Happy Anniversary! First Ever Pharmaguy Social Media Procrastinator Award Goes to...

Today is the third anniversary of the first day of the 2-day November 2009, FDA public hearing on the Promotion of Food and Drug Administration-Regulated Medical Products Using the Internet and Social Media Tools (see here, here, and here).

Shortly after that hearing, some FDA staffers lead us to believe that FDA would come out with social media regulatory guidance for the pharma industry by the end of 2010 (see here). That never happened.

Instead, FDA kept procrastinating and throwing roadblocks in the way such as proposing further studies (see, for example, "FDA's Proposed Web Study Will Further Delay Social Media Guidelines").

Meanwhile, to add insult to injury, Tom Abrams, head of FDA's DDMAC (now OPDP), keeps showing up at industry meetings where industry leaders were expecting him to announce progress towards issuing draft guidance. At one such meeting in February, 2011, Abrams spent a scant 4 minutes discussing social media guidance (read this). At that meeting, he said FDA would NOT "do guidance on specific technology platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. Those things are really big now, but you know what, two years from now who knows what the next thing [will be]?" Well, guess what? It's almost two years later and YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are still BIG, if not BIGGER and nothing has come along that's bigger. [BTW, Abrams also pooh-poohed Groupon, which now seems prophetic! And Google eliminated sidewiki, which was a big concern at the 2009 public hearing (read this).]

In recognition of the role Abrams has played in all this procrastination regarding social media guidance from FDA, I hereby present to Abrams the first ever Pharmaguy Social Media Procrastination Award^TM.

This award, as you may notice, is the antithesis to the famous Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award, which was recently given to the sanofi US diabetes team (see here).

The iconic Hawaiian shirt in the "Procrastinator Award" is dark, symbolizing the negative implications of procrastination versus the bright yellow, positive Hawaiian shirt image used in the "Pioneer Award."

Abrams continues to show up at industry meetings promising that social media guidance is a high priority at FDA and it will be coming soon -- perhaps as "soon" as July, 2014 (see here). Yet, we've heard it all before. That's why I think it is fitting that Abrams receive the the "Procrastinator Award."

If Abrams lives up to his latest promise -- which is doubtful, IMHO -- it would have taken the FDA only 4 years and 8 months to issue draft social media guidance. In terms of Internet/social media timeframes -- in which 2 years can bring BIG changes -- this is procrastination on an epic scale. But in terms of FDA guidance timeframes, 4 years and 8 months is par for the course (see, for example, "A Cautionary Tale for Anyone Expecting FDA Social Media Guidelines Any Time Soon").

The 3rd Annual Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award

If you are a regular reader of Pharma Marketing Blog, you know that I generally do not like awards sponsored by pharma trade publications (see “Awards. What Are They Good For?”). Such awards are somewhat suspect because of the inherent conflicts of interests involved -- the winners tend to be the agencies that advertise the most in the sponsoring publication or that purchase big page ads announcing that they won the award.

The Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award
Defenders of pharma “social media” site awards insist that we must reward even the most elementary attempts that pharma is making to have online conversations despite all the regulatory obstacles that they face. I agree. But instead of having awards for the work product, why not give awards to the pioneers who have lead the way to create these sites? We can learn more from how these pioneers overcame the obstacles to launch a social media project than from the end result – even if the end result is flawed or faux.

Sometimes, pioneers work "behind the scenes," making it possible for their colleagues to develop customer-facing social media projects. We must recognize these efforts as well. Marketing campaigns and Web sites come and go, but pioneers move on to new positions and continue to spread their influence far and wide.

To better recognize the value of these pioneers, I launched the Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award in July, 2010. The first award went to Alex Butler (see here) and the second award went to Tony Jewell (see here).

The Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award is meant to recognize pioneers who work (or have recently worked) within regulated drug and device companies. The award recognizes courage in the face of regulatory and corporate culture boundaries!

What's With the Hawaiian Shirt?
Let me explain the Hawaiian shirt motif of the award. Around the time that the FDA announced it would hold a public hearing regarding regulation of pharma’s use of the Internet and social media, I started appearing at conferences in a yellow Hawaiian shirt, which was left over from a Hunter S. Thompson Halloween costume (see “Pharma Social Media Crips vs. Legal/Regulatory Bloods: Call for a ‘Peace’ Conference” for a sighting of me in the shirt at the 3rd Annual Digital Pharma East Conference). I also considered wearing the shirt when I made my presentation to the FDA at the November, 2009 meeting (see “Fear and Loathing in Washington, DC”), but out of respect for the FDA and the audience, I opted for a traditional suit and tie.

