I've had the opportunity to speak with so many insightful KOLs this year, many within the pharmaceutical marketing space. With 2025 rapidly approaching, I've compiled insights from various video interviews I've conducted recently. They've emphasize a few things including: the importance of a strategic approach to social media marketing, the need to choose platforms wisely, prioritize privacy, and leverage targeted advertising techniques. Additionally, they highlight the importance of authentic and engaging content that resonates with the target audience, and discuss the ethical implications of AI in healthcare and the need for responsible use of this technology.

Social Media Regulatory and Ethical Standards

Amanda Powers-Han, Chief Marketing Officer, Greater Than One and Pharmaceutical Executive Advisory Board Member

Amanda Powers-Han, Chief Marketing Officer, Greater Than One and Pharmaceutical Executive Advisory Board Member: “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, 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 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, 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…We're thinking about the purpose and the meaning that the brand is delivering back to them and ultimately building that trust and loyalty.”¹

Angela Tenuta, President, Full Service Agencies, EVERSANA INTOUCH

Angela Tenuta, President, Full Service Agencies, at EVERSANA INTOUCH: “Ethical concerns are very real with AI. I think we all have a hope that policy might come in and give us some regulation and some ground rules, but that's very likely not coming, so it's something we all have to spend a lot of time on and come to some standards for each individual organization. The biggest problems within healthcare really center around privacy. I think there’s two parts of privacy, first and foremost, patient privacy, biases and algorithms or misuse of data for targeting or just decision making within these tools can really start to identify patients in a way that we don't want happening and disrupt a little bit of their decision making or basic path with their HCP, so that that's a piece Nobody wants a part of. And we really have to be vigilant to ensure what we're doing doesn't get that far. The second kind of wing of privacy, I think, that we're all struggling with, is related to strategies and proprietary information in a very competitive marketplace that we don't want getting out.

So, if we're asking a standard place a bunch of prompts that's getting at pre-launch strategies or differentiation between drugs, that's another part that we have to make sure we continue to build protections around. So, if we can keep kind of both of those patient identification targeting content along with protecting our sound strategies and our IP those two pieces solved, we can then, you know, adopt all of the wonder that AI will bring us.”²

Balancing Personalized Targeting with Protecting Consumer Privacy

Ted Sweetser, VP, Ad Partnerships and Strategy, PurpleLab

Ted Sweetser, VP, Ad Partnerships and Strategy, PurpleLab: “I like to say that ethics don't change, but laws do your product and operations organizations really need to have a very strong ethical grounding, which is hopefully, you know, informed by your legal team as well. I usually go back to the principles of privacy by design, which is a set of practices, you know, focused on understanding exactly what is required out of a product and the privacy implications of the components of that product development. It also means learning best practices and staying up to date with what you know is considered to be you know the best class legal guidance and how to operate, especially at a state level.

So, for our part, it's been a very eventful few years in the health data space. We've worked continuously over the last few years to update a lot of things in light of changes to privacy law on a state-by-state basis, but the best way to stay abreast of that is to also remain up to date with as much information as possible by, say, participating in industry organizations that provide information on that subject.”³

Powers-Han: “The first thing that I and we think about is the relationship that we create between the brand and the customer. It has to be relevant, and it has to have meaning. So, when we think about the interactions and ultimately, how we're engaging customers, we think about content versus advertising and bringing forward something that is truly going to help them. So, when we do that, it's connecting the content right, great, either educational information and or, you know, branded information that will help them with the right context, or, in other words, the media environments right the places that the content lives, that creates a patient or an HCP experience that truly matters. And by doing that, you build trust in terms of data and privacy.

I would say that targeting is at the heart of that, and we are very careful. And all marketers in the healthcare space need to be very careful in terms of the targeting techniques that they are deploying. And some of the ones that we use are contextual targeting, which, of course, is where we're connecting to those relevant environments based on the content pre-qualification, which is a great experience, where we're addressing whether or not that patient is, in fact, one of the qualified patients that then should continue in terms of the branded experience. And we also have doubled down on first party data. And then the last thing, as far as privacy. And what we're seeing is we are seeing the industry step forward some voluntarily to make sure that their privacy practices are exactly what they need to be, and in some cases, right the industry and the government is pushing so we're watching very carefully the case between Google and the DOJ.”⁴

Trends to Expect

Powers-Han: “One of them is the topic that we were pushing on a little bit earlier in terms of data and omni channel. Omnichannel is something that all of our clients are working very hard to build in terms of what is that omnichannel customer experience, and how do we actually enable that to take place? Different degrees of maturity depending on the client that we're working with, but it is one of the key challenges that every one of our clients is trying to figure out, and something that we're helping them with. The other is big bets on Google and TikTok, those are going to be huge decisions that are coming up. And depending on the outcome of those decisions, we believe there's going to be some really great positive disruptions that could come from it.

And then in terms of format, just as we think about channels and marketing mix, the power of video is just undeniable. And while traditionally, the larger brands were developing TV spots, now there is a huge opportunity for even the smaller niche brands products to invest in video content in so many exciting ways for us to deploy and distribute that video content in the world of digital that we believe that doubling down on video content is both where the industry is headed and it's going to be great for the brands that we support. And then the last one is, you know, as we think about the way that content is created and developing the best customer experience as possible, it's all about fusing content in media and technology to bring those great experiences forward.

So, we believe that in 2025 there's going to be a lot of great work that will continue to be done, and even more so than this year, creating and crafting content for the develop for the environment that it's living in, versus the traditional, you know, create one campaign idea, and then just pull it through in a very direct way across channel.”⁵

Sweetser: “In healthcare, you know, access to the real-world data, tools like I was describing, allows us to create, you know, align messaging across both the physician and the set of patients that they're engaging with. We expect this to be a pretty big part of media strategy going forward. Another major trend that we're seeing is the integration of market access and marketing. So high-cost drugs, especially your GLP-1s, Ozempic and cheap have a lot of barriers to access. So commercial success in pharma is going to be as much a function of making sure patients know how to move through the insurance system, and actually qualify to get on a given medication, as it is, making a patient aware and interested in taking a given product to, you know, improve their lifestyle.

Trying to tie those two things together and provide educational materials is definitely going to be a growing trend. And then, you know, the last one would be, you know, as third-party cookie. Deprecation continues to roll out, referenced, you know, like people need to understand, you know, if I'm not going to be doing third party cookie-based targeting, what are the intelligent ways that I can buy media by channel, by, you know, what sites are popular, by what content is popular. And so, I think we are beginning to see a greater amount of investment in media, rather than audience-based buying.

So, we're doing something like that with our partners, and I know others are also beginning to have this question about, like, what is the natural Audience Quality. Where are places that people, who have a given condition are more likely to pay attention or be interested that aren't just endemic websites about the condition, but like the say, psoriasis patients are more likely to consume content in the afternoon. When it comes to CTV, can we use that to improve our efficiency without needing to have an audience in the loop to make that an effective buy.”⁶

References

1. https://www.pharmexec.com/view/navigating-social-media-regulatory-ethical-standards
2. https://www.pharmexec.com/view/ensure-ethical-ai-pharma-marketing
3. https://www.pharmexec.com/view/balancing-personalized-targeting-protecting-consumer-privacy
4. https://www.pharmexec.com/view/balancing-personalized-marketing-maintaining-data-privacy
5. https://www.pharmexec.com/view/pharma-marketing-trends-2025
6. https://www.pharmexec.com/view/advertising-marketing-trends-q1-2025