Congratulations on your new job :)

A lot of people have been congratulating me on my new job, "Digital Media Consultant". Thanks.

Several people have said... "Wait a minute... when did you leave Novartis? Why did you leave Novartis?"

Good catch :)

Novartis announced there would be layoffs in January 2012, then told those of us who were impacted in April 2012. My department got impacted.

So, what does this mean to Brad P from NJ? It means I'm taking some time to do some things that need to get done. Translated to transparent English? I'm looking for full-time opportunities in agencies... pharma... big pharma... medium pharma... small pharma... independent digital consulting gigs... I'm looking for things that meet my skillset and fill that needs I have for using all that cool knowledge I have about the shiny, digital, Social Media space, and for helping business people understand that a little better. I've also got this wicked, strong knowledge of how seriously the regulated industry of Pharma takes itself. Mix all that together, and I've got the skills to be creative... within reason.

If you want to help out, I'd be happy to accept it. I'm looking for ideas, recommendations, introductions... the usual things that people who are in transition are looking for.

Thanks.

Free might be a loss leader, but are there better customer retention strategies?

Legos. They're awesome. They're plastic. They're targeted at all ages. And the first Tuesday of every month, the stores give away a small set for free to kids 6 and over... up to age 14.

Free. The price is right.

But who shows up at these shindigs? Why have these giveaways every month? Do these things achieve any purpose? What the heck does this do for Lego?
And let's throw this loop a little wider, why do PodCasting authors like JC Hutchins, Mur Lafferty, and Scott Sigler give away their work for free? Why do companies give Buy One Get One offers? What benefit does it serve FIOS for them to offer 3 months of a service for 99 bucks to new customers?

All right, I'm an N of 1. But I do listen to other people who have opinions to share as well.

Marketing experts I know tell me that these things are called Loss Leaders. I get it. If I offer you something for free, you may come in, and once I have you, my brilliant marketing will encourage you to spend so much more money than you thought you would.

Other marketing experts that I've read have pointed out that the cost of customer acquisition exceeds the cost of customer retention... generally by factors, not percentages.

As that N of 1, though. I will tell you that I have experienced the use of free for customer retention to be more valuable.

I'm not saying that I want you to comp me a month of service every year or so... although that wouldn't be a bad idea FIOS, just saying... but I would like to know that my continued brand loyalty is worth something to your company beyond one more entry in your sale book. I would like to hear from you if I talk about your brand, even if it's just a little hat tip. Let's face it, not only am I an N of 1, I'm in the lower 90% of content producers on 99% of the brands I enjoy.

From a pharma perspective, this may mean that I can get additional patient education opportunities if I sign up for your information. Or, maybe... just maybe... I get the chance to tell you what I want to learn about, and myabe even help create, produce, and distribute patient education material that's relevant to me and my colleagues. It may also mean that I get to be on a list of people who are notified if there's an increase of reports of certain types of adverse events, or packaging changes, or price increases, new formulary wins in the area that I live. With the reams of data that pharmaceutical companies store, making more of them transparent to their established customer base may have the benefit of showing the depth of an honest and open relationship that pharma keeps saying that it wants to have with patients, providers, and payors.

Imagine this simple scenario. I start taking the drug Remembrall (HT to JK Rowling) for those memory issues I have as I reach my middle age. I sign up for the product information, and get notified that Remembrall has just been granted Tier 1 coverage under OrangePlus/RedArmor of New Jersey. And, hey, I happen to use them. Awesome. I happen to go to the doctor for a checkup, go to get my refill, and discover from my pharmacist, or my mail order, that I need to get an additional note from my doctor. Turns out that the Tier 1 coverage includes a prior authorisation. I log back into the Remembrall portal, post a little comment on the coverage notice, and have helped out my peers, and the company that makes the drug that helps me remember things better by doing a little crowdsourcing and reality checking on all that data they rely on so heavily.

Sounds a bit far-fetched... until you realise that comanies are already doing this on a much more basic level with things such as clean toilets, or where the nearest AED is located.

Free can be a loss leader to get people in the door, no question. Coupons can help. Increased customer services, offers of valuable added services, reduction of friction in interactions... these haven't fallen under the umbrella of "free" before... but maybe they're better.

If you've got nothing to say... pretend

I'm sitting here in front of my keyboard, because I've been telling myself, "It's Monday... CREATE CONTENT!!!"

Yeah, that's not working.

Which emphasises for me a couple of important things I've seen as stumbling blocks in so many social campaigns.

One is the simple task of keeping your content fresh. Too many people I've seen treat their social campaign as though it was a Relationship Marketing campaign. Which to me means, broadcast, impersonal, and something that bangs on me too often. As a case in point, I signed up to hear about opportunities to see presentations about a disease state I have an interest in. I get anywhere from 3 to 6 pieces of mail a week from this program. I don't get any invitations to change the rate, or type of information I'm getting. And the content is the same thing... just with a different date.

If I'm seeing a social campaign, you can at least get my name in there. You can give me a chance to do some customisation, or maybe some refining. I can choose to get things delivered to me in bulk, or my social platform may bucket some things together for me. If you're sending me the same thing again and again, with no chance for me to help you understand me... don't bother. Think about this from a social platform perspective, and you'll see that I can refine what feeds I want to follow, how I can consolidate them, how often, what format...

