JNJ Attempts YouTube Humor to Promote a DTC Advertising Goal

The goal of every direct-to-consumer (DTC) ad is to get people to visit their doctors and ask about the advertised Rx drug. But are these ads effective?

The drug industry often defends DTC ads, claiming they ARE effective in achieving this goal. Some studies, however, seem to indicate that once people visit their physicians, they do not ask for the advertised drug (read, for example, "Advertisers Don't Know How DTC Works. Say wha?").

But the ads may not even be effective in driving people to see their physicians. Maybe that's why Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) recently promoted a YouTube video it uploaded more that two years ago called "The Appointment." It's an non-branded attempt to use humor. JNJ's corporate Twitter account (@JNJComm) recently posted this tweet:

"Afraid to visit the doctor? Don't be! Watch 'The Appointment' for medicinal laughter - and important info > http://t.co/0PQanPNF @JNJVideo"

On the YouTube page, JNJ introduces the video: "Many people are wary of making a doctors visit. In The Appointment, some extreme humor works to make several important points about why you should visit your doctor and most importantly things you should not be afraid to understand and ask. Enjoy and no, there really isnt a needle that big!"

Here's the video:




A few people do not think the video is funny. One commenter (yes, JNJ accepts comments on its YouTube channel) said:

"I'm not one to start a YouTube spitting contest - I'm just saying that this seems to be a bit (not massively!) insensitive to both the clinicians and the patients who are trying to treat each other better. Your ultimate message in the vid is perfect - it just strikes me as missing the mark in its opening approach."

One commenter even said it was "misguided":

"Wow. I'm sure you meant it to be funny, but I have to say, this is the worst-conceived pitch I've ever seen for being an empowered patient. In addition to the patient looking like something of a simpleton, to me it charicatures doctors in the worst possible way too.. I'm sure y'all meant well, but wow, this is misguided."

To which JNJ replied:

"I understand and respect your point of view. It was supposed to be a lighthearted reminder to those who might not be practicing preventive care. You are already an informed, empowered patient who has dealt with, and become educated about, a life threatening disease. Although it uses caricutures of doctors and patients, the video is aimed at those who might have misconceptions or fears about visiting their doctors for annual check ups and other routine care."

What do you think?

EU's EMA Plans to Open Up Proprietary Drug Trial Data to Outside Investigators

European Medicines Agency (EMA) -- the European drug regulator -- "is opening its data vaults to systematic scrutiny in a move that will let independent researchers trawl through millions of pages of clinical trial information," according to Reuters news (here).

This is big news depending on how EMA makes these large data sets available to outside investigators and which investigators are granted access. Reuters reports that the agency will host a conference in November to determine who has access to what and how fast. As I always said of the FDA, if an agency wants to delay something, its best bet is to hold a meeting to discuss it or sponsor research to study it.

The drug industry has long argued that the clinical data it presents to the FDA and other regulators as part of the drug approval process is proprietary -- ie, closely guarded trade secrets. But critics contend that important safety data about drugs is hidden from outside investigators and the data is critical for maintaining public health.

"It will make a huge difference to public health," said Peter Gotzsche, director of the nonprofit Nordic Cochrane Centre in Denmark, which carries out systematic healthcare reviews. "The pharmaceutical industry routinely exaggerates the benefits of its drugs and plays down the harms or hides them. By getting access to material held by drug regulators we may discover that many drugs are less effective than we thought they were and also more harmful."

In 2011, Gotzsche wrote paper titled "Why we need easy access to all data from all clinical trials and how to accomplish it." In it, he said "Calls for data sharing have mostly been restricted to publicly-funded research, but I argue that the distinction between publicly-funded and industry-funded research is an artificial and irrelevant one, as the interests of the patients must override commercial interests" (find the full text here: "Call for Easy Access to ALL Clinical Trial Data").

A case in point is Vioxx, whose harmful side effects once were secrets known only to Merck and the FDA.

