Monthly Archive for May, 2010

Putting the digital divide to work

The social web has opened a big divide: it’s a behavior gap between digital natives (people who grew up with digital technology) and digital adopters (people who were well into school or career when internet access and use became ubiquitous).

The social web hasn’t just changed the way younger generations connects with their friends and consume entertainment, it’s changed the way they work. The way they find answers and connect with other professionals and use information. It’s a divide of fundamental values and expectations. Read Full Entry

squillin
Seth Quillin | May 18th, 2010 | 0 Comments

P&G’s social problem with Pampers

It’s a brand manager’s worst nightmare.
Complaints that a product with a new formula is causing side effects.
It’s a premium-priced brand and touted as the “biggest innovation in diapers” in 25 years.
But starting in January, Ad Age had a story about concerns from parents.

Every pharma brand manager knows the worries … would single complaints build a groundswell of controversy?  In the past, it would take a lot.  With social media, it can grow quickly.  After growing on Facebook, events moved quickly this month:

  • This story appeared in Buffalo, NY May 7.
  • This story appeared May 14 in Columbus, OH.
  • P&G addresses “concerns” as “rumors” in this statement.
  • And the Consumer Product Safety Commission launches a probe reporter by CBS News.

Why?

It might be the reported 227,000 Facebook users who have posted complaints on Facebook!

Can social media shut down a new super brand? Well, yes and no.  Facebook can’t.  It’s the community — the people — who will influence with their buying power.  But P&G is already saying its a “few” parents.

Is it a few parents using Facebook?

Or a groundswell of concerned parents?

Time will tell but how this story develops could be a case history on how to handle a community and how a social groundswell can influence a brand … from a Fortune 500 company like P&G.

Crisis Management 101 calls for positioning a few “isolated” incidents as outside the norm. And simply dazzling with numbers of millions sold vs. a few rashes. But Old School Crisis Management 101 hasn’t dealt with social much.  And if you read the posts, it is compelling.

Can your brand handle that kind of controversy delivered through social media?

mwallinger
Mark Wallinger | May 17th, 2010 | 0 Comments

Social retailing: Diesel reaches out

Pharma is a unique combination of science, medical and (recently) retail.

Going retail in the last decade has meant huge changes. The mindset of pharma brand managers is now more about the end user experience than ever.  And the lessons learned from retail are always intriguing, because retail has much faster, and much more competitive, interaction with the public than pharma.

Here is how one retailer is using modern technology to help customers use Facebook to ask the opinion of friends about … Think less about the ROI here … think more about the … possibilities.

mwallinger
Mark Wallinger | May 14th, 2010 | 0 Comments

America’s broadband divide: Are we ready for digital health records?

President George W. Bush set a bold goal for our medical system: create a digital medical record for every American by 2014. The Obama administration raised the stakes this year by pressing for billions of dollars in stimulus funding to jumpstart adoption. Under the plan, doctors will be able to apply for $44,000 in extra Medicare payments if they purchase digital systems and make “meaningful use” of them. Hospitals can receive millions of dollars from the same program.

This nationwide system of computerized medical records will cost nearly $100 billion, but there’s broad agreement on the value: if 90% of hospitals go digital, it will save $77 billion a year in healthcare costs as well as create new jobs and prevent deadly medical errors.

Sounds like an ideal system. The problem: Almost one third of Americans may not be able to access their own records.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Commerce released their latest benchmark data on internet use.

The internet may be important to American life, but its use is far from universal.

Over 30 percent of households do not use the Internet at home, and 30 percent of all persons (not households) don’t use the internet anywhere. The top two reasons? They can’t afford it and don’t care about it.

People who don’t use the internet are more likely to be low income, seniors, minorities, the less-educated, and rural Americans.

To prevent widening the gap in access to the best-quality healthcare, the first step may not be digital medical records, but universal internet access. More access means greater transparency in record keeping, more ability to add to our own medical files and an increased number of digital encounters (email, video chat, etc.) to supplement office visits.

