulted in new products or solutions to healthcare-‐related

problems.

Through Roche’s webpage it’s clear that product development and innovations are done with help

from more than 150 different alliances and partnerships8. These collaborations bring together

creative and diversified sources of knowledge that align innovation across multiple disciplines like

biochemistry, biology, and physics and engineering. Many collaborators constitute the foundation of

Roche’s technological research and development department, and future expansion of the product

portfolio.

In addition, Roche collaborate with diagnostics to come up with custom-‐made solutions for patients,

through which smaller partners are invited to contribute to product development9.

The way through which Roche tries to support and build upon their collaborations is through

surveys and frequent interaction. Roche is highly engaged in creating what they call an “innovation

6 http://www.roche.com/ar_faqs.pdf 7 http://www.roche.com/greenhouse_gases.pdf 8 http://www.roche.com/research_and_development/partnering/roche_partnering/our_alliances.htm 9 http://www.roche.com/research_and_development/partnering/roche_partnering.htm

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network”, that is seen as a gateway to scientific excellence10, which is why Roche focus a lot of energy

on building collaborations.

From multiple surveys conducted by Roche and third parties, Roche gathers feedback from

customers in order to optimize communication channels as well as sales and marketing plans11.

Recently, Roche’s department in Spain received the Madrid Excellence Reward for customer

confidence and creating suitable value by meeting customers’ satisfaction12.

When looking at Roche’s webpage, we only find limited attempts to include the broad mass of actual

and potential customers. Further, as seen on Roche’s Facebook-‐profile, the attempt to include or

activate customers had limited success. See the image below:

Source: Facebook: “Roche Careers”

Even though Roche tries to engage customer participation, their attempt was only “liked” by 6 people.

We suggest, that Roche could post more intrigues and eye-‐catching posts, and restrain the customers’

attention by following up with comments and new insights. As it is, Roche does not reply those few

responds that appears once in a while, which gives the impression, that the attempt to create

communication and dialog is insincere and shallow.

In sum we have assigned Roche 8 points regarding their current innovation-‐level. We definitely see a

strong collaboration behind the development of the products, and some strong attempts to maintain

10 http://www.roche.com/rd_partnering.pdf 11 http://www.roche.com/search.htm?query=2011&x=0&y=0, Roche 2011 annual report 12 http://www.roche.com/search.htm?query=2011&x=0&y=0, Roche 2011 annual report

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a widespread innovation network. However, when focusing on Roche’s attempt to build customer-‐

networks on social platforms, they still have a long way to go.

Leadership: 6 points In this section we will evaluate Roche’s attempt to create figurative story telling and evaluate

whether the brand is connected to relevant influencers in social medias.

When looking at the front page of Roche’s website, a film presents a catchy sales talk about the aim of

Roche and how they operate13. The film is made trustworthy through facts and real-‐life insights from

Roche’s manufacturing quarters. Further the film tries to capture a three-‐folded product-‐focus,

namely to capture and deliver benefit to patients, pharmaceuticals and researchers14. Even though

the film is presented from an objective and matter-‐of-‐factly point of view, which is mostly, is in favor

of an approach toward pharmaceuticals and researches, the patient point-‐of-‐view is supported

through an additional film that pops up right after the first film has ended. The second film focuses

entirely on the patient, by telling a story about Roche’s products from a personal point of view. The

film is about a pianist who got his life and passion back, due to some of Roche’s new technological

developments. The film captures a real-‐life scenario, to which both actual and potential customers

can relate, while succeeding in presenting the positive benefits of using Roche’s products.

When looking at Roche’s Facebook-‐profile and other social platforms, Roche’s storytelling-‐ability is

not nearly as accurate and personalized as the films on the home webpage. The majorities of the

posts on the social platforms are made by Roche and are formulated from a Roche-‐employee point of

view. This perspective does not succeed in inviting customers to participate in the conversation,

which shows on the nonexistent response under each post (see picture below).

Source: Facebook: “Roche Careers” 13 http://www.roche.com/index.htm 14 http://www.roche.com/products.htm

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However, the tones of the posts are trustworthy and as a viewer you get the impression that Roche

has their internal capabilities and developments under control, as the employees explaining the aim

of the posts are presented as calm, rational, healthy and forthcoming.