Although I didn’t wear my Hawaiian shirt at the FDA hearing, it became an emblem for standing out from the crowd, which is a necessary trait for a social media marketing pioneer. I think a Hawaiian shirt motif befits, therefore, what the Pharmaguy Pharma Social Media Pioneer Award stands for.

The Nominees Are…
I have several people in mind as contenders for this award (see the end of this post), but first let me discuss what I consider to be the qualifications for nominees.

What are the qualifications to be nominated to receive this prestigious award?

First, a nominee must work or have worked within an FDA-regulated pharmaceutical, medical device, or biotech company when he or she pioneered in social media marketing or non-branded communications or was an advocate for such. Although there are many people in agencies that are true social media pioneers and who have been involved in many pharma social media projects, only the insider has the experience and courage I am looking for. The insider has to contend with many stakeholders inside the organization and is ultimately responsible for the project. Consultants and agencies do not have nearly as much skin in the game as do insiders.

Although some pharma social media pioneers have subsequently moved on to other positions in non-pharma companies (see, for example, "Is There an Upward Career Path Within Pharma for Social Media Pioneers?"), they are still eligible for consideration as nominees for the Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award.

Second, a nominee must have been a true social media pioneer. By that I mean someone who has been involved from the early days in marshaling the forces necessary to ultimately build a social media campaign. No matter if the campaign has been a failure. We often learn more from our failures than from our successes. Above all, we want nominees who have learned and who can share their learnings with us.

Third, although it is not necessary that a nominee to have experienced a “Mack Attack” such as that experienced by Novo Nordisk’s Ambre Morley (see “Novo Nordisk's Branded (Levemir) Tweet is Sleazy Twitter Spam!”), it can’t hurt, especially if that person has survived and gone on to be interviewed by me (eg, “Novo Nordisk's Race With Insulin Campaign: It's Not Just About Twitter”).

The type of social media that a nominee has been involved with is immaterial as long as it is one or more of the following: a blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a network (community), a YouTube channel, etc.

That’s about it for qualifications.

Who Will Nominate Candidates and Determine Who Wins an Award?
Since this award has my Twitter name associated with it, I take ultimate responsibility for who to consider for this award and who wins an award. I already have several candidates in mind (see below).

However, I also depend upon my readers and colleagues to assist me. You can vote for my nominations and write-in other candidates using the online form here (sorry, voting is closed; see a summary of the results here). Not only your vote, but the comments you add will go a long way awards influencing me, especially if you offer details that back up your choices. I especially need help identifying former pharma people who may be working at agencies, but who did a lot of their social media pioneering while employed at a pharmaceutical company.

Ultimately, I will use my best judgment and experience to decide who is qualified to enter the contest and who wins an award. My decision is final.

NOTE: It occurs to me that many pharma marketing initiatives – including social media initiatives – are the result of teamwork within the organization. For example, a SM Pioneer may operate behind the scenes to support a pioneering product manager who makes the decision. Both are pioneers and should be rewarded. It is possible, therefore, that several people may share the same award. I also recognize the fact that outside consultants and agencies may have played a critical role. When appropriate, these pioneers will also receive honorable mention when the awards are announced.

Let me start the process by nominating several people that I know and have interacted with listed in alphabetically by last name. You can click on each name to learn more about this person and add comments. More names will be added as the nominations continue. Please add your nominations and/or votes here.

Nominees
For the most up-to-date list, see Nominees for The Pharmaguy Social Media Award.

NOTE: Every nominee for the Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award is a winner and deserves recognition. But only 1 individual will be awarded the coveted Hawaiian shirt. This is NOT a popularity contest. "Winners" will be chosen solely by Pharmaguy (me) based on my evaluation of merit. Your votes, however, will also count to influence my decision. Also, I need your comments about the people you nominate so that I can profile each and every nominee in recognition of his or her pioneering effort.

AZ's Tony Jewell Receives 2nd Annual Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award

Yesterday, I figuratively gave the Hawaiian shirt off my back to Tony Jewell (@tonyjewell), Senior Director of External Communications at AstraZeneca US, for his pioneering use of Twitter. I picked Tony specifically because AZ was the first pharmaceutical company to host a Twitter chat (#rxsave; see "OMG! AstraZeneca Hosts Twitter Chat & World Does NOT End!").