Okay, a live example. Pinterest.

If you have an account, log in and check out my account. You'll see that you can follow everything I do... which only the most masochistic of you will do... or a specific board. So, maybe you don't want to see my LOLz, you just want the Infographics. You can choose. That's customisation, and allowing the provider to keep the content fresh, and the user to get the fresh content that person is looking for.

Another one? You've got to create content that's compelling.

Not just to you, your agency, your legal team, or your regulatory team. You've got to create content that users want. And sometimes that content may feel like it's out in left field.

Sure, my content may seem like it's me dumping my brain on a page... which it is. Some of you will find this somewhat valuable because we get to learn something about each other. Others of you will say, "I've had enough of this self-absorbed narcissist, I'm outta here." And that's a risk I take.

Proctor & Gamble took that risk, too. They created something that was potentially going to seem a bit self-obsessed. An app for the iPhone called "Sit or Squat". It's an app that helps you find a clean toilet. It's socially driven, so that you hope that the toilet near you has been recently reviewed. But, think about it. Here's an app about toilets. It's sponsored by Charmin, so there's a tangential product tie-in. But, it's intended to meet a compelling need that may or may not result in somebody becoming a product user. Sometimes, the content your audience wants or needs is not always that which your brand thinks your users do. So, when you're brainstorming that compelling content, use the old axiom that "there is no spoon".

Okay. That's today's brain dump. I may refine this one... there's a thread in here I think has value, and a topic I discussed with a colleague of mine about how I keep up with the things I do.

Stay safe, everybody.

What does somebody who thinks about Pharmaceutical Social Media Marketing do for fun?

It's Friday, and that means I need to think about fun things. Besides, it's only two more days to Monday.

I like games. I like acquiring things. I am a sucker for those claw games, or games at carnivals, or the little giveaways you get at conferences. My problem is that I have too many of them already, and I've got no desire to clutter my space with more things. I'm very selective about how I fill my real world space... now...

My virtual space, however, is a lot more cluttered. I've got over 5,500 photos in Flickr, more than 300 eBooks, a LOT of MP3s, virtual cameras... a lot of stuff. I also have a carry bag filled by a shark with a laser on his head, a dinosaur skeleton, a caveman, an uncharted galaxy, a ferris wheel, some roses, and a gadget watch. Cool, but virtual.

That virtual pouch, with virtual items is from one of my favourite apps, Wallabee. Like I said, I'm a sucker for tchotchkes, and I used to use Gowalla in conjunction with Foursquare just to get little objects. So, I'm already the target audience for something like Wallabee. The app so far does the following (according to me):

I forage, like checking in, I find virtual currency or items, I can keep the item, maybe mix it up with something else to make a new cool thing, I can use the things I find to check off the themed Wallabee scavenger hunt lists, and I can buy things in a store using the virtual currency.

The app allows you to upgrade so you can carry more things, or buy some virtual currency to not have to wait so long to acquire some of those things on your lists.

The algorithm of what you can buy, what you have to find, where and when you can do either makes this a game I can enjoy playing. There's enough random reinforcement that it's a good game to come back to.

The thrill of finding a low numbered item before somebody else, figuring out what mixes with what, or completing a set before anyone else makes this fun for me.

Of course, I've got my marketing hat on at the same time.

If Wallabee can create sets, when will a company be able to create a code to let you get access to a branded set? When will somebody only be able to find the thing they need by foraging at your store site? When will the completion of a set be tied to a brand offer, a discount card, or a premium website, a download, or information? Can I create a patient journey set that will take somebody through all the elements of an educational program by getting them to various sites? Can I force an order of item acquisition, you won't know what item 2 is until you get item 1? Can I tie a forage to a QR code or an image recognition tool?

You see, that's what my brain does when I play. It goes free a little bit. I get to be curious, comtemplative, and some other word that sounds really cool and begins with a "c". It's Friday, cut me some slack.

So, I'd recommend you get out there and try Wallabee. Have fun with it. Let me know what you think about.

Please use the comments below to let me know what you do for fun, too.

FDA Guidance that may... or may not... have anything to do with me

I'm busy reading two new pieces of draft guidance from the FDA. Really catchy titles these things come with. The first is titled, "Guidance: Classifying Significant Postmarketing Drug Safety Issues" and the second is "Guidance: Drug Safety Information - FDA's Communication to the Public".