We suggest that Roche could benefit from a more creative way of posting statements, in order to

activate and capture attention on the social platforms. Further we suggest, that Roche put an effort in

building a correlation with influencers of different social platforms. Such influencers could be real-‐life

customers, whom have had experience with the treatments (both doctors and patients).

In total, we rate Roche’s Leadership ability 6 points, since a lot more can be done to capture the

attention and perspective of the users on the social platforms, but that some relevant material

already exists (e.g. the films), but are not yet made available on the relevant social platforms.

Linking value/community: 4 points In this final section we will examine whether Roche is positioned as a connector, and how Roche

handles users’ connection/relatedness on the different social platforms.

As our analysis above indicates so far, Roche is not seen upon as a social connector. We believe that

Roche should work more on all of its presents on social media platforms. This conclusion is based

upon the number of visitors found on the different platforms: Twitter: 24.046 followers, Facebook:

9.593, YouTube: 260 views and LinkedIn 18.003 members15.

Source: Twitter: “Roche”

Source: Facebook: “Roche Careers”

15 http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=2314868

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Source: Youtube: “F. Hoffmann-‐La Roche Ltd.”

In sum this picture could look much more positive, since members, followers and “likes” is not

arguably high considered the size of Roche, which is why Roche only gets 4 point as a social

connector.

Novartis Novartis is a Swiss multinational pharmaceutical company with headquarters in Basel, Switzerland,

ranking number two in sales among pharmaceutical industry worldwide in 201016.

Social presence: 9 points

Source: http://www.novartis.com/newsroom/stay-‐up-‐to-‐date/index.shtml

From the homepage of Novartis, you can see related links to Novartis’s social media platforms as the

picture shown above. The brand of Novartis is present mainly in five public social media platforms;

these are Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Flickr, and each platform presents relevant

information for supporting their business and relationship long-‐term strategy which is keeping

16http://www.imshealth.com/deployedfiles/ims/Global/Content/Corporate/Press%20Room/Top-‐line%20Market%20Data/2010%20Top-‐line%20Market%20Data/Top_20_Global_Products.pdf

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growing in a dynamically changing healthcare environment by focus on innovation, diversify

portfolio and improve efficiency in business processes17.

In addition, Novartis has developed CML Earth (shown as below) that is a social network that

especially connects Chronic Myeloid Leukemia patients, while the site welcomes patients, patient

groups and healthcare professionals from around the world to be CML focused. As well as online

cystic fibrosis (CF) community, Novartis has also involved to expend their business service.

Source: http://blog.kruresearch.com/2009/06/novartis-‐cml-‐earth/

Comparatively speaking, among healthcare sector, Novartis has not only have established their own

account on public social platforms, but it has created its own social media platform with a global

target focus. For a healthcare brand like Novartis, social media means so much more than just

pushing their brand or gain awareness, such as CML earth, which is a good innovation approach to

improve their effect in certain business area to expand their healthcare business.

Dialog/ customer engagement management: 3 points In this part, we want to find the reach of Novartis’ social media by finding out how many users

Novartis has contacted through social media. The official page face book demonstrates that 5.52% of

the members are discussing the brand (1122 talking/ 20308 likes). When talking about Twitter,

there are 30899 followers on Twitter, the context on Twitter is most about some advertising and

nearly each tweet has the customer comments or following, but Novartis hardly responded to the

17 http://www.novartis.com/newsroom/media-‐releases/en/2010/1463217.shtml

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activity. From the social platforms which are provided by Novartis, we know that the number of

users connected the brand through social media is huge, but the data shows that the users are not

very active on these social media.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/user/Novartis/featured

Source: http://www.facebook.com/novartis?ref=ts&fref=ts

Source: https://twitter.com/novartis

Then we look at the content of these websites, we try to find if Novartis has a visible strategy to

stimulating participation and customer engagement.

The Facebook website includes a lot of pictures that introduce the company’s product and the R&D

achievement. They also use a timeline to show their company, so the customers can better understand

the history of the company. But we hardly find there is any obvious and official channel that Novartis

connect with their customer to provide some useful information or try to improve the enthusiasm of

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the customer.

