If you haven’t heard yet, Astra Zeneca US launched a new corporate blog last week, called “AZ Health Connections“; thus being the third (active) corporate pharma blog online that I know of… JNJBTW.com and GSK’s More Than Medicine, being the other two.

There’s been a number of blog “reviews” and comments about the launch of this new AZ blog and, while you would have expected lots of congratulatory remarks towards taking another step in the world of social media (they also have a Twitter feed: AstraZenecaUS), it turns out that some comments are not exactly positive so far. You can read a summary of some early commentary in Jim Edwards’ BNET article and here are some additional quotes from various sources:

BNET: AstraZeneca’s New Blog Is Slammed by Critics
The criticisms are harsh given that AZ blog editor Earl Whipple has still got his training wheels on… However, the haters do have a point when it comes to pharma company blogs generally: Firms shy away from controversy but controversy is the blogosphere’s raison d’être. unable to overcome that central contradiction, pharma blogs are often pallid affairs.

PharmExec.com:AZ’s First Corporate Blog Falls Flat
So far there have been no comments on the AZ blog. Besides the introductory post, the blog offers only company-line stances on FDA social media regulation and healthcare reform. If content can’t generate the type of product discourse pharma companies are looking for, perhaps a new approach to social media is needed to educate customers in an ethical and productive way.

EyeOnFDA: AstraZeneca Joins List of Corporate Bloggers
AZ indicates it is their desire to engage with the blog, but the early postings leave little upon which to engage.  For example, their posting on the Part 15 Social Media Meeting is purely informational about the meeting, but doesn’t provide a point of view of what AstraZeneca would say to FDA, either at the meeting or in comments posted to the docket.  Without that kind of substance, it is hard to engage.

So, as you can see, there are some doubts as to the “authentic” nature of the AZ blog, but I really like what Mark Senak (EyeOnFDA blog) wrote overall, as it’s more constructive than critical. In particular, I like what was written in the last sentence of his blog post: “But it is early yet, and this blog, like all blogs, needs time to find a voice and identify its parameters“.

IMHO, I think we are often too quick to judge and point out the negatives, usually to the detriment of any organization that is at least trying to take a step forward in this space. Many “experts” and opinionated individuals  often berate the pharma industry for not jumping-in and engaging in social media; yet when they try, they are often criticized for only taking baby steps and not doing the cannon ball straight into the deep end.

Personally, I think AZ’s blog is a great start. In fact, ANY start is a great start. I believe that with every initiative, there is an opportunity to learn, adapt, and evolve. Particularly with this industry, I’ve always said that it’s better to have dipped a toe and tested the waters, than jump right in and get shocked. From what I’ve seen in the past (especially on Twitter), many companies are only able to start out within a comfort-zone, but then over time, they slowly adapt and evolve as they (and their legal, regulatory, etc. colleagues) get more comfortable and more experience. Yes, it’s a bit of a “tortoise approach”, but remember — the tortoise wins the race !

What really bothers me, is when “purists” and “antagonists” start criticizing new efforts for playing it safe (e.g. turning off comments for YouTube videos or reviewing blog comments before posting)…  As it is, an initiative like a corporate blog takes a lot of time, effort, planning, and approval before it can launch, never mind the need to justify it’s existence and purpose (“what’s the ROI for that???“). To then have a slew of negative comments/publicity hit you at your very first step, can only hinder progress or even scare some into shutting down altogether, thereby taking steps backward (the once-bitten feeling).

Instead, it would be helpful to have constructive advice like those that Mark provided in his blog — he blogs about what they did right:

In setting up their blog, AZ has done a few smart things.  They have a very detailed comments policy that was obviously put together by a fleet of lawyers.  They state that they reserve the right to edit or not publish some comments.  They also state that this blog is not the place for discussion of specific product issues.  But the smartest thing they did in my mind is to provide referrals for people if they do want to report a problem with a prescription product.  That is smart because at some point in the future, companies are going to be compelled to be more aggressive and proactive in adverse event reporting – so why not start now?  It is also smart because it reinforces the message that the blog is a platform for other discussion.  There is also an elaborate “Legal” tab.

