Hill+Knowlton Strategies

For a really interesting look at social media in the pharma industry this week, check out this post on the Eye For Pharma website.

The article looks at how the pharmaceutical industry responded to the growth of social media as a new comms channel and suggests that those companies that were willing to dip their toes in the water in the early years are now reaping the benefits of being at the forefront, “having learnt from their experimentation and having started the cultural change process that this ‘new’ channel requires”. The majority of companies, however, who were overly cautious at the emergence of social media, perhaps waiting for more regulatory clarity, are now struggling to play catch-up.

This is certainly a compelling argument. Genuine engagement with social media requires a considerable shift in company attitudes and behaviour, particularly within the traditionally conservative pharma industry, that can take years to implement. Companies willing to take risks early on will have had more time to adjust to the changing environment and to lay the foundations needed to utilise social media within their organisations.

Another good point the author makes is that companies that dabbled in social media a few years back did so in a far more forgiving environment, when it was still considered a new channel. Social media is no longer new. It is now the elephant in the room. It can’t be ignored no matter how hard companies might try, and those that have been slow to respond are at risk of falling further behind.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Many of the early frontrunners have become more cautious due to bad experiences, while others have lost momentum due to lack of tangible ROI and internal politics. Great opportunities exist for those now wanting to catch-up and use the experiences of others that have gone before them to inform their activities. The article goes on to give some great advice to those companies now looking to “jump on the social media bandwagon” and it really is a must-read for anyone involved in pharmaceutical comms.

Although not strictly a pharma company, GE Healthcare is one company that has pioneered the use of social media and digital and continues to lead the way. Their latest foray into the online world sees them teaming up with Spotify to launch the first in a series of health initiatives that will be powered by the online music streaming service.

The first of these, the “Give A Little Beat” jukebox, has been launched to raise awareness of breast cancer. Spotify users can share and listen to songs via the jukebox, which GE say “reflects the healing power and international reach of music”. As part of the campaign, the company has also produced a “Give A Little Beat” Facebook App. Having already made use of a number of social media and digital channels, including Pinterest, this is yet another example from GE Healthcare of the potential that exists.

I always enjoy participating in Social Media Week. Some big agencies may view it as ‘giving back to the community’ but I think we get more than we give. And in the world of digital marketing, there is a real connection among the group who share the job title of Community Manager. So it was a privilege to join four insightful women on stage and welcome more CMs among the standing room only crowd in the H+K bar.

I asked @ScottMonty, Head of Social Media at Ford, for his top tip for Community Managers. His sage advice — Be attentive, be available, be yourself — and the experiences of our panelists point to listening, empathy and common sense as the best practices of good community managers. Genuinely being a nice person might be the only real secret.

Our panel: Bethony Taylor of HSBC, Hannah Ryan of H+K London representing Tango, Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein of Dogs Trust, and Line Rochard of H+K Paris representing eBay. I purposely looked for a diverse range of brands and both in-house and agency side CMs. One of the interesting things to come out of the panel discussion, though, is how similar their views were at heart. Read the rest of this entry »

Alzheimer’s disease has always had trouble attracting as much attention in mainstream media as other medical conditions. It is a long-term, degenerative condition, which tends only to afflict people once they reach old age. The tangible effects of the condition are largely experienced in the home or nursing home, away from public view. However, it is one of the most common forms of dementia and the effects of can be utterly devastating for both patients and their families or carers.

Cases of dementia are set to rise massively over the coming years as the result of an ageing population. The latest figures show there are an estimated 35.6m worldwide with dementia and this figure is set to nearly double in the next two decades. This will place phenomenal pressures on both families of patients and health systems. Read the rest of this entry »

Pharma and healthcare has an image problem. Or at least, it has sometimes had a problem conveying itself in a compelling way through visual media. It’s curious then, that a number of prominent pharma companies in the US have set up corporate accounts on Pinterest, the latest much-hyped plaything of the social media world. Bayer US, Boehringer Ingelheim, Menarini Spain, GE and Novo Nordisk have all begun populating their boards with healthy-looking people and clinical researchers on a site more often associated with pictures of wedding dresses and cakes.

