The Social US Army

The US Army. An organization of 4.5 million professionals that safeguards the national and international territories. In this blogpost I certainly do not want to make any judgement about the intentions of the US Army when executing their duty, and whether it’s good or bad to show so much power in some areas of the wold. That is something everybody should make up their own opinion. No, what I do want to talk about is the way the US Army has embraced Social Media and provides soldiers to blog from their location abroad. Whether that’s a warzone or not. During Blogworld 2009 we had a short interview with a spokesman and -woman.

Rifle or keyboard
For the first time the US Army had a booth at the commercial exhibition place and looking at the sheer number of people visiting the stand it certainly was popular to talk to soldiers that so now and then replace their rifle with a keyboard. Totally against expectations the US Army has opened up blogging for a large number of US Army personnel, who can share their experiences with the rest of the world. According to their own words no filtering takes place. They even have established a new division for this: ‘the Online & Social Media Division’. “We recognize the informative power of Social Media to reach our target audience, and we are here at Blogworld to see how we can improve”, says Major Arata during our interview.

“We have a blog, Armystrongstories.com, where everybody who is interested in finding out the lives of real soldiers can come. Currently we have 56 real soldiers blogging about their lives, unfiltered”, says a passionate Major Constantino (who, by the way, kept a very close eye on the PR lady rushed to us when we were conducting the interview…). Constantino: “We make the army more human. We are not some sort of digitized machine but we are real people”.

Army gimmicks
Main question of course is how they do it, unfiltered blogging. Whereas many organization don’t want to burn even their little toe, the US Army is providing full insight. Or so they say. Honestly, I can hardy believe that a platoon somewhere deep down in Afghanistan -accidentally- throws some confidential information on the net. But apparently they don’t bother too much. Arata: “We always say: we should educate and not regulate. That means that we should provide clear guidelines en trust our people.

The biggest goal of this initiative is informing the general public about the activities of the US Army and thus increasing the ‘goodwill’. According to both spokesmen they have succeeded in that, though a lot of work still needs to be done. That -coincidentally- a new person joins the army because of the social media activities, that’s good but not the main cause. And yet, looking at their booth with all the US Army gimmicks and give-aways it did look a bit like they were attempting to bring people in. Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely convinced that the spokesman and -woman truly believe in the power of blogging (though Major Constantino has to start herself blogging) and I think it’s wonderful that Social Media especially here found its place.

Now, if the US Army kan blog unfiltered, what can your company do?

Blogworld 2009: Human Business and a Guinness World Record

Social Media has definitely grown out of its infancy. Although, according to all the geeks that attended the first integrated edition of Blogworld and New Media Expo in Las Vegas. More than 2500 bloggers, podcasters, consultants and other new media mavericks visited Sin City for 3 days to talk about and share experiences on Social Media. Close to 300 speakers gave dozens presentations and panel discussions on a large variety of subjects. Without going into detail of all of them, I will give you the highlights of the conference.

Twitter rawks

If there was one subject that was mentioned in almost every discussion then it was Twitter. With great passion Twitt-lebrities like Laura Fitton (@Pistachio), Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) and Aaron Strout (@aaronstrout) shared the power of Twitter. “The power of unisolating people”, according to Laura. “And it’s not about the writer, it’s not about the number of followers you have but it is about the message you share. People are made to socialize, also in business. For that it is important to surround yourself with inspiring people. Twitter is a great tool for that.”

Guiness World Record

Thanks to Twitter a Guinness World Record was set during Blogworld. The highest number of social network mentions within 24 hours. And last Monday the record was confirmed by Guinness World Record: a total of 209,771 social network mentions of #beatcancer in one day via Twitter, Facebook and blog posts. As a result eBay/Paypal and MillerCoors offered a donation of $70.000 to four non-profit cancer organizations (Spirit Jump, Bright Pink, Alex’s Lemonade, and Stand UP to Cancer). As the campaign continues, you can still donate and help promote this initiative via Beatcancereverywhere.com.

Shoe4Africa
More good causes-support from eBay/Paypal. Their booth was completely dedicated to this theme. One of the good causes was Shoe4Africa, a non-profit organization aiming at ‘empowerment through sports and education, creating unique health initiatives, and promoting AIDS awareness.’ Cornerstone project is the development of a children’s hospital in Kenya, which will be the first public hospital in Kenya and the largest children’s hospital in Africa. The project is supported by Anthony Edwards, who sat in the keynote Celebrity panel. Although not yet very active in Social Media, Edwards understands the difference he can make as a celebrity using Social Media to spread the word around this project. So at Blogworld, he lost his Twitterginity and made his first tweet. Follow him on @anthonyedwards4. We also had a short interview with him which will be published shortly.