"Europe used to be behind the FDA in terms of openness and transparency but now Europe is ahead," Gotzsche said. Will the FDA ever follow EMA's lead?

I doubt it. FDA has been very gun shy of the pharmaceutical industry, which pays over 60% of the agency's budget for approving drugs. Also, the drug industry has no qualms about taking the FDA to court to defend itself. Usually, the FDA is sued by pharma for limiting the industry's First Amendment right to free and open speech. In this case, however, the industry would argue that FDA has no right itself to "speak" freely about clinical data provided to it by drug companies.

UPDATE (7/16/2012): While the EU plans to provide access to "confidential" clinical trial data, the FDA is prohibited by LAW to do so. The Wall Street Journal reports that the FDA is monitoring some of its own employees who are suspected of leaking confidential medical device data to the press (read about this here).

“We do things at Pfizer that are best for shareholders of Pfizer." You Gotta Problem with That?

I can't believe a Pfizer "spokesperson" (Corporate Secretary and Chief Governance Counsel, Matthew Lepore) said:

“We do things at Pfizer that are best for shareholders of Pfizer" 

when defending Pfizer's continued financial support of Heartland Institute, an organization whose president Joe Bast claimed that the public health community has a campaign to "demonize smokers" based on "junk science" (find the story here: "Pfizer Refuses To Pull Funding From Anti-Science Front Group").

Among the books authored by Joe Bast is "Please Don’t Poop in My Salad (and other essays opposing the war against smoking)" (see his 2008 resume here).

First of all, it's shameful for a drug company that on one hand promotes campaigns to help people quit smoking (eg, CHANTIX direct-to-consumer commercials) while on the other hand supports an organization that believes anti-smoking campaigns are based on "junk science." How does that resonate with people who are taking CHANTIX?

Secondly, doesn't Mr. Lepore know that Pfizer's trademarked slogan is "Working Together for a Healthier World" and NOT "Working Together for a Profitable Investor"?

Lepore also stated that Pfizer "isn’t concerned" by the decisions of Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, and Bayer, to disassociate themselves with Heartland. "We can't be very knee jerk on every issue that is brought to our attention," said Marc Scarduffa, Vice President, Government Relations & Public Affairs.

Which reminds me of a typical New Yorker conversation ender: "You gotta problem with that?"

Gamification's Brave New World Circa 1984: Operation Frog

There's a lot of brouhaha these days in pharma circles about "gamification" as if it were the newest thing since sliced bread. What is "gamification," you ask? According to the Gamification.org wiki (here):

"Gamification typically involves applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging. Gamification has been called one of the most important trends in technology by several industry experts. Gamification can potentially be applied to any industry and almost anything to create fun and engaging experiences, converting users into players."

You might find this "Gaming Goes Mainstream" infographic interesting.

An example of an attempt to apply gamification to the pharmaceutical industry is the "Syrum" Facebook game being developed by Boehringer Ingelheim. The release of that game, however, has been delayed for nearly a year (see "Pharma & Fun, Not Oxymoronic? Here Comes Gamification!" and "'A Drug is Developed:' Easier than Launching an Educational Facebook Game about Drug Development?").

I know from first-hand experience how difficult it is to develop educational games. I started my career -- such as it is -- back in 1984 designing an educational life science personal computer-based game. It was a simulation of a frog dissection. The objective was to use the keyboard or joystick to move a simulated hand, pick up simulated instruments, and "dissect" a simulated frog and identify its organs. At the end, the user (usually a high school biology student) was challenged to reverse the process by putting the frog back together (the game aspect). If successful, the user was rewarded with a fun animation of the (simulated) frog dancing off in a top hat and cane -- no harm done (except to the frog I dissected doing research for the simulation). The codename was "Defrogger" but it was published by Scholastic as "Operation: Frog".