And he also blogs about areas to improve upon (which may not be obvious to the authors):

A visible indication of possible multiple authors is the fact that the postings each have different fonts and spacing, indicating that they were drafted in Word somewhere and cut and pasted into the blog without stylizing consistently first.

Whatever the case, I hope that AZ (and any other current or future corporate blogs) will learn, adapt, and evolve through the feedback they receive and not shy away — the journey of a thousand miles (with plenty of hurdles along the way) .

I like that AZ has already responded to some of this negativity with a statement on their blog, showing that they are — at least — listening and responding:

AZ Health Connections: Pharma Blogs Face Unique Challenges
We are presented with some unique challenges  when it comes to mentioning specific products or disease states on our blog, but despite the critical headline, it’s also wrong for anyone to assume that this is how we want things to be… Can more be done to help provide accurate, balanced and timely information about our products, especially through social media channels? Yes, of course. But what the PharmaExec blog post labels as “close corporate scrutiny,” I see as responsibility.  While adding any extra level of “scrutiny” to the comments we receive may mean it will take longer for us to respond to a comment, this is how we will operate for now.

In the end, I leave you with a quote from my friend, Marc Monseau — the well respected editor of JNJBTW.com, which is probably the longest running and probably the most admired industry blog —  which I believe aptly sums up my thoughts on how this industry can move forward with social media… one step at a time:

JNJBTW: Healthcare Comapnies and theSocial Web (October, 2009)
And so what we have ended up doing in many cases is take some small steps to get more comfortable with getting involved. We are also making sure we have processes in place to handle adverse event reports and that we have responsible people involved who can respond quickly to questions… At the same time, projects like JNJBTW and the Johnson & Johnson health channel on YouTube are giving us some great experience.

OK, not sure what’s going on with my blogging lately, but I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last blog post. Arrgghh… I think I’m suffering from “Bloggers Block“. Not that I don’t have anything to blog about; in fact, quite the opposite — I’ve have tons of things that I want to blog about — but somehow, I’m just not finding the time and concentration needed to really craft a proper blog post lately, so please forgive the slow down and delayed updates. Sorry !

Having said that, however, if you are following me on Twitter, then you’ll know that I continue to update my Twitter posts pretty regularly. There’s definitely something to be said for 140 character posts that makes (micro) blogging a whole lot easier.

So, in case you haven’t already heard, a couple of interesting developments happened in the Social Pharmer world while I was away  at the BIO International Conference last month…

GSK Launched “More Than Medicine” (Corporate Blog)

Firstly, GSK launched a corporate blog called “American Health: More Than Medicine“. Below the main header, a small tagline (in small print) reads “This is an official GSK blog and is intended for US residents only” — I bet someone in legal made them add that sub-text to the banner

While I think it’s really cool that they’ve chosen an interesting and catchy name for the blog, I do think they could have done a much better job with the domain name, which is currently: http://www.morethanmedicine.us.gsk.com/blog. Doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue nor is it easy to remember! But hey, at least they’ve got an active blog!

To my knowledge, this is only the third corporate pharma blog online; the other two being JNJBTW and CNTO411, with the latter being defunct since Octoer 2008. Despite this achievement, there has been some push back because the authors of the blog have not been “fully transparent”, as they have only identified themselves as Michael F. and Michael M. from “GSK Communications” — read the comments on this by Mike Huckman and Ed Silverman (both great guys, btw) and then read GSK’s very valid response “Content is King Here, Not the One Who Posts It“.

Personally, I think the fact that they actually have a blog is a big achievement and the authors not revealing their full identities (at least not yet) should not cloud the fact that they are blogging regularly, with lots of good content. Furthermore, their response to these comments, shows that they are not just “preaching”, but also listening to feedback and responding as necessary.