Dutch presence
And of course we ran into Vincent Everts, a webexpert and trend-watcher. Vincent presence at Blogworld was to promote yubby.com, a video aggregator the collect videos from over 30 popular video sources. Previously known as Dik.nl, but you can imagine, not a name that would work well in the US (although, flickr didn’t change its name for Holland…) And of course, Vincent not only did his upmost for yubby, he also worked on his own brand. Being very present at various sessions and as member in one of the panels, the success of his quest was confirmed to be successful during the closing keynote. When one-time talk-show host Guy Kawasaki asked the audience who has not heard of Jenny the Blogess, Vincent raised his hand as one of the few. Guy looked at him and said ‘oh, that’s that guy in the white suit’. An interview with Vincent will be launched shortly.

Chris Brogan

If there is one Social Media guru that is reaching superstar status without losing it, it’s Chris Brogan. I think he is the most mentioned, quoted, RTweeted and appreciated speaker of Blogworld 2009. And true, Chris is a very sympathetic and respectable person, but moreover, he is a visionary and true knowledge expert in the field. His keynote on day one was for me the most inspiring of all sessions. ‘Stop tapping each other on the back, but get out there and start working. There is so much to do out there’. And he is right. Social Media has grown out of its infancy. As much as we liked the pioneering atmosphere at New media Expo 2007, those days seem to be over. Social Media is becoming true business. Moreover, we shouldn’t call it Social Media anymore. It’s Human Business.

For more details go to Chris’ blogpost on his keynote. Here you can find the entire keynote (and all other keynotes).

Trend for 2010
On the exhibition floor, there were several companies that demonstrated applications based on aggregation of content. We already mentioned yubby.com as a video aggregation site, but aggregation goes beyond video. Zemanta is an application that helps you look for content related to the blogpost you are writing. While you’re writing, it ‘looks over your shoulder [..] and gives you tips and advice’. It analyzes your content, suggests keywords and related articles. With Zemanta, your blog becomes more visible and generates more traffic.
Regator goes even further in aggregation. There is an enormous amount of content available within the blogosphere. Regator ‘gathers the world’s best blog posts and organizes them in a way that’ makes it easy to find the things you need’. This selection is not purely done through some fancy algorithm, but through a team of editors. Yes, real people that search the web for valuable content. In fact, they decide for you what’s valuable or not. Regator uses criteria like regular updates, topical, well written, originality and whether or not your blog is ‘awesome’ based on which you can be added to the selection. The last criterium is rather vague and subjective, but that’s admitted by Regator.

Content is still king in new media. But finding the right content becomes like a monk’s job. For that we need aggregation, and we predict aggregation becomes the trend for 2010.

Audio Bummer
Was it all highs in Vegas? No, there was definitely a bummer. As there were more than 5-6 simultaneous tracks, you had to make up your mind what session to attend. Obviously, that was challenging as interesting presentations were scheduled at the same time. At New Media Expo in the past all participants were given the opportunity to download the audiotracks of all presentations. For free (or better, at no additional fee). Blogworld changed that policy: audiotracks are now available for $15 per session. Not funny. I can’t split myself up in 6, but feel that I have paid close to 1200 bucks to make all these sessions possible. Therefore I plead that all participants should have access to all recorded sessions (at least audio). And I was not the only one complaining about that. Organizer Rick Calvert should make up his mind or consult Tim and Emile Bourquin, former organizers of New Media Expo.

Another disappointment was that there was not much on the use of New Media for internal communication, in our view the way to learn what New Media is, to gain experience and in addition, to improve your internal communication, which in many organizations is underdeveloped. Truly win-win. A separate track should have been developed for this topic. Hopefully the organization considers this for the next edition.
Further, there was a strong focus on blogging, too strong to my liking. New Media is more than just blogging and Twitter. The focus overall was too much on the technology. There was hardly any attention for the development of a New and Social Media strategy. If we really want to go out there and help companies adapt New and Social Media, we need to understand that this is key to success. From that perspective I didn’t really hear anything new in these three days.

Conclusion
Conclusion for Blogworld and New Media Expo 2009: a lot on technology (and then mostly blogging) and too little on strategy. A lot of panels, some good and some which had a tendency towards too much ‘incrowd’. Some very inspiring speakers, a good atmosphere and at night awesome parties. Overall, a more than average event. Rick Calvert only has to solve this audio issue and I will certainly consider attending Blogworld and New Media Expo 2010.