Operation: Frog ran on the Apple II computer, which at the time had the most advanced graphics of any personal computer on the market. It was an 8-bit computer with a screen resolution of 280x196. You could get 16 colors using a technique called "dithering." Here's a screen shot showing the frog's digestive system:

You can count the pixels without a magnifying glass! To get this level of detail from an 8-bit 16-color computer display was quite a challenge requiring planning and storyboards (I also created the graphics and wrote the screen text and user's manual). Here's the storyboard for the dissection screen, which is evidence that I actually did this more than 28 years ago (OMG!):

In my proposal to Scholastic I said that "dissection of a living animal or one stewed in formaldehyde is an unpleasant experience for many biology students and teachers alike. Not only does it require the sacrifice of many animals, it is also expensive and potentially dangerous. Consequently, many children never carry out a dissection."

Okay, I was playing it up a bit too much. However, the program was a hit. It was  featured in the October 15, 1984 issue of Newsweek Magazine and played a role in a 1987 California court case in which Jenifer Graham, a brave 15-year-old high school girl, defended her right to refuse to dissect a frog. Ms. Graham suggested "she could learn just as much from models or computer graphics as her fellow students learn from the dissection of a frog. It seems incredible," said a Los Angeles reporter at the time (here), "that a school would resort to a dead frog, formaldehyde, forceps and scalpels in this age of computer graphics."

At the time, Ms. Graham was vilified. Unfortunately, although we've come a long way in terms of computer graphics and gaming, students who refuse to dissect real frogs are still vilified (see, for example, "Middle school student claims teacher bullied her over refusing to dissect frog").

For more Operation: Frog screen shots, see my Pinterest Gamification Board.

Can Pharma Cure Alzheimer's Disease? A Pfizer Pre-Launch Multichannel Marketing Case Study

Last month I quipped on this blog that "Pfizer's Social Media Initiatives are Getting Old." Actually, that was a review of Pfizer's new "Get Old" initiative, which Pfizer says is a "first-of-its-kind online community" where people can "get and share information, add to the dialogue and contribute to the growing body of knowledge about this important topic."

In that post, I suggested that Pfizer's real goal was to court advocacy groups such as the Alzheimer’s Association in advance of the announcement of results from an Alzheimer clinical trial of its drug ddsigned to treat the disease.

Just a couple of days ago, on the CBS Evening News, I saw an interview of Rae Lyn Burke, "An Alzheimer's researcher who is also a patient." Ms. Burke is participating in a clinical trial of bapineuzumab (bap-ih-NOOZ-uh-mab), a drug with a funny, Irani-sounding name. Turns out that bapineuzumab is a Pfizer/Johnson and Johnson drug.

Ms. Burke's participation in an Alzheimer clinical trial is old news. According to an August, 2011, San Francisco Chronicle story (here), "Burke worked on some of the initial research into bapineuzumab" (her LinkedIn profile indicates that she is "senior Director at SRI International," a CRO that is likely running the Pfizer Alzheimer clinical trial).

The 2011 story also revealed that "Burke has been in the trial for almost two years, and should find out shortly whether she's been receiving the active drug or a placebo. If she's on the placebo, she intends to switch to the active drug as soon as possible.

She obviously was in the bapineuzumab arm of the study, or switched, because in her recent CBS interview she said that she taking the drug and it was "slowing the decline, but I don't think it's making me better." That's too bad.

Is this all part of Pfizer's multichannel marketing of bapineuzumab prior to its approval by the FDA (if indeed it ever does get approval)?

It's no coincidence that Burke's story was resurrected shortly before results from key studies of two Alzheimer's drugs -- including bapineuzumab -- are to be released. But the journalism stinks: the CBS Evening News story is practically the same, word-for-word as the 2011 San Francisco Chronicle piece cited above. Maybe CBS owns the San Francisco Chronicle or maybe it's becoming more like a blog rather than a primary source of news.