Overall, I really liked their first public blog post (the blog had been running internally for a while before going “live” to the public), which really puts into perspective why they are blogging and what their intentions are for the blog. To me, it also showed that they really “get” the nature of social media and have adopted the right attitude towards it. I’ll leave you with a quote from the blog:

But More Than Medicine is expressly uninterested in promoting GSK brands.  As stated in our credo, our intent is to express a point of view and create a dialogue on health and healthcare issues you can’t find anywhere else–not to serve as another product marketing vehicle.

Still, there will be times when you might expect us to address product-related issues or news that clearly relates to the purpose of this blog and, by extension, our company’s reputation.  We will endeavor to do so responsibly and ethically, and within the existing legal and regulatory boundaries.

Sanofi-Aventis Launched “Sanofi-Aventis TV” (Corporate Video Channel)

During the same week as the GSK blog launch, Sanofi-Aventis also launched Sanofi-Aventis.TV — an online video repository for publishing a variety of Sanofi-Aventis produced videos. The video channels include: Our Expertise, Around the World, Your Health, Solidarity, and Working for People. I find this approach very interesting, as they haven’t just focused on a single topic, such as patient testimonials, brand promotion, corporate announcements/interviews, recruiting videos, etc. But instead, they chose to associate their overall corporate brand with all of these types of information.

Although the selection of videos per channel is somewhat meager at the moment, at least they have a platform up and running for any future videos that they published. Many of their videos have a very professional/corporate feel to them, but perhaps some or most have been repurposed from previous initiatives, which makes a whole lot of sense. It will be interesting to see how often they will update the site with new videos and how the content will grow.

Having heard the Sanofi-Aventis regulatory folks and their US-CEO speak at conferences recently, I would expect more and more social media intiatives to come forth from them. I think SA.TV is a way for the public to get a better understanding of what Sanofi-Aventis is all about and the wide array of activities that drug companies — like Sanofi — are involved with. It’s like a “behind the scenes” documentary that provides a different perspective to what is being portrayed and perceived publicly. I look forward to seeing what else is in store.

Let’s face it – at this stage, many of these corporate efforts – particularly in the healthcare field — don’t quite match what you or I do when we use Facebook or Twitter or engage with others online… While I would argue that what is being done is a good start, it nonetheless begs the question – why not more?

Take the case of what we had to think through as we developed THIS little ‘ole blog.

In addition to our well-known consumer products, Johnson & Johnson also sells prescription medicines and medical devices — which are highly regulated products. That’s where things become complex. Among the many considerations we had to take into account as we tried to move from simply broadcasting messages to engaging in conversations, we had to sort out how we would handle comments that could include reports of adverse events (which legally must be reported to the FDA — something we routinely do) – and could include a discussion of so-called “off-label” or unapproved uses of our products, which we do not support or encourage.

Ultimately, the decision was reached, right or wrong, to create a comments policy that would encourage comments that would be “on topic” – as well as to not allow comments that could get us into legal or regulatory trouble…

Clearly there need to be some measures put into place to mitigate the risk of legal or regulatory liability. However, the more hurdles that are put into place, the less credible, useful or open those online efforts become, and in the end you may be left with something that could be criticized as being more akin to a traditional, one-way communications effort.

And so what we have ended up doing in many cases is take some small steps to get more comfortable with getting involved. We are also making sure we have processes in place to handle adverse event reports and that we have responsible people involved who can respond quickly to questions.

At the same time, projects like JNJBTW and the Johnson & Johnson health channel on YouTube are giving us some great experience.

I think Marc has really said it perfectly, in terms of where we are today with the adoption of social media in the healthcare industry (you can read my response to Marc at the bottom of the post here).

It’s a real conflict of interest, as this industry tries to engage in a conversation with it’s customers — both consumer and professional — without overstepping the gray boundaries that it is regulated by. But as more and more companies in the industry start to push forward with new social media initiatives (such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter), the momentum will build, we’ll get more, and ultimately establish better boundaries and processes for operating in this space.

As for right now, like Marc says, we’ll take small steps and get great experience — the most important thing, is that we need to at least try!