Interview: Steve Woodruff, Impactiviti

As I’ve written before, I’ve started a series interviews with entrepreneurs in the life sciences and biotechnology industries, and individuals doing great things in marketing and branding that could be applied to biotech, the life sciences and pharmaceutical companies. The following interview is with Steve Woodruff, founder and president of Impactiviti.

Steve has been very involved in reviewing and commenting on social media’s impact on the pharmaceutical industry. I thought my readers would greatly benefit from reading Steve’s point of view on social media and how big pharmaceutical companies have been incorporating it into their marketing mix.

What follows is Part 1 of our interview. I’ll publish Part 2 early next week.

STEVE WOODRUFF: I spent 10 years in sales and marketing of medical devices in radiation medicine. When the World Wide Web started appeared, I decided I wanted to be involved with interactive media, so I joined a company that provided software solutions for pharmaceutical companies. I spent 10 years in sales, marketing, business development and creating web-based enterprise applications. At the same time, I also started getting involved in social networking, with sites like LinkedIn and blogs.

After that time, I decided to start my own business. I launched Impactiviti with the goal of becoming the eHarmony of pharma training and marketing. Impactiviti creates partnerships with the best vendor companies, matching them to my pharma clients’ project needs. Impactiviti helps vendors stand out when they’re competing against several other providers and helps pharmaceutical companies pick the best vendor for a project. It’s a win-win for both parties.

Matchmaking is the heart of the business. I’ve been doing this for nearly four years and I have a blast putting people together, using the power of networking to make businesses work better.

KARL SCHMIEDER: You blog very actively. Tell us about your blog, the people it reaches and how that has helped you with business development and customer attraction.
WOODRUFF: I launched the business on the basis of Impactiviti, an industry blog, where I write articles of interest to for the pharmaceutical industry. I figured the best way to get my message across, add value to my community, and be part of their lives is to write things of value and bring information and resources to people.

With Impactiviti, my goal was to become the go-to person in pharma training and marketing. This blog was intended to play a central role in that effort and has become quite well known in the industry. The blog is well trafficked and I have more than 200 subscribers to my daily news post.

Six months ago later, I launched a second blog called StickyFigure, based on my interest in branding, marketing and social media. It reaches a more general marketing and social media community. I also run a personal blog, called Steve’s Leaves which has all kinds of other laruminations. Finally, I contribute to a group blog called MarketingProfs Daily Fix. That’s a lot of destinations, so visit SteveWoodruff.com to get the links to everything

Blogging has been essential to everything I do. It’s been a wonderful way to get to know smart and well-connected people who can help my clients in many different ways. In the end, the entire business model is built on connection-making and relationship-building through social media applied to pharma.

SCHMIEDER: How do you find the time to manage three blogs and your own business?
WOODRUFF: I’m wired to get up early because I used to deliver newspapers as a teenager. Now on most days, I get up before 5:30. The first six hours of the day are my most productive time for creating content, searching and linking resources, and making new connections.

SCHMIEDER: Let’s switch gears and talk about what you see happening with social media and pharma. You wrote an interesting piece in Ellen Hoenig Carlson’s eBook Best Strategic Learning Investment in 2010? Tell us what you see working in social media.
WOODRUFF: Social media is the latest marketing communication tool that is at the beginning of its adoption curve for the pharmaceutical industry. The first was eLearning for sales training, where people had their doubts. They asked, “How are we going to use this technology to disseminate our information? Is it going to be secure?” After a few years, eLearning was second nature. It reached the point where people stopped asking ‘if’ and started asking ‘how.’

With Web 1.0, it was the same thing: The same fears, the same adoption curve, the same tentative toe in the water. And finally, the same not ‘if’ but ‘how.’

Now, it’s the same thing for social media. It’s just another type of media, a marketing and communications platform. It’s not going away. It’s not something you can ignore. It’s here and you better understand it. So, now we are quickly moving from the ‘if’ to the ‘how’ with social media.

The early adopters, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Boehringer, and a few others have put their toes in the water with blogs. They’ve opened Twitter accounts. They have sponsored communities and have created Facebook pages. It reminds me of the beginning of the eLearning and the early Web 1.0 days. There have been a lot of the same question marks, particularly in the case of FDA regulations. But the fact remains, social media is ubiquitous and will continue to be more so. Pharma is not going to be able to ignore it or hold back.

Admittedly, social media is a double-edged sword for pharma because it makes an organization more transparent. It has been used to expose some of the unethical behaviors that have gone on behind closed doors. Some pharma folks fear social media because they know once you start turning on the lights, you might find skeletons in the closet you don’t want others to see.

SCHMIEDER: Pharma has historically been fast to adopt technologies that enable discovery and slow to adopt technologies that facilitate communication. You mentioned Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and Boehringer Ingelheim as early adopters. What have you seen that is working?
WOODRUFF: Some companies have gotten more interactive with their Twitter accounts. That’s encouraging because it’s humanizing the face of the corporation and that is one of the biggest benefits of social media for Big Pharma.

Big Pharma tends to have a bad reputation. It’s perceived as a monolithic beast. When you humanize your communication through social media, you can control the information better than any politician or journalist out to make you look like a monster. A blog, a Twitter account, or anything used to humanize the organization is great.

One of the best things a pharma company can do for its image is to give grants to organizations to create patient communities and allow the free flow of information, interaction and patient support. A lot more social interaction can happen on sites like that because they’re not brand-sponsored. A number of companies have begun to do that. I recently reviewed Novartis’ CF Voice site for cystic fibrosis on the Impactiviti blog and that is a tremendous way to provide value without getting into the landmines of product-specific information.

In addition, companies that are using channels like YouTube, where they talk about company history, tell stories of drug development, and collect testimonials from people whose lives have changed because of a treatment are doing something that man has been doing since the beginning of time – telling stories. And telling stories, humanizes the company. Every company should have a YouTube channel.

END PART ONE. STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO.