Pharma on Facebook: The handwriting on the wall is about more than adverse-event reporting

A bad case of “consumer package goods envy”

Pharmaceutical companies have long had a bad case of “CPG envy” because regulatory handcuffs constrain their customer outreach and limit their ability to develop brand relationships with any of their customers. Even in this golden age of “patient democracy,” pharma has no small challenge engaging with patients for a complex set of reasons – among them the rather frustrating truth that patients don’t generally care to love and know their drug brand in quite the same way they love their brand of beer. (More on that in another entry…) At the same time, pharmaceutical companies feel a pressing need to cultivate relationships with patients as a result of many factors that are redirecting their marketing efforts toward end-users – including tighter access to physicians, the coming shift in pay burden to patients, and the industry’s focus on revenue lost through non-adherence.

For that reason, the opportunity for pharma companies to talk to patients and potentially hear them talk back through social media was hard to resist – especially given FDA’s continuing refusal to offer guidance – until Facebook announced new rules of the game requiring that everything be said out loud. Companies began rather quickly to reexamine their strategy and, in some cases, shut down the conversation.