This memorable event was captured on video by the Pixels & Pills/Zomega people at the Digital Pharma East conference in Philadelphia:


Pharma Guy Gives Tony Jewell the Shirt Off His Back from Zemoga on Vimeo.

There were several other contenders worthy of this honor, including

• Brad Pendergraph, Novartis
• Dennis Urbaniak, Sanofi
• Kevin Nalty, Janssen
• Ray Kerins, Pfizer
• John Pugh, Boehringer Ingelheim
• Craig DeLarge, Novo Nordisk

Over 100 readers of this blog voted for their candidate in an unofficial poll (see "2nd Annual Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award Goes to..."). Although Tony did not garner the most votes in this poll, I still picked him as MY favorite -- after all, this is the PHARMAGUY award, which is not a popularity contest.

Tony received many kudos via Twitter, but at least one fellow blogger -- PharmaGossip -- was not pleased because of Tony's PR role in defending Seroquel against critics (see "What a week for AstraZeneca's Tony Jewell!").

The open #rxsave chat was a pioneering event not just because it was the first ever pharma chat. It was pioneering because AZ did it even though it knew that Seroquel critics might try and "hijack" the discussion. In a Twitter chat it is not possible to "edit" or "not publish" comments made by participants. And the conversation can actually be hijacked by "disgruntled" patients or employees (see here).

As I noted previously, two critics were by far the most prolific tweeters during the chat. These 2 people made 256 posts -- about 30% of the total -- during the one hour chat session. @AstrazenecaUS made just 37 tweets and mostly listened and learned. AZ (ie, Tony Jewell) did not ignore the "critics," who posted off-topics tweets about Seroquel.

Despite the volume of off-topic, critical, and branded tweets made by a few people during the chat, the conversation about how AZ can help more consumers save money on prescription drugs went on and was, IMHO, successful.

So, even though Tony may be a PR person whose job is to promote good news about AZ and "spin" bad news, he deserves my award and I hope his pioneer social media effort is emulated by other pharmaceutical companies.

Pharma "Social Networks": Close But No Cigar Award

If you are a regular reader of Pharma Marketing Blog, you know that I generally do not like awards that are given to pharmaceutical marketers by trade publications. Such awards are very suspect because of the inherent conflicts of interests involved -- the winners tend to be the agencies that advertise the most in the sponsoring publication or purchase big page ads announcing that they won the award.

Recently, Dose of Digital, which maintains a wiki list of pharma and healthcare organization social media initiatives, hosted the "2010 Dose of Digital Dosie Award" to be given to the most deserving sites on the wiki list. You can find the finalists here. The winners will be announced at the upcoming 2nd Annual Social Communications & Healthcare Conference in New York City. Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend that conference. I am sure attendees will have fun despite my absence ;-)

The Dosie award process was a bit unique in that the finalists were determined solely by soliciting votes among Dose of Digital's Twitter followers and blog visitors. The voting process did not require any identifying information, so we will never truly know much about the population who cast votes. I am sure everything was on the up and up, but contenders were allowed to promote themselves to their followers on Twitter and game the system in other ways.

It's safe to say, however, that most of the people who cast votes for the Dosie were pharma professionals, marketing agency people, and social media activists. In other words, people who should know what constitutes a "winning" or outstanding social media application or social networking site.

The finalists in the Best Brand Sponsored Patient Community (Communities created by a pharma or healthcare company for a brand or corporate effort) are:

• Accu-Check Diabetes Link (Roche)
• Children with Diabetes (J&J Lifescan)
• Crohn's and Me (UCB)
• Diabetes Handprint (J&J Lifescan)
• Voices of Diabetes (Novo Nordisk)

Wow! This list is completely dominated by diabetes sites! That's not surprising. People with diabetes have long engaged in online social networks.

Between 1996 and 2000 I was the owner of the DIAB-EHLB listserv, which was an email-based discussion group for people with diabetes, diabetes educators, caregivers, and endocrinologists. It was sponsored by Hoechst Marion Roussel, a pharma company that later merged with other companies that eventually formed Sanofi-Aventis. "EHLB" was short for "Electronic Highlights Bulletin," which was a source of highlights from medical conferences such as the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association. Highlights, which were produced live at the meeting, were pushed out to the list of subscribers (see here) during the conference. Subscribers could also post their own comments to the entire list and anyone in the list could respond to those comments (see this sample discussion thread about Hemoglobin A1c). It was a lively community.