So it appears that Novartis treats social media as a platform for advertising instead of stimulating

participation and customer engagement.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj8GD8kD76w&feature=plcp

Novartis has also posted some advertising videos on YouTube, the amount of the viewers is large,

while the participators is small, such as the above video that had only 12 people participating in this,

even though the viewers is 4572. There is another reason that the users are not so active. Novartis

forbids customer to comment on the video, this measure inhibits the customers’ enthusiasm.

From the points mentioned above, we think Novartis really did something to attract customer’s

attention, but it seems that they only emphasize the introduction and display of the company’s product

while ignoring the opportunity to build a connection with their customer. We believe there is a lot of

room in this part, and if they take advantage of the customer engagement, the company will be benefit

a lot. All in all, we give the 3 points to Novartis.

Sentiment/ advocacy management: 4 points In this sector, we will focus on the customer satisfaction about Novartis and the influence from word

of mouth. What content are people interacting about? How rich are the conversations? How many

different people are engaging? We think those are important questions for us to keep in mind, when to

evaluate the customer satisfaction based on the small data available on Novartis’s social media

platforms. Customer/stakeholder comments about Novartis made on the various social media

platforms are mostly positive, which is not necessary the same as word of mouth. However there were

only limited comments online, which might be because of the healthcare industry and the special

behavior of customers as patients, and for the unique Novartis’ s social community like CML earth that

are quite popular but mainly for the users who related about that certain healthcare segment. As

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mentioned earlier, for their public social platform there is only little percentage among the total

number of customers involved to talk about the brand or products. This fact could indicate that a lot of

customers were patients, on one hand they would prefer to go for the official page to get official

support for the serious health issue which is understandable and reasonable, on the other hand that

after recover they may not enthusiastic to talk about the sadness sickness memory.

Using Analytical Tools By applying the friends.skuttle.com analysis for Novartis, we get the following characteristics:

Source: friends.skyttle.com

1. While the numbers of negative posts are minimal and positive posts are numerous, the sentiment

over the previous 3 months has significantly decreased

2. The majority of posts are deemed to have a neutral opinion

3. Generally posts have decreased by one third over a period of three months

By using the same analytical tool, we obtain richer information about Novartis User Behavior as

follows:

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Novartis may be writing about fairly “safe” topics but their user engagement has decreased

significantly. The long tail is interesting too. Some 72 different users are interacting with the Facebook

page but only three of the users have posted more than 10 posts. The majority has posted less than

twice.

To sum up, we give Novartis 4 points for handling both negative comments and stimulate positive

conversations, since their effort seem to be maintain reputation by posting safe topics in a neutral

way.

Support/ value: 6 points

In this part, we first look to see if Novartis has offer free and valuable content to the customer. When

we look at the Novartis homepage, we can find that the corporate responsibility is to improve global

heath by reaching more patients. The company has provided the low price medicine poor people

particularly in the developing world and also try their best to overcome the barriers to access to

benefit some limited available person.

“To make a meaningful impact in solving some of society’s biggest health challenges, Novartis focuses

its CSR efforts on three key areas: reaching more patients, partnering for results and doing business

responsibly. These areas are a part of the Novartis business strategy and underscore our purpose of

caring and curing.” -‐-‐ by George Gunn, Head, Corporate Social Responsibility and member, Executive

Committee of Novartis18.

All these years, Novartis does their best to connect with their patients. Novartis has built two

specialize institutions: The Novartis Vaccines Institute for Global Health (NVGH) and The Novartis

Institute for Tropical Diseases (NITD) to further implement their policy that benefits patients. Form

2000, Novartis has provided free treatment for leprosy patients worldwide. In 2010, 37,000 patients

in about 80 countries received Glivec (it is a Novartis drug for CMLpatients) or Tasigna (a second-‐

generation medicine used in CML patients) through their global patient assistance programs and

through the support of more than 1,000 physicians19.

Then we look at whether Novartis offers some useful information through their website. We found

that through the widely used media platforms, not owned by Novartis (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube),

the company may not fully participate in interaction with the customers. But from the channels above,

the users can receive information, reply, through comments & posts from the company.