There are also stories in newspapers about these trials, such as this one from the Mercury News: "Alzheimer's drugs could be pharmaceutical industry's last-gasp efforts to cure disease" and this one from the Denver post: "Alzheimer's cure may lie in three drug (sic) tested over past decade." Both of these stories are based on the same AP story, which does NOT mention "cure" but says the drugs are meant to "slow the course of Alzheimer's disease."

I always find it odd that reporters often overstate the efficacy of drugs, sometimes in collusion with drug companies (see, for, example, "BI Masters the Art of WOM through Its 'Parrots,' er, Spokespersons"). Perhaps the local news reporters were influenced to use the word "cure" by Pfizer, JNJ, Lilly, and/or Baxter PR parrot trainers?

As I mentioned in my "Get Old" post, institutional investors doubt that treatments for Alzheimer's disease being developed by Pfizer (and Lilly) will "achieve the main goals of their ongoing late-stage trials." Those goals certainly are NOT to CURE Alzheimer's, but only "aim to clear the sticky plaque gumming up patients' brains."

"Everybody in the field is probably holding their breath that there is something positive to come out of these trials," said Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Mayo Clinic's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. "It may not be a home run" in terms of improving memory and cognition, but if brain imaging or spinal fluid tests show the drugs are hitting their target, "they will be regarded as successes," he said.

Next week, at the 4th Annual Social Communications & Healthcare: Case Studies and Roundtables confernce in NYC, I hope to discuss this with Pfizer's Andrew Topen (VP of Global Media Relations and Digital Communications), Caroline Roan (VP of Corporate Responsibility and Reputation), and/or  Bob Libbey (Senior Director of Global Colleague Communications). These exceutives led the GetOld.com site project and will present the Get Old Case study ("Pfizer Starts a Conversation about Aging") at the conference.

NOTE: Pharma Marketing News is aMedia Partner for this conference. You can get a $20 discount off registration if you have the secret word, which you can find here.

Multichannel Marketing: Easy to Brag About, but Difficult to Do

"Multichannel pharma marketing [see PMN glossary definition: MCM] is conceptually relatively simple to understand, but incredibly difficult in practice," says Len Starnes, former Head of Digital Marketing & Sales, General Medicine at Bayer Schering Pharma. "That said, multichannel is not a transient phenomenon, it’s here to stay," according to Starnes, who is a candidate for this year's Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award.

Len is well-known for his LinkedIn surveys, such as a 2009 survey that asked "Will doctors’ social networks radically change pharma marketing & sales?" Thirty-one percent of respondents to that survey thought this would happen within 2 years (by 2011) and 38% said within 5 years (2014). For more on that, read "Socially Challenged Pharma" (PMN Reprint#84-03; pdf). I think it hasn't happened yet, but multichannel marketing (MCM) to physicians these days must surely include social media "channels" and even more importantly mobile.

But given the "incredible difficulty" of implementing MCM, Starnes is hosting another survey on LinkedIn (here), which asks "Will pharma marketing become de facto multichannel marketing in future?" The results to date are shown in the chart below (click on chart for an enlarged view).

There seems to be overwhelming sentiment that MCM will be de facto for pharma within 5 years.

Starnes' survey also has generated a good number of comments, some of which I include below. My own opinion, however, has to do with the difficulty of implementation vs. the ease with which pharma marketers talk about MCM, which used to be called "Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM)."

I've attended many pharma marketing conferences in the past that focused on "CRM." These days, however, I don't see any CRM presentations included in conference agendas, whereas there are conferences dedicated to "Multichannel Marketing." More often than not, these conferences actually focus on digital marketing. The upcoming Pharma Marketing Show (Europe) is a good example (note: Pharma Marketing News is a Media Partner for the conference; however, I have not been paid to write about it on Pharma Marketing Blog). It's description includes this observation:

"The pharmaceutical marketing sector is fast moving with new marketing techniques developing to meet the wider challenges of the industry. Over recent years, pharma has learnt what emerging technologies such as online and mobile can offer to a marketing campaign."

