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Pharma blogs: going beyond the press release?

pharmafile | October 7, 2013 | Feature | Manufacturing and Production, Medical Communications, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing ABPI, blogs, press releases, social media 

The rise of personal blogging has grown in the past decade with millions taking to the internet to tell their stories and share their opinions. In recent years the impact of blogging as a social media strategy has not gone unnoticed by the corporate world, and pharma has been quick to get in on the act.

Some of the better-known names have starting using this medium, albeit in slightly different ways. There are five main pharma firms now publishing blogs: Pfizer’s Think Science Now; GSK’s More than Medicine; LillyPad; AstraZeneca’s LabTalk; and Boehringer Ingelheim’s More Health.

In many ways this has been a suprising move as the industry is generally conservative when it comes to broadcasting information to the public and press, and a blog suggests that posts may be more insightful and informal than the often formulaic press release.

Most are updated fairly regularly each week with many sporting ‘guest posts’ by academics or public health figures, but the majority are written by an internal communications team, or by members of staff from the firm.

GlaxoSmithKline’s More than Medicine blog is aimed specifically at the US with many of its posts speaking of the public health work it does over the world, as well as plugging editorial pieces mentioning the firm in the US media.

Pfizer’s Think Science Now has a slightly different set-up as the site incorporates its entire social media into one place. The blog element is primarily made up of Pfizer staffers doing repeat posts on a range of topics, with Brian Nunnally, who is in charge of process validation for Pfizer US, the most prolific blogger with over 135 posts (at time of press).

Pfizer’s posts have a more informal – or at least emotional engagement than many of its contemporaries. As an example, one of Nunnally’s latest posts speaks of his wife and children, whilst Jack Watters, VP of external medical affairs, writes recently about celebrating lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender Pride Month by highlighting the contributions of some notable LGBT scientists.

The LillyPad blog is much more focussed on business and patient issues such as drug adherence, counterfeit medicines, highlighting editorial in newspapers and issues around patents and intellectual property. It is written predominately by one person – Amy O’Connor, who leads the digital government affairs team at Lilly – and who does inject an informal style at the beginning of some posts, before getting more serious.

As an example of being more informal, her biography on the blogs states: “She [Amy] is a graduate of the University of Notre-Dame – Go Irish! – and the Georgetown Public Policy Institute – Hoya Saxa!” But some posts begin and end with a serious and often political tone.

One blog piece from late August reads: “Even under ideal circumstances, intellectual property law is pretty complex (except for IP attorneys, of course). But the laws in Canada, as they relate to biopharmaceutical products, surpassed ‘complex’ some time ago. Maddening is probably a better word.”

The post goes on to bemoan the problems in Canada where medicines can be taken off the market before a patent expires. This is a lot further and more political than many other firms will go on their blogs, and perhaps is indicative of the culture of Lilly, who’s chief executive John Lechleiter is well-known for his straight-talking on these kinds of issues (in fact it was Lechleiter’s editorial in a US newspaper that ‘inspired’ this post).

AZ’s LabTalk is predominately about the impact of collaboration and success stories/the need for more success stories in scientific collaboration. This at times almost appears as a mating call to other firms and biotech companies; AZ has made no secret of its desire to partner with more organisations, and its communications team have clearly been made aware that this is its remit.

Boehringer’s More Health mainly uses it blog to announce competition winners for certain awards, or to speak of its own successes in awards. It is also keen to plug the virtues of digital and social media; unsurprising given its penchant for this area.

Lobby groups and regulators take to blogging

But it is not only pharma that has taken to this medium as US regulator the FDA and pharma lobby groups the ABPI and EFPIA have also experimented with blogging. The FDA’s Voice blog is perhaps the most independent of all these blogs, though it certainly still has its own motives and patterns of messages.

Nearly all of the posts are written by FDA staffers discussing issues of public health around the world, and also how the FDA is helping with research. The regulator’s commissioner Margaret Hamburg also contributes on a regular basis, and has in the past commented on controversial issues, such as its decision to restrict access of Roche’s breast cancer drug Avastin.  

In September Hamburg also posted a piece on public health as well as a separate piece the same day about the importance of drug labelling, along with new policies from the FDA on this issue. It is good to see the head of organisation taking pen to paper – or fingers to keys in this context – and have a personable prose that also gives key information to the public in non technicalese.

On the other side of the pond – and on the other side – is the ABPI, the UK pharma lobby group. In a similar way to the FDA Voice, the ABPI’s chief executive Stephen Whitehead often takes to the ABPI’s website to post an entry.

But in actuality I have been told that most of these posts have in fact been written by the press communications team, despite saying it is from Whitehead, which serves to remove the personable touch.

It is also almost always reactionary in tone and content: much of September’s posts are rebuffing the argument that R&D costs are too high or posting figures about how much the world needs pharma, with numbers and stats, usually obtained by the ABPI-funded Office for Health Economics, to help back this up.  

It is written in a short, corporate burst and serves to promulgate the traditional pharma line on all topics. It very rarely adds anything extra than a press release and for people well-seasoned in pharma much of the content contains little to surprise.

This is a shame, as the ABPI has done much on the face of it to create a new-looking team, and ostensibly a new outlook – the blog could have incorporated this, but a number of issues are stopping the group.  

The main issues is that it is talking on behalf of hundreds of members who can pay as much as £750,000 for membership – so it has to stick to the script or face a potential backlash from the diverse group it is supposed to represent. But there is still a feeling that the blog itself could go further than it currently does, by perhaps have Whitehead write more frequent posts, and stick his neck out on issues more.

The European pharma lobby group EFPIA also has a blog, and is very similar in tone to the ABPI, but it can be slightly softer, and a bit more focussed on explaining the details. But it too is fairly corporate and reactionary; yet it has played host to a number of key announcements, including August’s post discussing its desire for self-regulation when it comes to publishing clinical trial data.

But is it blogging?

All of the pharma blogs explicitly extoll the virtues of the industry, the positives of R&D innovation, and the need to better market access – key themes for pharma. But can we rightly call this medium ‘blogging’?

The writers themselves are often employees of the company they are discussing and clearly have restrictions on how much information they can divulge, and are barred from criticising the firm or the industry as a whole.

There are times of individual flare from writers and an attempt at engagement with the public, but much of it can seem hollow, as there is generally an underlying business motive behind each piece. But this is not true for all of the blogs: Pfizer’s Think Science Now is the closest I’ve seen being what one would deem a ‘blog’, although it still obviously has a corporate purpose.

But blogs do often go beyond the press release and offer more information and occasionally more insight into the firm. It also allows different members of a company to write in a slightly more relaxed style about certain issues, and on issues that they have a particular passion for.

As a journalist however, I feel it all falls a bit short. A blog is a real opportunity for a company to allow its staff an open voice on practically any topic that falls within the industry, but you get the feeling that it is all very controlled and purposeful in its motives.

This is not necessarily a bad thing and understandable given the rules and regulations that pharma works in; to allow an employee to criticise a firm on a blog would also be an odd corporate tactic. 

But I would still like to see more – as an example, Sir Andrew Witty, the chief executive of GSK, recently said that drug prices are too high and R&D costs could be lower. The company also signed the AllTrials register for greater clinical trial transparency, making it the only firm to do so.  

This is borderline revolutionary in the conservative world of pharma, but these were not mentioned on the blog or first published there, perhaps showing that it is not meant to replace the press conference or the media section of the firm’s site.

But these are the sorts of issues that would be ideal content for a ‘real’ corporate blog, and should be better incorporated into all pharma’s blogging ventures if it wants them to be taken seriously.

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