18 http://www.novartis.com/corporate-‐responsibility/improving-‐health/index.shtml 19 http://www.novartis.com/corporate-‐responsibility

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We do not have the exact percentage of users who receive information, reply through answers or

make posts of the company, but we did know that Novartis’ efforts to achieve the goal to supply some

help through the Internet.

At the end of 2009, Novartis has participated in a social media campaign to reach the online CF (cystic

fibrosis) community. The results are quite impressive, and a lot of the CF patients and their families

have got help by Novartis through the Internet20.

For these reasons mentioned above, we think that on the one hand, Novartis has always tried their

best to offer some useful information to the patient and keep to achieving their corporate

responsibility. On the other hand, Novartis can do a better job in take advantage of the social media to

offer some help to customers, so we consider that Novartis deserves 6 points in this area.

Innovation: 8 points

When we look at the performance of Novartis in innovation, we first noticed that when entering the

company’s homepage, there are some pictures introducing the company, the first of them said that:

“innovation is the essence of the mission of Novartis.” So we think innovation accounts a lot in the

company’s business. Actually, if you go through the annual report, you can find the Novartis mission

on the first page that they want to discover, develop and successfully market innovative products to

prevent and cure diseases, to easing suffering and to enhance the quality of life.

Next step, we want to find whether the company has asked for collaboration. When searching the

Novartis homepage, you can find the collaboration sector in the homepage. Like the picture below,

collaboration is very important in the company’s strategy.

Source: http://www.novartis.com/about-‐novartis/collaborations/process.shtml

If we enter in the NIBR (Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research) website, we can see that Novartis

has already built an official group to better achieve the collaboration.

20 www.novartis.com/corporate-‐responsibility

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Source: http://www.nibr.com/collaborations/index.shtml

Novartis used to collaborate with patient groups in online communities to develop new drugs21.

Novartis has executed a public relations program in the year 2007, there are about 30,000 patient

participated in this programme22. The feedback is pretty good; hundreds of people were interested in

this company at the end of the activity. These results have a good influence on Novartis’ social

influence. In order to encourage this activity, Novartis was given “the best innovation award” for

reward the media effort23.

Think about all these efforts Novartis did, and the success they have achieved, especially that they put

the innovation as their long-‐lasting mission. We consider giving a high score of 8 in this sector.

Leadership: 7 points

We are looking whether people have shared the stories about Novartis in the social media. We have

found that Novartis are active in building its brand awareness. It has working with YouTube videos to

come up with some winners to promote the company’s brand. What’s more, Novartis has also given a

clear direction for the customer, because the social media effect on YouTube is consistent with the

company’s product.

On the website; brandadvocat.com, people can read a vivid and detailed story about “why Novartis

leadership took the long view?” it is very impressive24.

When you enter the Novartis homepage, you can find that the company introduces its innovative

products with a large selection of articles. What’s more, from the “Video stories” people can learn

about the company from a different point of view. The videos are made up by the patients who were

cured or being treated by the medicines and vaccines produced by Novartis.

21 http://www.novartis.com/ 22 http://www.novartis.com/downloads/investors/reports/novartis-‐annual-‐report-‐2011-‐en.pdf 23 http://www.cliohealthcare.com/winners_media/2010/pr/pdf/401000796_1_supporting.pdf 24 http://www.brandadvocat.com/stories/novartis/

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There are lots of patients who share their stories on this website, and people can share or e-‐mail after

they have watched the video. So we think this social media conversation is quite influential and

trustworthy.

But looking at the unofficial websites, almost all of them have a link to the Novartis brand homepage

sites. The problem is that there are hardly any discussions with their customers. Meanwhile, we found

Novartis does not allow users to comment on some media platforms, so these measures will have a

negative effect on the transparency and honesty to some degree. And the numbers who shared the

posted information on the platforms is not satisfactory.25

Linking value/ community: 4 points

A recent Knowledge Networks survey found that many people view social media as “social” rather

than “commercial.”

