I’m at a conference on Physician Relationship Management (MDRx). As usual, we’re talking e-marketing, social media, and fear. If you know pharma, you know that anything new is embraced with enthusiastic expressions of…terror.
Often, the starting points for these discussions are the following:
- 1. How are we going to do this and keep clean on the regulatory front?
- 2. What’s the quickly-demonstrable ROI?
- 3. Risk. Risk. Risk.
- 4. Who else is doing it?
So, of course, these starting points doom the participants – who often are in short-term marketing rotations – to think about “safety in tactics,” rather than strategic opportunities.
Careful – you might shoot your eye out.
There are structural reasons in this industry for this mentality. However, if we’re going to make any progress, I’d like to suggest that anyone thinking about Networked Communications strategies in pharma START with only two perspectives:
- 1. What are the needs of our audience(s)?
- 2. How can we add value?
That’s it. Begin the initial discussions there and leave all the other stuff for the last 5 minutes, or you’ll never approach it with an opportunity mindset. Now I know that all these other concerns have to be addressed, but that’s like choosing your outfit only after putting on handcuffs and chains.
That’s my e-Vent at this event. Your thoughts?
———-
Subscribe to the Impactiviti blog via e-mail
Subscribe to the Impactiviti blog via RSS
Connect with Steve Woodruff
Steve,
Well that weird, because I had a similar experience yesterday but with a client rather than at a conference. You could have been summarising my conversations with those 4 questions!
It’s more like a death spiral sometimes, as Seth Godin alluded to and that’s what caught my eye this morning:
http://www.pharmastrategyblog.com/2009/07/death-spiral-in-pharma.html
The two questions you raise are exactly how I have been trying to get them to focus, but the climate of fear is pretty overwhelming in many places right now and they are scared of making mistakes. Sad really.