Pharma's fear of intimacy
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What Canavan did seems absurd to us today because we know what happens to corporations that try to live without the press.
Corporations that try to live without social media will seem even more anachronistic in 20 years' time. Just ask President
Obama. Obama's 2012 campaign has sunk a fortune into the real power of social media. Not the neolithic display advertising
that Big Pharma supports, and certainly not those actors reading bad scripts while pretending to be patients. How do you get
voters—many of them disillusioned and demoralized—to donate and vote and to persuade their friends to do the same? Hundreds
of young volunteers in the Chicago HQ are working on Operation Vote, a project that uses the intimacy of Facebook and Twitter
to relate to voters as individuals: its targets include the transgendered—even chefs in restaurant kitchens. If you are a
chef with a sexual identity crisis, you will be amazed at how well the President appears to understand the issues of cooking
while wearing size 14 heels. Marilyn Katz of the Obama campaign says, "You have millions of young voters who don't get their
news from TV but from social media and friends online. You have to penetrate each one of those venues. In the same way, older
voters may hear something on TV but are much more likely to vote depending on what their neighbors are doing. It's those intimate
type of conversations, among networks of friends, that get you out of your house and into the voting booth."
Robin Hood Tax
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If people can be persuaded to get excited about voting again for President Obama, can they be persuaded to care about how
healthcare dollars are divided up and whether there are incentives for innovation? Definitely. Unfortunately, however, it
tends to be the other side doing the persuading. If you can bring yourself to "like" Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) on Facebook,
you can join their 500,000 FB friends. You could also join the 1,500 people who like their YouTube video protesting the Novartis
stand on patents. Or you could sign just up for their Twitter hashtag, #stopnovartis. If you can't hit the button to friend
MSF, no problem: you can look at the 12,000 FB'ers who like Avaaz's campaign to "stop pharma killing thousands to make millions."
There are, of course, risks in this kind of relationship building: friends sometimes talk back. Amongst Merck's followers
on Facebook is an obsessive poster named Michelle Petersen (from Petersburg, IL) who puts up comments such as this: "Merck
can't wait to get a hold of those babies and force poison into them." Overall she ends up looking crazy while Merck sounds
pretty reasonable and trustworthy. It's a pity that only 3,000 Facebook fans get to see it—over 40,000 people still work for
Merck in the United States alone. Assume that only 50 percent of them are on Facebook; assume that each has below the Facebook
average, with about 100 friends who they don't know from work. That would amount to a network of 2.5 million people.
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Given that both hard-pressed industry employees and social media are growing in credibility, there is a clear opportunity
to bring the two together to create a vast new network of "employee ambassadors"—that is, people who talk about the company
online in a quasi-official capacity. The fall in CEO credibility makes it more important than ever to prepare employees to
advocate on the organization's behalf. A recent Edelman study shows CEO credibility sinking 12 percent in the past year, while
the same study shows the credibility of "regular employees" and "a person like yourself" increasing 16 percent and 22 percent
respectively. These numbers may reflect the growing trend of distrust for corporate messaging and slick PR.
Swabhimaan India
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Oddly, Pfizer, the current owner of the AHP inheritance, may be doing this better than others. The company has over 50,000
likes on Facebook, although only 600 people are talking about their online presence despite an admirably clear policy on the
posts they remove from their Facebook page and why. The number of followers is driven in part by Pfizer's innovative blog,
"Think Science Now," which gives its scientists and their guests a forum to pose big thoughts. As the company says, "we remain
the only large pharmaceutical company empowering our colleagues, those closest to the science, to use social media to talk
about the innovative work they are doing." Maybe it is also due to the frequent updates from the employees who volunteer for
short-term assignments with international development agencies. But you will search in vain for anything about the views of
the company or its people on differential pricing, the reliance of many US states on charity to treat sick people with HIV,
or on any other big policy issue.
Compare this with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), which has about 220,000 likes on Facebook and about
18,000 people talking about its policy agenda. These are serious discussions, such as "You've Earned a Say," a national conversation
to ensure that Americans have a voice in the future of Medicare and Social Security, led by the question, "If you had a moment
with the President or a member of Congress, what would you tell them about Medicare and Social Security?" But the conversation
is broad and attuned to life in the street, as evidenced by a recent stream around the fact bite that 760,000 Americans over
age 65 had undergone elective cosmetic surgery in 2011. It's that mix of gossip, news, and serious debate that gets the adrenalin
going around this 18,000-strong community. And wins the attention of the policy cosmetologists on Capitol Hill.
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