We think that Novartis has not done well enough in terms of making the brand become a social

connector. They should try their efforts to achieve this goal. Because we should never forget the

reason “why do people really use social media? àStay in touch”. So once Novartis can make use of

this, it will bring it numerous advertising effects, thus will generate greater profits.

Through their website, the customer can share their experience with their friends through the above

social media platforms. On Facebook, there are 1122 out of 20308 followers talking about Novartis, so

it is 5.52% percentage of users sharing experience with their peers and use this brand-‐relate social

media. It is not an expected data, we hope Novartis can take advantage of this part in social media

advertising, because the friends’ experiences “even the peers” sharing is much more persuasive than

the company publicizing26.

In effect the Novartis strategic goal of putting the patient at the center can be effectively facilitated

through the use of Social media. While health care professional and patients need information from 25 http://www.dtcperspectives.com/images/email/OTC%20Perspectives%201009%20web.pdf 26 http://www.facebook.com/novartis

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Novartis that is readily accessible and trustworthy, they could also be offered the opportunity to add

knowledge to that process. Baldwin et al (2010) see the clinical trial process as being an ideal example

where information on drug effectiveness could be shared to the benefit of all parties using social

media. Stakeholder (particularly patient) conversations maybe an essential part in this process.

Nevertheless, corporates need to be aware of ethical issues such as patient confidentiality and

accuracy of information shared.

We find that Novartis creates their own website to introduce their products and connect to the users

for some feedback instead of giving some social media authority to use their brand. Thus we say that

Novartis prefers managing proprietary brand communities directly to support independent brand

communities.

Weleda

Social presence: 7 points On Weleda’s main webpage there is no mention about their presence on social media or any

integrated links. You are requested to select a specific country in order to access its relating website.

By selecting the desired country from the main page, you are redirected to the specific website which

presents different approaches in terms of social media integrated links.

For this report we focused the analysis on the American, Swiss and Russian webpages.

The list in the American webpage includes the most popular communication platforms such as

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest which is a clear signal that the Weleda’s

American section is putting lots of efforts in becoming a social point of reference for the community

and not only a seller. They also created their own Blog, where regularly articles about new products,

lines or events are published and where users can interact each other.

The list in the Swiss webpage is not present at all, which, for us, is quite surprising being that

Weleda’s headquarter is located in Basel. After a more detailed research, the Weleda Headquarter in

Basel made us clear that even though they were born in Switzerland, the main market is USA where

that kind of clients are more “social” than Europeans.

There are two official web pages of Weleda in Russia. One of them consist all general information

about the product, and another one created especially for pregnant women or women with newborn

babies. Both webpages have links to each other. Moreover, among the most popular communication

platforms, those webpages include just Facebook. Also Weleda takes active participation in one more

Facebook group, devoted to herbal cosmetics. We think here is also important to notice official

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Weleda webpage in Ukraine, because it is also for Russian-‐speaking users. Ukrainian webpage

includes the official group in Facebook and in another social web, Vkontakte with a profile of around

180 million users all over the world. Also Weleda created blog, where news about new products

regularly appears.

In our opinion Weleda is perfectly aware of the value of social platforms and the importance of being

“social” in the market, but it is focusing all “efforts” on the markets which are relevant for them, like

for example USA.

A “social media” policy document is not available in none of the 3 main markets websites. Although

the absence of such a document, the social media marketing strategy of Weleda focuses the power of

social media on its relevant markets. In support of that, we have the evidences on topsy.com which

show us about 4500 mentions for the American market, whereas for the Swiss market only 500

mentions, but for the Russian market it doesn’t exceed a lot -‐ there are around 560 mentions at the

moment.27

Finally we have ranked Weleda’s social presence 7 points, due to the high awareness of the value of

social platforms, as the American website demonstrated, but the social presence could be more

consistent in all website introducing unique guidelines, getting at the same time advantages from the

global presence, considering the fact that the tendency of using “social media” is continuously

increasing.

Dialog/customer engagement management: 6 points

A general overview about the 3 analyzed markets is now set. The next point of our analysis consists

in analyzing how many users Weleda reached.

According to the Weleda’s American Twitter-‐profile, the majority of twitters come from users

involved in the healthcare sector (both professionals and “addicted health-‐care products” users).