There are somd very interesting presentations on the agenda; even a couple that address the "difficult" part of MCM: data collection and management (propeller head stuff) such as:

• Managing and analysing vast amounts of data
• How can pharma utilise data to enhance strategic marketing?
• Using big data to integrate multiple sourced customer information and improve quality of customer engagement

In my mind, pharma marketers are "old school", meaning they believe marketing is more of an art than a science (see, for example, "Are Marketers Artists or Mathematicians?").

When I talk to my nephew who sells digital media advertising, it's all about numbers and esoteric measurement terminology, which is way over my head. These numbers, I bet, cause many pharma marketers' eyes to glaze over. But for MCM to be successful, more pharma marketers must become "propeller heads" or hire, enable, and listen to them, IMHO.

OK, enough about my opinion. Here's a sampling of what experts are saying in relation to Len Starnes' LinkedIn survey:

Christopher Wade said: Len - good question! It's not surprising that the consensus is that MCM will become the norm - in terms of aspiration if not actual reality - over the next few years, but I suspect that like other tech-dependent initiatives it will remain the preserve of the few if it sits in the same marketing organisations that exist today. My opinion is that one of the key points on which pharma trips time and again is that sales are nowhere to be seen. Marketing's role as understanding the product / customer / need space and formulating tactics is no less important, but the group that has the information, resources and experience in executing complex activities is the sales force, or more specifically the SFE / SFO group. I would hope that marketing has access to a level of analyst support that helps them to identify key segments and understand their behaviour and preferences, but implementing is where sales excels - they just need to realise that their competence spans more than the rep/territory model.

Robert Nauman said: Excellent discussion. Thanks for asking the question. I honestly have to say no. My rational is born from the assumption that good Multi-channel marketing requires some interaction on the part of the other party. We all suggest it is the marketing paradigm that has to change here. I am growing skeptical in my belief that will occur anytime soon on the patient or the HCP side, can industry create a real two way dialogue. And given the recent US case with GSK and there $3Billion whistleblower settlement, My opinion is that other entities (not supported by pharma dollars) will be producing the content that meets the needs of healthcare consumers and professionals today. And pharma marketing will not be paying for that content creation. I believe that if truly tested, pharma produced content scores very poorly to content produced via other healthcare entities. In terms of the multi-channels, it adds a level of complexity that in the silo'd world of pharma marketing today, may not be operational. The grow of mobile and video's use in that channel is tremendous. And in developing nations, SMS messaging is making great strides in improving health care yet the industry is not leading in either of these approaches. It is sad, but I believe this is pushing marketers into similar roles that we see in the medical device industry today. Very few marketing dollars, very little innovation.

Paul Simms said: Great question, Len. You're good at these! Rob, hope you're well (haven't spoken in ages...) I wanted to respond to your point, which unfortunately saddened me. I see every industry in the world, with the exception of pharma, investing in 'content' as a way of engaging its audience - because it works.Yet pharma still seems reluctant to engage those who can speak in the doctor's language (the medical affairs / liaison folks) fully as a communication device. These days we have simply moved from physician access to now worrying about payer access and soon it will be fretting over patient access. To me it feels like pharma continues to create the equivalent of a TV channel that plays only commercials - and that's never going to create high engagement or trust. Stuck on the one blaring channel, night and day. Yes, you are right, pharma is starting from a difficult position and news like that from GSK doesn't help. But are you resigning us all to eternal oblivion? To me the only way to dig ourselves out of this rut is to begin to produce content of value (let alone services of value) and to build those bridges. Otherwise pharma, and by default, healthcare will never reach its true potential. It is possible for GSK et al to produce content of value and to build trust that way. As for multichannel, I can't believe we're talking about it like it's something revolutionary (yes I'm guilty of running events on the topic but that's only because it's what everyone tells me they want...). I'm personally astounded we're even bothering to distinguish between the channel at all. Indeed it's a gross manifestation of the focus on the medium rather than the message. As some have said, we should simply provide valuable wisdom in whatever convenient format our customers request, and use technology to adapt to multiple channels in a semi-automated fashion. Again, that's what other industries do. Can you imagine FMCG or other B2C industries having a big debate about multichannel???