A debate has recently started on just how we’ll get there.

squillin
Seth Quillin | May 13th, 2010 | 0 Comments

Google blocks Pharma paid search redirects (Updated)

Updated – Google has sent a correction that they would like us to post…

“Our policy has not changed: pharmaceutical manufacturers continue to have an exception to allow a URL redirect, which is not currently recognized by our automated system. All pharmaceutical manufacturers’ search ads campaigns continue to run, unchanged, today.”

——-

Since the FDA sent warning letters to 14 pharma companies for issues with their paid search advertisements, agencies and internal marketing teams have been more cautious with their search engine marketing.

There are two options they’ve typically considered when creating a paid search ad for a branded medication. I’ll use Viagra to illustrate each (although I’ve never worked on the brand).

  1. Branded ad copy that has no mention of the medication’s indication. For example, you can say Viagra but cannot mention erectile dysfunction. Using the branded URL (Viagra.com) is acceptable.
  2. An unbranded advertisement that has condition copy (like ED). In this case the ad would talk about an ED treatment but cannot mention the brand name Viagra. This is where you would need an unbranded URL, like EDtreatments.com, that would redirect (or link to) to the regular branded site.

Many pharma advertisers chose that second option because it helped them connect with searchers who were looking for information about how to treat a problem they could solve.

Here’s the new issue: That kind of redirect (using a “cover” URL like EDtreatments.com) is against Google’s (and other search engines) policies because they’ve deemed it misleading. Although that’s been a lasting policy, they had long made an exception for pharmaceutical advertisers. From John Mack’s Pharma Marketing Blog post from April of last year:

“We just heard back from Google this morning,” said Jeff Hill of MedThink Communications. “Their ‘policy board’ ruled that they will make an exception just for pharmaceutical companies and allow non-branded URLs in paid search ads to be redirected to branded websites.”

The use of redirects has been standard practice for at least the last couple of years in pharma. You will find hundreds if not thousands of unbranded text advertisements that continue to redirect to branded product sites.

As I was setting up a paid search campaign using the “accepted” rules, I was surprised to continually be blocked with the below message:

The Adwords help section says:

“Your display URL must accurately reflect the landing page URL of the website you’re advertising. It should match the domain of your landing page so that users will know which site they’ll be taken to when they click on your ad. Where you have keyword URLs, these are considered to be your destination URLs, and the display URL must accurately reflect them.”

This was nothing we didn’t already know. But I work in pharma, I have an exception to the rule. Right? Well, I reached out to Google to get an answer on why I am getting caught in this web. It’s unclear if what I’m facing is one lone reviewer taking a stand or Google truly removing the pharma exception. The below email was received from AdWords Support on Friday, May 7th, 2010 and is unedited other than removing a name,

“Thank you for your reply. I understand you want me to escalate this issue to a higher authority(supervisor or equivalent) to get more information on why our inaccurate display URL is being enforced now and why you see a lot of ads violating this policy currently.

[Omitted name], please be assured that you have reached the appropriate AdWords support team for your AdWords related concern and I’ll be unable to escalate your issue further. Below, I address your concerns.

CHANGES IN OUR DISPLAY URL POLICY

Thanks for asking about our policy changes. The Google advertising program is managed by a set of policies that we develop based on several factors, including business considerations and user and customer experiences. We review our policies regularly and make changes to keep them current and effective. Our goal is to have policies that are fair, consistent, and adaptable.

In response to advertiser and user feedback, and in an effort to provide relevant results and a high quality experience for our users, we have made the decision to no longer allow certain exceptions to our display URL policy. Please note that this amendment to our policy applies to all advertisers, regardless of previous exceptions for, or acceptance of, any campaigns. To provide a quality experience for our users and partners, the display URL policy will be strictly enforced.”

As stated by AdWords Support, they will no longer allow certain exceptions to the display URL policy.

I am not 100% convinced that this new policy is being thoroughly enforced and am looking for anyone else that has seen the same push back from Google.

The next step is how to overcome this new hurdle. We at GSW Digital and the iQ Lab have come up with several solutions and will be testing them shortly.

Tyler Ransburgh
Tyler Ransburgh | May 12th, 2010 | 0 Comments
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