The Weleda’s American Facebook-‐profile collects more than 43.000 “likes” and about 285 users talk

about it. A general pattern has came out of the analysis: Weleda reacts to comments only when it

comes to direct requests2 and to very positive comments3, whereas for comments which do not

present any “extraordinary” aspects28, Weleda is not responding at all.

27 http://topsy.com/s/weleda?allow_lang=de&window=d6

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Source: Weleda’s North America Facebook profile

There are around 1454 “likes” in Russian group, and just 74 users talk about it. Based on several

comments in the groups we think that Weleda created a dialog with its customers, but in private

messages, so, it is hard to evaluate.

We suppose that lack of dialog can be partly caused by customers itself, who create unofficial groups

in social webs and communicate with each other. Those people, who know more information, share it

with other users and answer their questions. That’s why some users of Weleda may likely follow

unofficial groups and web pages.

From this data, Weleda seems that it is following its main “strategy”: “Focus only on what is very

important or relevant to them”. It seems that Weleda wants to develop a dialogue only with those

customers who are actually asking for something (good customer service) and with the advocates,

which are already satisfied with their products, but can strongly increase their reputation. North-‐

American Weleda’s Facebook-‐profile management actually is doing better than its current colleagues

in Russia, where the number of groups’ followers in social webs is relatively small, and of

Switzerland, which are not present at all in the Swiss division. In sum we have ranked Weleda’s

dialog with customers 6 points, as we will argue, that Weleda only creates limited brand awareness

according to the countries they want to be recognized in and this could lead to an inconsistency of

the brand recognition worldwide. We can argue furthermore that Weleda, or at least, the American

Weleda’s social media website management has succeeded in engaging customers on its platforms,

but Facebook needs more attention which on the contrary is present on the American Weleda’s

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Twitter, since every comments gets a reply, it doesn’t actually matter the nature, a great point not to

let the website static and this therefore the dialogue building process. In our opinion Weleda should

apply the Twitter management principles also to Facebook.

Sentiment/advocacy management: 4 points

The next point of our analysis consists an evaluation of the customers’ satisfaction about Weleda,

based on Weleda’s social media users’ comments.

Weleda’s customers are, generally, positively commenting on the social media, but even though this

is not a signal of a good management, because in other platforms such as makeupalley.com, are fully

rich in negative comments, which get no reply and this can be easily defined as bad word-‐of-‐mouth.

As stated before, Weleda’s Facebook and Twitter profile present a huge number of “liked” or

“followers” but actually the activity on the profiles is very low, which is quite of inconsistent to the

actual number of users.

This feeble activity could hide many reasons such as: 1) A bad communication management/

customer engagement; 2) uninspiring or not useful website to the relevant audience 3) the current

customers of Weleda don’t use Internet and are not therefore “social”.

Usually, negative comments on online platforms like Facebook and Blog are not present at all. We

assume that negative complaints are directly addressed to the company; and we mainly noticed that

complaints are addressed to products in products reviews websites, where unfortunately the

company is not present at all and cannot interact with customers. Therefore it would be highly

suggested to be present also in other unofficial platforms, especially in the biggest beauty products

review websites.

In regards to concerns and doubts directly addressed to the company we have evidence that the

reply is prompt and personally designed and addressed. 29

We assume therefore that all Weleda’s division management privately deals with negative comments

or questions.

Using Analytical Tools By applying the friends.skuttle.com analysis for Weleda, we get the following characteristics:

29 http://www.cookiesteaandmakeup.com/2012/10/02/news-‐alcool-‐nei-‐prodotti-‐weleda-‐alcuni-‐chiarimenti-‐dallazienda/

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Source: friends.skyttle.com

Support/value: 5 points

In the following section we will try to evaluate the quality of the contents that Weleda offers to its

community.

Very surprisingly the Swiss website offers lot of valuable contents to its customers, given that one of

the pillar of the company are the bio-‐elements used for its products, Weleda shows many videos

about bio-‐ products cultivations and the natural collection. 30

We assume that this aspect hides basically two main points: a) to convince people about the quality

of the products they use b) to offer a valuable range of contents to its clientele (in this case about the

quality of their products).

