Interview: Steve Woodruff, Impactiviti – Part 2

This is Part 2 of my interview with Steve Woodruff of Impactiviti. For Part 1, click here.

SCHMIEDER:At the end of last year, the FDA had their meeting on social media, yet they didn’t issue guidelines and it seems like those guidelines will be a long time in coming. How does that play into pharma’s use of social media? What will happen to the product-sponsored patient communities when the FDA finally makes a decision on this stuff?
WOODRUFF: Communities sponsored by an organization – versus a product – will be safe. I’m not worried about those. I’m also not worried about general corporate communications on a blog.

The dicey stuff has to do with discussions of a product and clinical treatment with a product. That’s going to be a challenge. I don’t envy the FDA’s job trying to walk this tightrope. I think the FDA would do very well to provide high-level guidelines on the most general aspects of social media. They can’t regulate what you should and should not do with Twitter, Facebook, or blogs because the technology and the platforms change rapidly all the time. Many pharma companies are only going to keep their toes in the water until more formal guidelines are issued.

Many companies, though, are not waiting. We have the basic and general guidelines for marketing communication and most companies are doing their best to operate responsibly within those guidelines. If they get their hands slapped by the FDA, it will be because they’re trying to push the envelope. I applaud every one of those innovative and responsible efforts. That’s how we learn.

SCHMIEDER: What are examples of pharmacos pushing the envelope successfully?
WOODRUFF: Johnson & Johnson has a very good example of the corporate blog. They sponsor ADHD Moms on Facebook and have built a nice following. Their “Black Bag” iPhone app has done well. Johnson & Johnson tends to push the envelope (carefully) and I think they’ve done a really, really good job.

Novartis has launched CF Voice on Facebook and Twitter for the cystic fibrosis community. They use a fictional character named Christopher, based on interviews and research on people with CF. I’m not sure how that will work out for them, but I applaud them for trying this experiment. Not everybody will like it but that’s okay, you have got to try new approaches.

Pfizer was a little late in the game but they have a very dynamic guy, Ray Kerins, in charge of their communications now. They’ve become aggressive on Twitter, have done some interesting community projects, and a lot of internal corporate social medial projects. Their R&D wiki exploded. Pfizer also has a group blog for their scientist to talk to the public. So Pfizer’s doing some interesting stuff and I think they will continue to push the envelope as well in a responsible way.

Boehringer and Novartis have also done a very good job. Their Twitter presence is very approachable and human.

SCHMIEDER: What about the way pharma companies are communicating with physicians?
WOODRUFF: Traditionally, pharma’s primary target for communications was physicians. Right now, everybody’s trying to figure out the fact you can’t prevent the public from looking at content you’ve created for physicians. There’s a lot of information that pharma needs to provide doctors but it can be scary because of concerns around off-label discussions, adverse event reporting, and the appearance of selling prescription products directly to patients. It’s going to take years for this to get sorted out.

In the past, pharma has not been trusted because they have abused their communication privileges, selling off-label to the physician community, and to HMOs. I’m confident that it’ll eventually get figured out because there are so many ways that each pharma company can provide help and support directly to patient communities. We’ll get there, but I think it’s going to be an extended process.

SCHMIEDER: What about the gated communities that pharma has set up exclusively for doctors? For example, PfizerPro.
WOODRUFF: It’s a great idea to have the communities for doctors and as long as the communication is responsible and on message. Private communities like Sermo have company sponsors. The conversations that doctors would have had, would happen with or without company sponsorship, but this use of technology to help pharma disseminate information and start debates creates opportunities for doctors to share clinical knowledge, be better informed, and impact patient care.

There are enough issues and enough concerns about how pharma does one-way communication. There have been enough problems on both a direct-to-physician and direct-to-consumer level. The good news is that social media is a two-way street. Social media is about conversations and user-generated content as opposed to just one-way, top-down monolithic content.

Again, the biggest challenge for pharma is social media is not the way marketing communication has been done until now. Traditionally, pharma communications has been a one-way, highly controlled, and thoroughly vetted with little to no back and forth. Social media is where the world is going and that’s where the regulators and the pharma companies must figure out how to participate without a major meltdown

SCHMIEDER: Let’s talk about how a startup should be thinking about social media compared to big pharma.
WOODRUFF: That’s a great question. I recently helped a company with their social media strategy. This particular company is probably years away from having a commercial product. I was encouraged to see that they are weaving social media right into the fabric of the company from the get-go.

This is very smart because weaving social media into a young, growing, aggressive company can make internal communications more efficient. The silo mentality that is inherently a part of big companies can be prevented as the company grows. I’d encourage any early stage company to start looking at the effective use of social media in private communications with physicians, with advisors, with internal people and within R&D, so that when it’s time to become commercial, the idea of social media is not some weird add-on but a natural extension of how the company operates.

SCHMIEDER: That’s probably easier for startups run by younger people who are fluent in social media but what about established companies? Is there someone doing a notable job in social media?
WOODRUFF: One company doing a great good job in creating a public profile is Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Shwen Gwee is one of my closest social media friends. He’s heading up Vertex’s social media efforts. He’s involved in conferences and other social media initiatives. He ran a one day conference at South-by Southwest called South-by-South Health. (Here’s a link to Vertex’s Twitter guidelines.)

Vertex has made a very clear, very public commitment to social media. I think we’re going to see more companies waking up to the fact that, if nothing else, it is a competitive advantage to get their name out there, get their people out there, and make connections, and build that network.

SCHMIEDER: This has been tremendously informative and I appreciate your time Steve. Is there anything else you think I’ve missed that you want to add?
WOODRUFF: I’d like to see pharmaceutical companies embrace social media as an opportunity, not just, “here’s another channel to get more sales.” Here’s an opportunity to listen to people, to learn from what people are saying in the marketplace, and to be human again.

As I said before, the perception of the pharmaceutical industry by the public is negative. Yet you and I know the people in these companies are wonderful, fine, caring and smart people that have a lot to offer in the realm of healthcare. Social media provides the chance for pharma to take back the ability to be human, to be responsible and provide values outside of pills. Pharma has a tremendous opportunity to change the dialogue about the industry using social media tools.

SCHMIEDER: Thanks for your time Steve.