Is Pharma Too Big For Digital Communications

Do Pharma Chairpersons (Apologies Chairmen) and Chief Executive Officers realise the potential of Digital Communications?

Are they Digital Communications savvy?

Do they ever venture onto the Internet?

Consult an occasional Blog?

Answer their eMail?

Do they listen to their kids?

Are they getting a real sense of how digital communications could significantly contribute to easing
Pharma industry issues?

(See: PWC - Pharma 2020: Marketing the Future.’)

Do you recognise your CEO? When was the last time you or your customer’s shared thoughts with the CEO?

(From Bottom Left - Clockwise:
Andrew Witty - Chairman/CEO GSK:
David Brennan - Chairman/CEO AstraZeneka:
Jeffrey Kindler - Chairman/CEO Pfizer:
Jean-François Dehecq - Chairman of Sanofi Aventis)

Organisational culture, values, policies and strategies are always fundamentally influenced by the leadership of an organisation.

(For Example See: E. H. Schein – ‘Organisational Culture and Leadership’)

Why would Pharma personnel strongly persue a digital communications agenda if there was no support from the leadership?

Where is the equivalent of the Sony Walkman ‘big idea,’ emanating from the troops?
Bottom-up thinking influencing and determining insightful strategy.

 Is there a focal point for digital communication within Pharma organisations?

Recent digital communications discussions, with Pharmaco, have illustrated the myriad of stakeholders involved in any significant digital communications strategy initiative.

Head of Sales, Brand Manager, Head of Innovation, Coordinator of Medical Affairs, Director of IT, and let’s not forget Marketing then add a liberal dose of Global, Regional, National, etc and the list can be endless.
Has Pharma reached the stage where ‘too many cooks are not spoiling the broth – they’re not even cooking it up’?

   

Has Pharma reached a stage of organisational dysfunction where………

Has Pharma reached a stage of organisational dysfunction where the issue of digital communications, its possibilities and opportunities, is simply being lost in the ‘Orgware’?

Myopia or Paralysis?

Meetings, meetings, meetings, Pharma is not alone. As the Director of Digital for a large agency I once sent an invoice to the CEO for a grossly oversubscribed meeting, for a launch product, that achieved nothing.

Talking doesn’t equal thinking.
Meetings don’t equal initiative.
‘Buy In’ doesn’t equal creative strategy
‘Ownership’ doesn’t equal results.

Could Pharma’s generally poor performance in the digital communications arena sound a wake-up call for Pharma’s organisational functionality and decision making processes?

A Changing Society

Do you know the story of the social impact of the invention of the metal stirrup – that is the horse riding variety?

Stirrups were one of the greatest catalysts for societal change human kind has experienced.

Right up there, in terms of societal and cultural impact, with the Wheel, Fire, Printing and McDonalds.

Because horse borne warriors could transfer the power of their horse to their weapons, those with wealth and armies, that utilised the technology, became all powerful and re-wrote the secular power landscape.

(For Example See: M.M. Crow & D Sarewtitz – ‘Nanotechnology and Societal Change’)

Don’t digital communications represent an equally significant technology that has heralded the way for a shift in the power structure of societal communication?

Has Pharmaco lost its communications power in its own marketplace?

Is Pharma client and consumer communications power rendering Pharma’s communication efforts increasingly irrelevant?

Are the words in the mouths of Pharma Clients really more powerful than the sword in the hand of Pharmaco?

Has the communications Orgware and Thoughtware that developed in the hay-day of Pharma’s ‘Blockbuster Molecule’ era stayed inappropriately in place?

Diagnosis is Important

Is the reason for Pharma’s poor performance in the new world of digital communications even relevant?

Yes – because if Pharma communication to its customers is to ever regain respect, relevance, engagement even power, the reasons for its current performance needs close scrutiny.

That is assuming Pharma still has a role to play in health and treatment communication?

(Tomorrows Blog: Digital Communications - The Answer To Pharmaco’s Challenges?)