Pharma: Who’s Talking to Whom and Who’s Listening?

Are Pharma Executives listening? Are they reading the Blogs and the Twitters? Are they interested? Do they have the time? Are we talking their language? Are we adding value?

 

Or, are we Pharma Bloggers just self-indulgently talking to ourselves? Naivety or Paranoia?

 

Are we alone? Is Pharma customer communication naive?

 

 

 

So, who is talking to whom? More importantly:

 

WHO’s LISTENING? Social Media …….

Social media, Web 2.0, I hear you yell! What about good old focus groups? Yes, but No.

 

Let’s examine the symptoms and reach a diagnosis before we impose the remedy.

 

Are we Missing Something?

 

Has the anatomy of communication something to offer?

 

We have two ears and one mouth; well we did last time I checked.

 

Ergo, shouldn’t we be listening twice as much as talking? Simplistic?
Yes, but irrefutable.

 

So, where are the Pharma Execs or company blogs?
Where is Pharma saying “This is what we need?”

 

Where are Pharma’s customers saying, “This is what we need?”

 

Or, are they just voting with their feet?

 

Is the truth only told when Pharma Sales Reps meet with Physicians, Payers and Regulators?

 

Are needs confidential, only to be disclosed behind closed doors? If so, why?

 

Maybe, the existing blogs reflect Pharma needs? Maybe, I just can’t find the “Please Help” dialogue? Maybe, Pharma is using ‘ghost bloggers?’ Maybe, Pharma has a non-de-plume for their column in ‘Osmosis’ the new monthly ‘black label,’ subscription only, magazine?

 

Isn’t communication, verbal and non verbal, about an interchange between people.

 

You know - Ask the probing questions. Listen with empathy. Discern needs. Check for understanding. Meet those needs. Empower self-management.

 

Result: an appreciative ‘yours for life’ client.

 

A ‘Can Do’ Philosophy

Wasn’t it Confucius who said:

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”

 

Or was it I Ching or Hirst and Peters – same message different pundit:

 

Communication that stimulates Doing wins every time.

 

Are Bloggers and Twitterers stimulating ‘doing’ and thereby empowering Pharma?

 

More particularly, is Pharma stimulating its customer-base in this way?

 

Emeritus Professor Russell Ackoff’s concept of a societal Path to Wisdom suggested we are moving from the Information Age into the Knowledge Age.

 

It will come as no news, I am sure, that the Age of Wisdom is some way off.

 

Are we transforming information into knowledge for Pharma Execs so that they - Can Do?

 

Are they?

 

Ref: www.rnzcgp.org.nz/assets/Uploads/qualityprac/Symposium2009/Harry-Pert.pptx

 

Is Pharma Listening??

 

When giving a large Pharma brand team seminar, participants reluctantly admitted that none of them had ever directly talked with a patient prescribed their brand. Customer needs were irrelevant in communication.
 
No one had ever listened! No one had asked! No one felt the need or their needs! Someone else’s job?
 
SCARY?

 

Do we understand communication needs and meet them?

 

Isn’t this the question for both Blogger-Pharma and more significantly for Pharma-Customer communication?

 

The Pharma Bloggers Fate

 

Are Pharma Blogger standing on a lone soap-box, on a different planet?

 

Are the Pharma Indians circling the pioneering customer wagon train, whooping and hollering for action, only to find the customer have slipped away in the night?

 

I hope not! Because the future of this blog is about effective Pharma Communications and, assuming I am not talking to myself, I am depending upon your Comments.

 

[Next Blog: Feeling Buried in Technology?]

Comments

[Lance Chambers]

Pharma has a very great issue and that is that their messages, especially to end users (people who take their drugs), are NOT trusted whatever form of communication is used.

Using the newly available forms of communication (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) are, I believe, not the issue. The issues are:

1/ How to convince in the face of such hostility or
2/ How to disguise, if necessary, the true messenger or
3/ How to build trust in people who do not trust and/or
4/ How to measure ROI for social media.

There are other customers of Pharma who don't trust but who also do not care. But these customers are not an issue as they will swallow (pun intended) whatever the companies pass onto them.

Then there are customers that do ,in part, trust(doctors, pharmacists, other 'professionals') who are probably an amorphous mob where some do and some don't trust the companies. Their issue is often that they have little real choice in what drugs to prescribe.

The only 'battle-field' that remains is to convince the consumer and here is where social media can make a great difference. But, unless the Pharma companies hide behind anonymous avatars and salespeople, I believe they will be doomed in these newly emerging media.

The victims of bad drugs will pillory any drug company online and they are far louder and persistent today than they ever have been and they constitute an army of dedicated detractors and nay-sayers who will not hesitate or rest until the companies that have betrayed them are destroyed.

I don't believe that many drug companies that exist today have very much in the way of real public good will (there may be a lot on their balance sheets but little in the heart and minds of their end users).

My strategy would be to divorce new drugs from old parent companies and float these drugs via newly hatched companies that can start fresh and build their own 'personality' from scratch with an emphasis on trust.