Mixed feelings about Blogworld’s first conference day

Today the Blogworld and New Media Expo 2009 took off in Las Vegas. Our first time at Blogworld but our third time at the New Media Expo and first for all of us at the combination of the two. What striked me immediately after entering the event is the size of it. More participants, more speakers, more tracks and more lectures than ever. And some very interesting and promising keynote speakers, such as Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki and Anthony Edwards (you know, Goose from Top Gun)

The opening keynote came from Laura Fitton (@Pistachio). Laura shared with us how she came completely hooked on Twitter and how it can change people’s lives. Absolutely convinced by its power she recently started her own consultancy on Twitter for Business, PistacioConsulting.com. In addition she wrote Twitter for Dummies. After her energetic talk I don’t think that anyone disagrees with her when it comes to the unique value of Twitter. That said, she spoke to the already converted.

It was packed, people were sitting on the floor as there were not enough chairs available. After the keynote the audience spread out to the several parallel track sessions only to come back together to the next keynote half way the morning and during the lunch break. The latter was maybe not the best chosen way of offering a keynote. When having lunch, I prefer to network and meet people, share ideas and experiences. But no, we had to silently consume our lunch, while listening to a discussion on stage which was hard to follow due to bad quality sound. Not surprizing people started chatting again.

Overall, the track sessions were disappointing. That is the sessions I attended. I had great expectations of the Medblogging track. But I did not really get any new information. Yes, individual bloggers like doctors, patients and nurses can generate their own community and yes some of these communities (especially of patients) can be of great help to the individual patient in managing his/her disease. But what’s new? Interesting question to me is: how can we truly make a difference in healthcare with Social Media? How do we get all stakeholders involved? Where is Big Pharma? Insurance companies? Governmental institutions? Hospitals? Do they blog? Or any other kind of Social Media activity? Do they care? Those parties need to get involved or at least approached and brought into the discussion in order to get a true sense of the impact of Social Media in Healthcare.

We still write. We still make notes. Electronically that is. Most participants carry their laptop around. Either to make their private notes, summarize what’s being said in their blog or share the quotes of the day through tweets. But not later than after lunch. Because all batteries ran out. And there were hardly any power plugs. How can you organize a conference for Bloggers and Social Media geeks without providing the life essence of their existence: electricity! Please give us more power tomorrow….

Was it all misery? No, I’ve titled this post ‘Mixed feelings…’. Cause the best thing of the day still had to come. Or two things to be exact (three that is…we had a great dinner with friends we met at previous editions of the New Media Expo). The last track session I attended was a panel about Social Media and crisis management. With Dallas Lawrence (Levick Strategic Communications), Maggie Fox (Social Media Group) and Shel Holtz (Holtz Communication + Technology). With the latter we had an interview last year. Social Media can truly help organizations to manage a crisis situation. transparency and authenticity are keywords here. And be prepared because a crisis always knocks on your door unannounced. Prepared meaning: have a strategy ready how to deal with a crisis and be present in the online space (and that does not mean only with a website!). Shel referred to the damage done to United Airlines by an erroneaous publication by Bloomberg that UA was close to bankrupcy. By the time UA had corrected this error, it had lost 70% of its stock value. Their response was through the traditional media channels. Had they had a blog, their response would have been much faster and less damage would have been done on UA.

Chris Brogan closed the day with a remarkable keynote. Why we are in Social Media, what do we want with it and where do we go from here. It’s nice, being at a conference like this, with all like minded friends. While we should get out there and convince others. And all this in sentences of not more than 140 characters. The tweet fountain in the back could not keep up with all the tweets that were produced. A few of his oneliners (of less than 140 characters):

- If you’re a bad person, get good or get offline – quickly

- Your community will fall on a sword for you, your audience will watch you fall on it.

- Listen to Master Yoda: do or do not, there is no try

- Social Media is the new nervous system of your organization.

And that closed the day. With inspiration. Now I’m curious what tomorrow will bring. Because overall it has to do better than today. Otherwise Blogworld and New Media Expo 2010 has to do without me.

Pharma on the Move – DigiPharm 2009

Rules, Compliance, Regulatory Affairs… There are many reasons why Big Pharma should not engage in Social Media. But apparently the Web 2.0 fever has hit hard in Pharma Marketing as well, since most, if not all congresses deal with this subject. And rightly so, since the change in behavioral patterns of patients and Health Care Professionals (HCP) are profound and can not be neglected anymore.

