As Facebook Opens Up, What Will Pharma Do?

Will “opening the walls” on Facebook, allowing people to post
public comments, lead to pharma companies shutting down their pages and abandoning this form of engagement with consumers?  Apparently, it already has, according to a recent Christian Torres’ article in the Washington Post.

Companies are already monitoring the situation to determine where and what the advantages and vulnerabilities are, as well as to figure out the time – and potentially cost-intensive modifications required in order to support and stay on top of giving their audiences a voice that up until now has largely been absent.  Some companies will adapt, and they will benefit from doing so.   They will embrace and benefit from the enhanced, reciprocal dialogue – constructive and critical – that inevitably will give rise to deeper insights and knowledge about what their customers want and need. They also will find out where they need to improve and change.   

The pharmaceutical industry should welcome this new openness, which was perhaps inevitable anyway.  The social media world is highly structured and at the same time, incredibly, fascinatingly messy, with enthusiastic, well-informed, cranky (and sometimes really bizarre and  outrageous) opinions, feedback and points of view connecting, overlapping and, often, colliding.  But it’s also teeming with opportunities to truly learn about what matters to consumers, as Thomas Harrison, Chairman and CEO of Omnicom’s Diversified Agency Services (DAS) states in his guest blog on the website of the industry publication, Pharmaceutical Executive.

With a site such as Facebook, doing things halfway makes no sense.  For a long time, many pharma companies have been content to dip their big toes in the social media “sea”; a few have waded into the water but stayed close to shore.  But now, it may be time to dive in and make a splash, or else retreat to the relative safety of the traditional media “beach.”

Facebook is forcing pharma’s hand, and it may actually be a not-so-disguised blessing.  Now, if only the FDA would issue its social media guidance (as noted in recent posts by my colleagues Tim Weinheimer and Carrie Rose) to help define the boundaries of this dialogue as they view them!