Let’s take a step back and explain Pinterest for those who may not yet have come across the site. Pinterest allows you to ‘organize and share things you love’ so your collection of paperclip sculptures can be ranked according to the number of prizes they have won and your photo albums of Iggy the pet stick insect can be shared with all of your friends. The medium is incessantly visual, as posts consist almost solely of either images or video, which can then be shared (‘repinned’), liked or commented upon by other users. While the site has grown at an exponential rate in the US, it remains to be seen whether it will have the same impact among the same groups of people in the UK and elsewhere when the site spends some of its recently-raised funds for international expansion. What does seem clear is that the site is growing fast and companies have begun to take note.

Now, back to that image problem. It may be exciting for pharma companies to have accounts across all the latest social media platforms, but it is important for companies to ask whether this will provide tangible benefits from a strategic communications perspective. Between them, Bayer, Boehringer, and Novo have a total of 355 followers. Meanwhile, the accounts don’t seem to have elicited much in the way ‘interaction’ or ‘engagement’ with these followers. 

 On the other hand, GE Healthcare has managed to capitalise on both the clout of its parent group and the innovative work done in other areas of the business to transform apparently visually unappealing engineering and energy operations into captivating images and video. By posting via the General Electric umbrella account, the healthcare arm already has an audience of over 9,562 followers, and the specialist healthcare Pinboards are original and well-populated. More importantly, they are also well planned with a clear remit and strategy.

 Of particular note are the Cancer Pintherapy and Pinspire boards, which manage to be both warm and engaging. The Pintherapy board features a collection of pictures alongside famous motivational quotes and experiences of ordinary people affected by cancer and particulalry breast cancer. Pinspire asks users to submit their own inspiring content on the subject of cancer experiences, one of which is then chosen to be featured each week. Just as with the GE Healthymagination Facebook page, the account is particularly good at interacting with users promptly and with a personal touch.

It remains to be seen whether pharma and healthcare companies can make Pinterest into a truly effective communication tool, or, for that matter, whether Pinterest itself will survive in an often faddy social media environment.

Welcome to this week’s An Apple a Day.

Firstly, I recommend checking out this post on the BMJ Web Development blog on the most impactful time to disseminate blog posts on different social networks to help them ‘go viral’. A really interesting piece and the sort of insight that might add real value when planning social media campaigns or blogger outreach for clients.

In other digital health news, a recent survey of around 4,000 nurses and nursing students in the US has found that around 71% use smartphones for work, with 66% of students using them at nursing school. It’d be interesting to see if the stats match up in Europe but these findings are a pretty compelling argument for the value of smartphone apps for this audience.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to ‘An Apple a Day’, our Healthcare team’s new blog!

This week, we heard a lot about the new Google ‘Knowledge Graph’ via the Healthcare Social Media Forum #hcsmeu. Google are enhancing their search service to augment search results with sets of associated facts, showing a greater understanding of search queries.  So for example, you type ‘Taj Mahal’ into Google, and along with the traditional results you also get a whole host of relevant answers down the right-hand side of the page (see below).

It’ll be interesting to see how this develops and it could potentially mean much less traffic for sites like Wikipedia. The implications for pharma and healthcare marketing could also be huge, as it could revolutionise the way both patients and doctors access health data online.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the seventh in our series of Demystifying Digital conferences. I’m really proud that D2 (as we affectionately call it) has grown from our London 2010 launch event into an ongoing platform to educate and inspire our clients. For 2012, we’ve added sector specific days, like D2: Healthcare and D2: Energy.

The concept for this conference grew out of the educational work the Interactive Lab does with brands. I talk with a lot of clients who just want straight talk on what the different platforms do and why their brand should care. The cult aspect of social as the solution to everything doesn’t help communications executives tasked with leading integrated strategies for multinational brands. So we launched the private Demystifying Digital conference as a fun event to showcase what we do with our bespoke workshops and hands-on training for clients and their staff. Understanding how the tools work functionally, overlapped with the knowledge of how real people are using these platforms as part of their lives, makes it much easer to cut through the hype and figure out just where our energy and resources need to focus. Resources, sadly, are always limited, but creativity, thankfully, is renewable.

