The Climate is Changing for Digital Healthcare Marketing
It’s coming. The FDA is planning to release draft guidelines for healthcare companies on advertising through digital marketing channels sometime later this year.
The Climate is Changing
This is great news!
Pharma and Device companies are already using digital channels – some more aggressively than others. I was at a conference in June specifically addressing social media in pharmaceutical marketing and that was pretty much the topic du jour. No clear answers, just a lot of interesting debate. This left a lot of marketers (justifiably) frustrated.
Last week’s article entitled “Outgunned FDA tries to get tough with drug ads” outlines mostly the bad – a few isolated incidents where advertising was pushed too far, or risks not stated explicitly enough. I am guessing there are hundreds of thousands of pieces of marketing material produced each year. The article states $4.8B was spent on patient (DTC) advertising in 2009 and I would double that for HCP marketing when you include salesforce and sampling costs. The FDA – or any other agency – cannot possibly control it all which makes a good case for having robust regulations around advertising, specifically in the digital space where none exists at the moment. What worries me is that the Agency may be signaling they will hire enough people to monitor this infinite amount of marketing material versus spending time creating practical and quality digital ad guidelines. I hope I am wrong.
These are exciting times.
There are now exponentially more touch points that patients and HCPs have with manufacturers in which to form productive and educational relationships. The net benefit has to be positive. I certainly hope regulators don’t impede communication channels for patients and HCPs to manufacturers.
The climate is changing and manufacturers need to start preparing for:
1. Understanding what the guidelines might mean and closely following the FDA’s progress.
2. Getting involved and making your voice heard.
3. Creating open and productive relationships with internal legal and regulatory teams.
4. Ensuring they are propagating an appropriate message that ladders up to the brand strategy.
5. Measuring each channel (digital and non-digital) for effectiveness versus cost and risk.
What do you think? Will the guidelines help or hurt the pharma and device companies?
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