Navigating Social Media Regulatory and Ethical Standards

In a recent video interview with Pharmaceutical Executive, Amanda Powers-Han, Chief Marketing Officer, Greater Than One and Pharmaceutical Executive Advisory Board Member discussed the importance of patient engagement in pharma marketing. She emphasized the need for personalized marketing strategies that build trust and ensure data privacy. The use of AI and advanced analytics tools was highlighted as crucial for extracting meaningful insights from healthcare data. Powers-Han also addressed the evolving regulatory landscape and the importance of ethical marketing practices in the digital age. Additionally, conversation was had surrounding the challenges of measuring ROI in the pharmaceutical industry and the potential of personalized audio and video content in future marketing efforts.

With the rise of social media and digital platforms, how can pharmaceutical companies effectively navigate the evolving regulatory landscape and ensure that their marketing activities comply with ethical standards and industry best practices?

It's so interesting, if we rewind three or four years ago with clients, we were having to build a case for social media to be a part of our plans, and now it's part of absolutely every plan. So, whether that is a broader social media and marketing strategy that includes organic and paid or if it's more limited to, you know, piloting and or investing just in a couple of key platforms in terms of paid advertising, the first thought would be, choose your platforms wisely. There are some social media platforms we trust and there are others that we do discourage our clients from participating on that landscape is changing by the minute, but ultimately, it's really important to know what platforms you're going to be participating in and be comfortable with the privacy and the way that they're run. Back to the idea of targeting in data equally as important, right? We need to make sure that we are leveraging privacy compliant targeting techniques, first party data, third party trusted data providers. You know, contextual targeting, again, in some ways, but just that we are very much above board and also aligned with our clients to make sure that they're comfortable and their internal regulatory teams are aware of and supportive of the techniques that we're using.

And then it's just again. I mean, in the world of social, even more so than many of the other environments that a brand shows up in, we have to be authentic. We have to create something that is purposeful, that we're, you know, connecting to a customer and solving a problem for them, or giving them something of value, creating content in interactions that help them. And what's really interesting is that in the world of social we can be very nuanced in terms of the content that we're developing and that we're deploying, and so thinking very carefully about, you know, how do we connect the content and the context? What is that great experience that we're building and then ultimately learning very quickly from the engagement that we're seeing from those customers and pivoting and evolving and looking at content as something that is dynamic versus static. So, we think about content and ideas in a way that they come to life when we put them into the hands and onto the screens of customers. And it's something that we think very hard about, not only in terms of how we're building the content up front, but how that content needs to evolve, and how we can make it better and better over time. And when we think about that, and we focus very much on the experience that we're creating for those patients, for those caregivers, and HCPs in those environments, they lean into us, because we're not thinking about only the brand. We're thinking about the purpose and the meaning that the brand is delivering back to them and ultimately building that trust and loyalty.