Will be posting more of the content from today later on. Many thanks to our amazing speakers and all our energetic delegates. We ♥ you.

HSBC Expat Explorer has been nominated for the prestigious Webby award, and is in the running against CNN Money, mint, wikinvest and wonga for the People’s Voice award, in the financial services category.

The Webby awards is recognised as the most celebrated accolade for innovative and accomplished websites. Being a nominee alone means that HSBC is in the top 3% from over 10,000 entries worldwide.

H+K towers and the team, who have been working on Expat Explorer since its inception, are super excited about the news. From its humble beginnings as basic PDF reports, last year, the research results were taken to a new level and became a highly interactive online tool for the expat community. The work has already won a good deal of awards but this is the most high profile to date.

For those who wish to support Expat Explorer for the People’s Voice Award, it couldn’t be easier. Simply visit the website, register your vote using your email, Twitter or Facebook account – it only takes a minute. The closing date is this Thursday (26^th April) so get voting.

The awards will be presented at the end of May in New York. If you fancy getting in the spirit of the Webbys beforehand, you can check out a compilation of the ceremony’s best 5-word acceptance speeches here.

What sort of training do you think someone needs who is working in PR today?

It’s on my mind as we’re in the middle of developing new training modules for TheHub, our internal training programme. And I got to thinking about just how different the agency workplace is to when I started in the mid-1980s.

For those of you who remember those days we wrote press releases by hand for someone else to transcribe on a golf ball typewriter. (I wish I’d had shares in Tipp-Ex.) The fax was a dazzling new gadget to provide media with content ‘instantly’. And we were all just a little more carefree – and badly dressed.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of nostalgia in film and music; but not the workplace. Agency life today is so much more challenging than we could have imagined but its dynamism, variety and the continual expansion of our scope of work is a real rush.

From the days of being a ‘people person’ and a newshound we’ve rocketed into the cloud. And we’re still newshounds.

But we’re more business savvy, more expert. Our insights are deeper. We’ve become business experts not just communications experts – the division no longer exists (if we’re honest, never really did).

So what skills need to be acquired to operate in this brave new world? Digital expertise goes without saying. Client service ditto. But those are just for starters. We’d really like to hear your thoughts.

When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, it seemed pretty obvious he had put some thought into what would be the first words out of his mouth. I mean, it was the first time a human being had EVER touched the surface of the moon, definitely worthy of some thought. As a result, his words “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” have taken on an almost mythical status showing how far human exploration can actually go.

However, I’m not sure the same status can be saved for Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, when he tweeted the first ever tweet six years ago:

Doesn’t really have the same ring to it, does it?

Then again, maybe Jack’s simple and to-the-point declaration was almost recognition of what Twitter would one day become. Twitter describes itself as “a real-time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news about what you find interesting”. Twitter has allowed individuals around the globe to communicate more freely and become a platform where anyone can express whatever they want regardless if anyone is listening.

Celebrities and sportsmen often use their Twitter accounts to show the “real” them, while companies tweet to showcase the personality of the brand and connect with customers. Twitter timelines are even simply a pure news source for users, an instantaneous way to find out what’s happening around the globe. Simple and to-the-point.

What started off as Twttr.com in March 2006 (with 100 user accounts) was later branded to Twitter.com in October 2006. In December 2007, there were 500,000 tweets quarterly, which by December 2009 had jumped to two billion tweets per quarter.

Unlike ‘Draw Something’, which was downloaded by 35 million users in the first seven weeks, it took Twitter 18 months before it achieved 500,000 users. Today, there are an estimated 500 million users, proving that a phenomenon does not necessarily need to become phenomenal overnight.

Six years later is seems Jack put a little more thought into his tweet:

And rightfully so, as social media has become what outer space once was, the new medium of exploration.

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This post was written by Caroline who you can follow at: @HK_TechLabs