Len Starnes: Reflecting on the comments from both Rob and Paul I am fully convinced that pharma is capable of providing ‘content’, via whatever channel is necessary, and that HCPs want the industry to deliver it – but it must be on their terms. Using Paul’s TV analogy this would be a shift from airing commercials to running full-on documentaries. I state this having recently spoken to a leading doctors’ social network here in Germany, Esanum, who’s CEO confirmed that 80% of its 33,000 members want to access pharma ‘content’ and engage with pharma peers (aka Medical Affairs, MLOs). This once again reconfirms my research with similar networks globally which indicates that the majority of community members welcome industry engagement of all types. What astounds me is that pharma largely continues to ignore these networks in its multichannel efforts - snail mail and email still appear to be brand managers’ favourites.

More here...

Are Pinterest Women & Virality Worth It to Pharma Marketers?

Once again I am responding to a Pharmaforum guest blogger post that was promoted by the author (Kelley Connors) on Twitter: "How Pinterest Creates the Love for #Healthcare #Marketers #hcsm #pharma #womenshealth #socialmedia @pharmaforum ow.ly/c8jiF"

Connors' post, entitled "Understand the rules of engagement with Pinterest" (here), starts out with this observation:

"Since healthcare is such a personalized experience, and 90% of healthcare decisions are made by women, I find it interesting that more healthcare marketers aren’t exploring Pinterest."

She forgot to add that 82% of Pinterest users are women (see data in this infographic).

Pinterest, according to Connors, beats Twitter hands down in terms of "engagement" and "virality."

"Remarkably," says Connors, "over 80% of pins are repins, demonstrating the impressive level of virality at work in the Pinterest community. By contrast, a study conducted by HubSpot at a similar point in Twitter’s history found roughly only 1.4% of tweets were retweets."

From my experience, Twitter drives much more traffic to websites than does Pinterest. I learned about Connors and her post, for example, via Twitter, not Pinterest. What's the purpose of "virality" if it doesn't drive people to your website where you can "close" the deal (ie, get subscriptions, distribute coupons, etc.)? Maybe it's different for shoes than for Rx drugs or B2B pharma marketing news items.

There is one other very important reason why pharmaceutical marketers do not use Pinterest: they cannot turn off or moderate comments like they can with Facebook and YouTube. The only Pinterest comment editing option -- as far as I know -- is to delete the pin and repin it without the comments. That is draconian (it deletes ALL comments, not just offending one) and labor intensive. Pharma is not only worried about possible adverse events mentioned in comments, but also off-label claims. For more on this, read "What's Your Infographics Strategy?" (use discount code 'pgpin4').

These problems may never arise if pharma pins only innocuous images and videos on Pinterest. That is, pins whose purpose is to generate goodwill, share disease information, promote corporate responsibility, and broadcast other non-branded messages. All of which are of no interest to pharmaceutical marketers who want to promote brands.

For some reason, however, Pinterest is of interest to a few pharma corporate communicators and PR preople. Therefore, you do see a few Pinterest sites that obviously are corporate PR campaigns. Unfortunately, however, the demographics of Pinterest (82% women and mostly consumers) is NOT the target demographic of PR people who want to reach mostly reporters and investors.

Ergo, IMHO, as long as Pinterest does not have a pharma-friendly commenting policy, it will not interest pharma marketers even though its "women's world"/consumer demographic and virality is enticing to them. In addition, Pinterest will not generate much ROI on pharma PR investment. Eventually, the pharma Pinterest pioneers, few though they may be, will drop out even though, as Connors surmises, the Pinterest net "attrition rate" overall is "close to 0%."