YouTube teaches pharma every day about the power of video.
The platform (both at YouTube and its dozens of competitors like Vimeo) allows people to easily host their near-professional and entirely-homespun videos … and they do hundreds of thousands of times a day. According to YouTube, 20 new hours of video are uploaded every minute. These video creators have uploaded so much desirable content that together they rate well over a billion views a day.
Although it was only started in late 2005, YouTube is more than just the most popular online video community, it’s a case study on how to grow using the social web. It doesn’t seek to control. It seeks to accelerate sharing, which is a lesson that pharma could learn faster.
Example? The Canadian Prime Minister is posting his speeches, interviews, etc., on YouTube but also allowing videos questions to be asked via the Canada channel. The channel takes e-mail questions, YouTube comments, and registers votes on topics … which makes it all the more interesting. Ultimately, the video itself is not that interesting (is any government video interesting?), but it shows the possibilities.
Pharma managers should ask themselves: can my brand do that?
If you go to the Channels at YouTube you’ll notice that there is one for Science and Technology, but do you know what there isn’t one for? Pharma. Or Healthcare. Or Medicine.
When we share social media case studies, we tend to start with the people. Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation is a story about two guys – Steve and Gary – and the server they hid under a desk. Sure, Dell revolutionized social media, but the story starts with quoting Jeff Jarvis quote chapter and verse – “No more.” Exxon leveraged a social platform to connect with problem solvers, but the story is about the half sheet of paper the unlikely hero sketched the big idea on – and, yes, we wish, often aloud, that it was a bar napkin because that would make the story better. MINI’s groundswell marketing success is thanks to a woman named Trudy swearing to her boss that their car wouldn’t become the next PT Cruiser (sorry, Cruiser owners).
When it comes to integrating social in an organization, it almost always comes down to one or two people who changed a company from the inside or out.
That’s why we’re excited about the latest undertaking by Charlene Li and her fellow travelers over at Groundswell. Their first book outlined how companies use social media. The new one is all about who made it happen. The empowered employees and customers who changed, opened and accelerated their businesses.
Watch for this new people-centered book coming soon. It’s called Groundswell Heros: Harnessing the Power Shift in your Workplace and Marketplace
Oh, and, we love the name of the first chapter: Empowered people and what to do about them. What indeed.
