OrganizedWisdom Health Blog

Web 2.0 and Pharma Marketing? Not as Strange as It May Sound

A few days ago the House killed a proposal that would have prevented pharmaceutical companies from marketing new drugs directly to the public for the first two years after they are approved. Drug makers breathed a sigh of relief at the news, but the larger message may still be the same, regardless of the outcome: Makers of drugs and medical devices will need to find creative ways to get their  message out to an increasingly distracted and suspicious public. (One industry professional who's carrying that particular banner is John Mack of the Pharma Marketing Blog -- read it, it's good.)

I admit it -- I flip past the pharmaceutical ads in magazines and tend to tune them out on TV. Yet even before I started working at OrganizedWisdom, I was passionately interested in new medical developments that affect specific conditions, not just for myself but for my friends and relatives.

At the same time, I know it's important not to take marketing information at face value. I remember when my father-in-law had lung cancer, and some family members wanted me to investigate really sketchy reports they'd seen on TV or on the Internet. Their motives were pure -- they wanted him to be well -- but in that frame of mind it was all too easy for them to be misled.

As a consumer, I want to receive complete and responsible health information, even from people who are trying to sell me something. I'm much more likely to give that information my full attention if I'm already perusing related material -- for instance, reading a health blog, whether it's by a physician advocate like Kevin, M.D. or a patient advocate like The Assertive Cancer Patient.

Is there a role for marketing in this kind of media consumption? Perhaps. As a blogger and patient, I want to be free to say what I think and talk publicly about my experiences with illness and treatment. Marketers, particularly in this realm, are used to having more control over the environments in which their messages appear, and are not used to dealing directly with customers' questions and concerns.

An honest, innovative, patient-focused marketer might well find a way to make this new Web world work. Here at OrganizedWisdom, we're starting out by bringing together information that makes patients' lives better. I can promise that that will always be my first priority.

Complete Transcripts from Don Kemper Podcast

We had the pleasure of interviewing Don Kemper, the CEO and founder of Healthwise the week before last.  You can click here to listen to the MP3 of the discussion which is about 40 minutes long or as promised here are the complete transcripts:

Steven Krein: Good afternoon. I want to welcome Don Kemper, who is the chairman and CEO of Healthwise, to a very unique conversation that we're going to have today. Unity Stoakes, the co-founder of OrganizedWisdom is here with me and we've got what a lot of people call the information therapy guru himself, Don Kemper on the call.

Don Kemper: Ohh!  That's nice Steven, to be here.

Steven: So anyway, we at OrganizedWisdom decided to integrate expert health content into our platform last year, and we went in search of what we consider to be the best health information online, both as a benchmark standard as well as the best tools for consumers to use. It was not even a question that Healthwise was the clear leader. So we actually decided to partner with Healthwise and include all of its content on OrganizedWisdom as a foundation of expert content to really supplement the really user generated content that we have available to consumers.

So Don, I want to welcome you, and perhaps you can give a little bit of an overview, you have been doing this a long long time, and most of the innovation in the health information space has really come from you and your team, but I'd love to hear in your own words a little bit about your background and how Healthwise came to be.

Social Media Grows More Useful for Marketers, Users

Social media tools such as RSS, blogs and podcasts are becoming more popular than ever with users - and marketers - according to new research from Bluestreak.

The study is titled "Emerging Digital Channels: Consumer Adoption, Attitudes & Behavior" and surveyed consumer behavior and attitudes toward emerging technologies, eMarketer reports.

All respondents to the Bluestreak study said they use email, and 88 percent use text messaging; other forms of online communication were also popular. Some 71 percent of respondents said they use message boards, 63 percent read blogs, 38 percent listen to podcasts and 28 percent use RSS.

"Emerging technologies are offering marketers and consumers an increasing number of channels through which to communicate, although marketers are allocating budgets for multi-channel communication without a clear understanding of the effectiveness and desirability of each channel," Doug Anderson, president of Bluestreak, is quoted as saying.

Other highlights:

Text messaging was the only form of communication that most users did not want to see sponsored advertising on: 88 percent of respondents had a negative opinion of companies that sponsored advertising on text messages. Next were RSS feeds at 21 percent, message boards at 16 percent, podcasts at 14 percent and blogs at 12 percent.

One in 20 Web Visits Go to Social-Networking Sites

Online competitive intelligence service Hitwise on Wednesday announced that in September one in 20 U.S. Internet visits went to one of the top 20 social-networking websites - nearly double the share of visits compared with a year ago.

As you might expect, MySpace lead the pack. In September, MySpace drew 82% of visits among the top 20 social networking sites, increasing its dominance of the Web's fastest-growing category. Overall, traffic to social networking sites during the month is nearly double the proportion of traffic a year ago.

Other social networking sites with above-average growth in market share of visits were Bolt (www.bolt.com), up 271 percent; Bebo (www.bebo.com), up 95 percent; Orkut (www.orkut.com), up 63 percent; and Gaia Online (www.gaia.com), up 41 percent.

The trend we expect to really take off in the coming few years is the rise of vertical social networks.  As communities mature, many are demanding more relevant communities and focused platforms.