Let's start with the first. The classification of significant postmarketing drug safety issues was not the most intriguing thing I've read. But I was left with a couple of questions, that I hope will become clearer as the Social Media world discusses the new guidance. Section IV.A discusses "The Hazard Assessment". I was struck as I reviewed the section that the summary paragraph was the most important:

When CDER (Center for Drug Evaluation and Research) staff identify a new safety issue, unless the information is derived from a clinical trial or pharmacoepidemiology study, precise and reliable information may be lacking about the frequency of the adverse event or the increase in risk posed to patients exposed to the drug. If such information is lacking, staff will use the existing information on seriousness, and size of the population at risk, and then the modulating factors to classify the TSI (tracked safety issue)

Why the heck is that important? Well, what struck me here is this whole 11 page document does not discuss where the information arises from. Is this solely based on reports from physicians? clinical trial outcomes? reports from patients via MedWatch? media outlets? Or... as I'm thinking... does this include trawling Social Media? You see, patients will discuss their experiences on a drug, and those experiences may include unnecessary positive claims, or adverse events. While an actually trackable adverse event is generally few and far between - I've seen 4 in the last 5 years - there may be information being culled from closed platforms, or by integrating other data sources that CDER may have at its disposal. For me, this is another wakeup call that we need to expand our listening beyond PR-style KPIs such as "We got mentioned 1000 times." into much more in-depth sentiment or human language analytics.

The second guidance document gave me a little food for thought as well. The FDA document discusses the ways in which the body will send out updates about important safety information notices. Section 3, l 197 points out that "At times, decisions to communication about important drug safety issues are affected by information the public has received from sources other than FDA". They highlight media as a source. It's my opinion that this media includes the social type. The concern here, as stated by the FDA, is that the information may be "incorrect, incomplete, or misleading". The communication with the public then, could be justified solely to deal with that type of information.

Okay. I'm not trying to leap too quickly into the breach here. This reads like an invitation. Those who have the authority to correct "incorrect, incomplete, or misleading" information should do so. The rest of this document reads, as much of FDA guidance does, a vague tiptoeing around that how to do so. But, the FDA refers to their mandate as justifiable cause to participate in this correction. An interesting sentence regarding their mandate is found in the Background section, l 51, "FDA believes that timely communication of important drug safety information will give health care professionals, patients, consumers, and other interested persons access to the most current information concerning the potential risks and benefits of a marketed drug, helping them to make more informed individual treatment choices."

My point in highlighting that particular sentence is that the FDA has access to massive quantities of data and safety information. Well, I'm not sure if everybody's noticed, but as Jamie Heywood pointed out at SXSW 2011, Big Pharma has spent large sums to further research and data gathering. Big Pharma has one of the most comprehensive data sets regarding safety for all of their marketed molecules.

What is stopping Big Pharma from correcting "incorrect, incomplete, or misleading" information?

The answers to that question are legion.

Perhaps a better question would be, what benefit can Big Pharma derive from correcting "incorrect, incomplete, or misleading" information?

And the answers to that question move us into the realm of things like trusted partner in providing quality healthcare, acting in the best interest of our business partners, or behaving in a socially responsible manner.

As you all know, that's my drum. Big Pharma has very highly worded mission statements. I believe that those mission statements are achievable. I believe that achieving those mission statements is an ROI all to itself. There are a lot of other relatable KPIs that we could tie to this, like the value of a happy customer, influence of eCOLs or eKOLs, rating high in SEO rankings in the areas of our expertise. These are soft measures, for sure, but I'm sure that our ROI calculations involve lots of tangential soft measures like these.

Taking a few moments to gather my thoughts

I'm sitting back in the office, day after New Years. Honestly, wishing I could be at home, still asleep, hanging out with my family. But nobody pays me if I do that, so I have to head out into the digital mine and dig up some gold nuggets in the Internetz.
I spent a lot of my time this holiday break hanging with my family, going to a couple of museums in New York, and a local one. I'm lucky like that, having some disposable time and income. And, like many of the people I see out and about on a daily basis, I take photos and videos with my iPhone. In fact, I only take photos and videos with my iPhone.
I'm one of those geeks who also uses Instagram to capture, modify, and share a lot of my photos. I've also recently put my toe back into the PodCasting field by doing some short pieces on Audioboo. And all this got me to thinking.
How much of of the lives of a lot of us are now based on geo-location based digital media?
Then I geeked down for a second and asked, how much of our lives are now being created and shared in digital media?
Upside, it's easy. We can snap a photo, share it with our friends, and voila, a thousand or so words saved. We can record a quick audio thought, and voila, I don't have to make sure I spelled reciprocity correctly, and quite frankly, I could never describe exactly how loud those fire engines were anyway.
Then I got to thinking about what I do for a living, Social Media for a Big Pharma company. And I thought, Downside. Almost every big company relies on these text based Social Media listening reports to tell us what people are saying. Heck, most companies who provide the service are just now getting to the point that they can tell if the words people are using are a good or bad thing. Try finding a definition of bad that encompasses both the Webster and Slang versions, and you'll see what I mean.
Now, try applying that sentiment analysis to place, context, time, voice intonation, position in conversation, facial and body language cues, and anything else that can be conveyed in audio or video. And you'll see that there's a whole other set of layers. Or what about photos or videos with no text or audio... silent films are still powerfully used, as was seen in a Novartis video contest in 2010.
I'm not offering a solution here, I'm just pointing out that the human element of Social Media is becoming more and more important. That nut we thought we were all going to crack through language and sentiment analysis? It turns out that was just the soft, leafy seed pod surrounding some other casing that may ultimately contain a nut we need to crack.
Don't you hate it when somebody throws out an idea, and then doesn't sell you the solution that comes with it?