Most of the "social network" Dosie finalists, with the exception of Children with Diabetes, are "Faux Social Media" sites that cannot hold a candle to even my primitive diabetes listerv in terms of real conversation! I am not trying to get praise for DIAB-EHLB. I am pointing out that these modern-day pharma-sponsored networks actually represent a step BACKWARD along the path toward true pharma-sponsored conversation with stakeholders.

Let me use  Novo Nordisk's Voices of Diabetes to illustrate my point.

I just registered with Voices of Diabetes, which publishes stories submitted by registered users. The registration form is nothing more than a market research ploy. No self-respecting, truly social network would require information that this site requires such as your name, physical address, age, when you were diagnosed with diabetes, and what drugs you are taking. You are also REQUIRED to agree to have information from Novo Nordisk sent to you (see registration confirmation screen below)!

I was not permitted to complete my registration unless I checked off one of the boxes to receive information from Novo Nordisk. If I were a real person with diabetes wishing to share my story on this site, this would stop me in my tracks! But, I am a sucker for punishment and opted to receive information in English.

I wanted to submit a comment about a story already published, so I clicked on "If you would like to comment on this story, click here to share your voice..." I expected to start a discussion about Catherine M's "Finding Motivation" story ("It has taken me years to come to grips with my diabetes. Talk about denial. Then I went on insulin and my sugars are coming down, which is motivating me. It definitely is a day-by-day adventure.").

But, instead of being able to post a comment like "Good luck with managing your diabetes, I hope my sister finds motivation to deal with her condition too.", I was only asked to Share Your Story and presented with these rules, aka "Guidelines":

Please use the following form to submit your story. You will first have to pick the "category" of your story. This may place your story in one of the many areas of this website.

Voices of Diabetes Story Guidelines:

1. Stories must be no less than 1 paragraph and no more than 8

2. Stories must not contain any drug or device names (neither Novo Nordisk nor any other company)

3. Stories must not contain information on any "reactions" or adverse events relating to the use of insulin or other types of therapy

Please note: The submission of your story does not guarantee its publication on the website.

Also, I had to agree to the following "Individual Release and Waiver of Rights":

I hereby irrevocably grant Novo Nordisk and those acting with its authority the following:


1. All rights to use my name (first name, last initial only), voice, likeness, age, city, state and/or image;
2. The unrestricted, absolute, perpetual, worldwide right (but not the obligation) to use, copy, modify, edit, create derivative works, display, transmit, perform, distribute, publish, exhibit and otherwise use the submitted materials ("the Materials") in any and all media or form of communication, whether now existing or hereafter developed, including on Novo Nordisk's Web sites or those Web sites owned by Novo Nordisk affiliates or anyone acting with Novo Nordisk's authority (the "Web Sites"), all for the purpose of publicizing Novo Nordisk's programs (the "Purpose").
I waive any right to royalties or other compensation arising from or related to the use of the Materials.
I acknowledge Novo Nordisk's right to crop, splice, treat and edit the Materials at its sole discretion. I waive my right to inspect or approve the finished product, now and in the future, whether that use is known or unknown to me.
Novo Nordisk reserves the right to discontinue the use of the Materials without notice to me.
I represent and warrant that I have full power and authority to execute this Individual Release and Waiver of Rights (the "Release"). I hereby waive all rights and release Novo Nordisk from any claim or cause of action, whether now known or unknown, for defamation, invasion of right to privacy, publicity or personality or any similar matter, or based upon or relating to the use and exploitation of the Materials as contemplated herein, including but not limited to any reuse, distortion, blurring, alteration, optical illusion, or use in composite form, either intentionally or otherwise, that may occur or be produced in production of the finished product.
*I have read this Release before checking this box, and I fully understand the contents, meaning, and impact of this Release. (Check box must be clicked for your story to be submitted.)

No wonder that the latest story was dated January 9, 2010! This site is dead to me and probably dead to every person with diabetes who would like to share his or her story. Which leads me to ask: Why is this site on the Dosie list of finalists? Sure, there are very few "Brand Sponsored Patient Communities" to choose from. But we need to have some MINIMUM requirements for sites to be classified as "communities." My opinion is that this minimum should be "real conversation."

So, that's why I don't like awards. Defenders of these awards will say that we must reward even the most elementary attempts that pharma is making to have online conversations despite all the regulatory obstacles that they face. Well, then maybe we should call these the "Close But No Cigar Awards!"