As the American platform is one of the more active, they are engaged in many ecofriendly and

sustainable social projects, just to name the main projects. Weleda is cooperating together with New

Caledonia involving locals in the extraction process. Long-‐term fair-‐trade arrangements have been

set with Uganda.

The content of Russian platforms is relatively wide. All the information about the company, its

product, philosophy and so on presented on these web pages. Despite the fact, that the main purpose

is obviously commercial, the platform provides free customer service such as advice about how to

take care about the babies and your own body. The information may be quite useful not just for

30 http://www.weleda.ch/de/service/filme/

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Weleda’s consumers. Customers also the opportunity to ask expert online and receive the advice

about how to take care and how to use cosmetics in a proper way. By default, web page provides also

the answers on the most popular questions. There is no opportunity to evaluate what percentage of

users receive the answers and required services, because there is no public discussion on the official

web pages, but possibility to apply to the company in a private way, via e-‐mail. As was mentioned

earlier, the same we can say about group in Facebook. There are almost no questions from customers,

but positive comments about cosmetics and replies to Weleda’s publications. Facebook group

organizes quizzes among followers and publishes main news regularly.

The American Weleda’s YouTube profile is the channel where the majority of visual flow information

is stored. It offers its 150 users news about products launches, but the majority of the videos stored

concern more or less the quality of their products and the real natural aspect of them, starting with

the collection process until the production chain process. The Swiss division offers more or less the

same quality videos but quantitative speaking they are less.

Considering the social platforms in which Weleda is present; the Twitter-‐profile contains mostly new

product launches, whereas its Blog webpage is about new product launches, but also about tips and

facts about the company.

In other words, Weleda seems to count on YouTube and its blog as platforms for delivering free

content for its customers and not only for commercial purposes. Where Facebook has more a selling

and commercial aspect. For Facebook and Twitter, we could generally suggest a more personalized

approach, which instead is more present on the blog.

Finally we rank Weleda’s additional support/value 5 points, since they give many valuable content,

but still the ”selling” aspect is strongly present, even though we can generally say that a more

“personalized and social” outline is recognizable in the official website.

Innovation: 5 points

This section is meant to analyze if Weleda tends to collaborate with its customers or partners looking

forward for innovation which leads consequently to new products.

Through Weleda’s webpage it is cleared which are the partners and their role, but on external

platforms31, Weleda is that product developments and innovations are done with help from more

than 150 different alliances and partnerships. These collaborations bring together creative and

31 http://www.fondsgoetheanum.ch/en/campaigns/medicine-‐therapy-‐and-‐healthcare/anthroposophical-‐medicine-‐effective-‐efficient-‐functional.html

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diversified sources of knowledge that align innovation across multiple disciplines like biochemistry,

biology, and physics and engineering.

The company doesn’t ask for collaboration openly. There are no users proposing new ideas for

development and innovation. At least on official platforms and open access. But Weleda is open for

dialog and collaboration with different organization and initiative groups, which are inspiring to

implement ecological projects. Weleda declares about its ecological approach to all activities and

tendency to reduce the influence on the environment.

Even though Weleda doesn’t seem engaged in involving its customers in innovation research or

suggestions, some customers feel free to give their own suggestions32 (see the image below)

In the end, we have assigned Weleda 5 points regarding their innovation level. We see an effort in

trying to be specialized when it comes to innovation and research, but we are strongly convinced that

innovation could also come from its customers.

Leadership: 3 points

The next section is dedicated to the evaluation of Weleda’s efforts in creating storytelling and their

weight in the social media world.

Both the Weleda’s American Official Website and the YouTube channel are rich in short movies,

which cover different themes: their philosophy, some launches of new products and the majority of

the videos posted on these platforms try to explain the vision of the company and the working

process1.

The movies have the aspect of real-‐life videos and deliver the idea of genuine and natural raw

materials, which deliver at their turn, genuine and natural products. The majority of the videos

32 From Weleda’s North America Facebook Profile

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explain how they get their products re-‐connecting them to their social programs of fair-‐trade in the

world.

Weleda’s official web platforms in Russia present detailed story about brand’s history and overall

development. Reports and articles on official web pages create feeling of transparency and

trustworthy, by giving the customers a general idea about company’s activities, partners, products

and sources.

