Big pharma companies are focussing more and more on digital media to reach their target groups.

In 2008, the pharmaceutical market clearly increased its Internet spendings and all signs point to a digital future for pharma. Mary Ann Belliveau, Google’s managing director of Health Vertical, who said she noticed an increase in the digital space in the second half of 2008, said: “Digital [marketing] seems to be becoming much more a central part of the overall strategy”.

Mobilization on Blogs, YouTube and Twitter

Johnson & Johnson maintains a popular blog and companies like Novartis and Boehringer Ingelheim are using Twitter to publish their news on the web. On YouTube, Sanofi-Aventis and AstraZeneca have launched branded YouTube channels to reach certain patient groups suffering from diabetes or asthma. On the AstraZeneca channel for example, asthma sufferers are invited to submit videos about their positive experiences with the asthma drug Symbicort and create their own advertising videos for the drug. The page views are maybe not as high as other popular YouTube clips, but it has to be considered that the target group is respectively smaller.

Microsites and communities for patients and their relatives

One of the agencies who are developing marketing strategies in digital media is Saatchi & Saatchi. For Sanofi-Aventis they created a very successful integrated TV and web campaign for an insomnia drug with 15-second TV teasers which promoted a microsite with games and social-media features. In another case, Saatchi created a user-generated community site for Acorda Therapeutics to establish a dialogue with multiple sclerosis sufferers. Acorda Therapeutics which is working on a drug that improves the walking mobility for patients with MS supports an event called “Walk MS” with the community site www.iwalkbecause.org .With community walks this event raises awareness and funds to treat multiple sclerosis and the website encourages the patients as well as their relatives to upload their photos, videos and to share their reasons for walking. Jim Joseph, managing director at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness said: “Rather than advertise to these people, we opted to join the community.”

PROS:

Addresses specific target groups

Can also involve patient’s families and friends who are also impacted by the patient’s disease

Offers different research possibilities

Creates a dialogue with the consumers

Can build trust in and goodwill for the brand

CONS:

Difficult to determine the return on investment