The YouTube channel is also fully rich of unofficial videos, which are posted by Weleda’s customers.

Basically these videos are all reviews about Weleda’s products but unfortunately Weleda is totally

absent when it comes to commenting or replying to these videos. The Twitter account doesn’t offer

any relevant story telling attempt, it is mainly use for launching new products or advising others.

The story-‐telling on the official North-‐American website occupies basically a couple of pages entirely

full of words, point that doesn’t encourage Weleda’s customers in better knowing the company, even

though the general style of the story-‐telling section is getting more and more informal compared to

other Weleda’s countries website, it lacks of attraction. A simple use of images and pictures could

better attract customers. We also suggest to clearly integrate videos in their storytelling and to store

them in a “Films” category of the website.

Weleda’s leadership ability is evaluated with 3 points, since on the website we have relevant content

for the users such as the films, but could be better integrated in the main social media platforms as

well as in the official website.

Linking value/community: 2 points

In this last paragraph, we are going to try to evaluate whether Weleda is perceived as a social

connector and its capability of managing users’ connection on the relevant social platforms.

As we know, Weleda created brand communities in social media, such as groups in Facebook or blog

in Twitter. But there is a lack of communication among customers. On official web pages customers

do not have the opportunity to talk to each other. On the other hand, Facebook gives all abilities to be

in touch, but still doesn’t serve as a connector.

So far, our research indicated the Weleda is not yet fully perceived as a social connector, but it is on

the right way. Working more on social media platform (official and unofficial) activities and

presence, Weleda can boost its users’ perception in quality of social connector.

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Conclusion The first part about social presence, Novatis is rated as the highest, with 9 points. Novatis is not only

present on the existing social network platforms, but has further developed its own platform for

patients worldwide to connect with other patients who have experience/used the medicine of

Novartis.

For the second part, dialogue, Weleda is doing more than the others because they try to answer and

create dialogue with customers. Whereas Roche and Novatis has wider presence on social media

platforms, they don’t use them properly to develop an active connection with customers.

For the sentiment, none of the companies reach their potential on this part. According to the ratings we

gave to these companies, we can conclude that none of them are doing well in advocacy management

in social webs. The percentage of positive and negative references is different, but also the amount of

customers differs – that is why Weleda and Novartis received the same grade. We suppose that all

three companies have the potential do well in this part of digital marketing in the future.

For the fourth part, support, we came to the conclusion that Novartis deserves the highest grade,

because it provides more additional services, as they participated in social media campaign to reach

the online cystic fibrosis community. So, definitely they are doing better than their competitors from

Weleda and Roche.

For the fifth part about innovation, we think that Roche and Novartis deserve equally high grades

because of their willingness to collaborate, and actually they have a huge amount of partners, which

cause endless innovations. But there is no feedback from customers, we didn’t see any propositions in

order to improve the product that is why we didn’t give them the highest grade – there are still a lot of

things to improve.

For the sixth part, about leadership, we have rated Novartis highest in creating stories and leadership,

and the main reason for it is due to deep customers involvement, which the other two companies does

not do. Thus, such type of activity creates high awareness and attracts customers’ attention.

On our opinion all three companies could do better in linking and socially connecting with customers.

But among the companies we evaluated, we think Weleda is doing the worst. They have established

their presence on social platforms, but have not done anything to provide brand value and make

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customers to communicate with each other, through these social media platforms.

In the table below, we have summarized our ratings of the three companies:

In this report, we have analyzed the current social media situation for three health care businesses,

based on available online information. We are aware, that in order to create a more accurate and

diverse picture of the three companies, further information should have been taken into

consideration – e.g. conduct interviews about customer brand awareness and search other news-‐

oriented platforms.

In current years, social media is becoming increasingly developed and form a fundamental channel

through which companies are able to target certain customers and create/build upon their image.

This fact emphasizes the need to carefully use and measure activities on online social platforms, in

order to align company vision and image with customer needs and developments.

Social Media Branding: Roche, Novartis and Weleda

Education

Transcript of Social Media Branding: Roche, Novartis and Weleda