DigiPharm 2009 was such a congress, organized by Health Network Communications in London, from September 22 till 25. We were invited to present as well, so off we went to the capital of Great Britain. The event started on Tuesday with an interactive preconference workshop (“European Regulatory Strategies for Digital Marketing”), followed by the two day congress and finished off with a postconference workshop (“Strategies for Successful Marketing to the Digital Healthcare Community”). The workshops were attended by about 20 people, the conference approx. 85 people (excluding 15 speakers). A pretty high number I must say, given the time we’re in now (and also related to the various -rather aggressive- phone calls I got to participate in congresses). In this blogpost I will focus on the conference itself.

Digital Media, Social Media and Regulations
With more than 20 sessions it was a full program. It’s important thought to realize that one should make a clear distinction between Digital Media Marketing and Social Media Marketing. The latter, in our view, is about a dialogue, being transparent and authentic, and let the customer (be it a patient or HCP) in the driver’s seat. Digital Media could be an eDetailing without any ’social stuff’ around it. It’s more a one way communication, rather than a dialogue. Although the importance of Social Media is now fully recognized, still Digital Media plays an important role in the communication strategy of many companies. Four years ago on a similar congress we concluded that Pharma is by far not ready yet because all presentations were about Digital Media (eDetailing, nice Flash sites). This time, at least half of the presentations were dealing with Social Media aspects within the communication mix.

The congress kicked-off by a presentation of Isabel Silva, Director Global eMarketing from Merck, who took us through the landscape of digital media and the new reality pharma is facing. She was focussing on the opportunities rather than the threats and stated that a “Digital environment could be the way that Pharma business can reinvent itself….to create an open dialogue with customers”. Easier said than done, was the common denominator in the audience. And what about regulations? Don’t they stop us at every digital initiative we deploy? “Not true”, said Heather Simmonds, Director of the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA, making ‘the Code’). “Of course there are rules to follow, like there have always been, and will be. But within those rules there is a lot possible. Clause 24 deals with the internet and in our Code of Practice Review Number 53 we even have an article about blogging for example”. “Let us know what you want and we’ll come back with a position”, she advised the audience. She went through a whole list of social/new/digital media tools and elaborated on the fly. She even discussed Wikipedia, which she had personally visited only once….

Hey! WE are being interviewed - for a change...

Multi-Channel
So if their are possibilities, we might consider using a multi-channel approach towards pharma marketing. Paul Dixey from BlueLight Partners states very clearly in one of his slides: “The Push Model doesn’t work anymore”, according to Paul. Too many changes which result in a more informed person on the other end of the deal. He identifies 5 main areas to deal with when implementing new channel approaches: Speed (pharma is not known for its speed), Knowledge (which company will have the best, up-to-date knowledge), Processes (can you handle to change your processes?), Resources (will you have sufficient resources to implement new and innovative channel approaches?) and finally Culture (is your culture open to change?). Paul suggests Multi-Channel Directors as a new function within pharma, preferably “empowered” according to Steve Jadhav from Astellas, who gave a presentation on team efforts in relation to successful campaign management.

Communities in pharma

Communities are no doubt one of the hottest things since Kotler came up with his 4 P’s, but most companies have trouble either

Yep, that's me, speednetworking

understanding, building or monetizing them (or all three). The same goes for Big Pharma, where legislation offers yet another potential deal breaker. So are there any success stories? May be there are. Hospira, a global specialty pharma and medication delivery company developed ‘Haemanet.com‘, a platform for hematologists to share knowledge on their profession and thus improving treatment in all hematological-related diseases. “For hematologists, the current communication methods are not ideal”, says Joseph Talanges Jr, Marketing Director at Hospira EMEA. “Journals reach a wide audience but yet the response to comments is slow, sometimes a few months. E-mail is quick, but it’s limited to what you know and is mostly a one to one communication. Congresses happen only ever so often and their only a few websites available”. I would say this is not only the case for hematologists, by the way. Haemanet jumps into this gap by offering a global, 24/7 expert platform. So far so good, because since June they have about 233 registered users from 55 different nationalities. Mind you, this is an expert community, so the absolute numbers are low.

A community from a different type and size is PatientsLikeMe. This patient-driven community collects and shares experiences of patients with certain life-changing diseases (ALS, fybromyalgia, HIV/AIDS, MS, Parkinson, etc). “The first real patient-centered management system”, in the words of co-founder Jamie Heywood who gave a vivid presentation at DigiPharm. “The ability to connect with others, the ability to understand the impact of treatments of the disease is an insight which was surprisingly absent

Jamie Heywood - from PatienstLikeMe

in online healthcare”, he continued in our interview we had with him. He started together with his brother and an old friend from MIT in 2004, after his other brother was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). “We had so much advantage in managing his disease because all the people we knew, we wanted to hand that over to other people”, Jamie said. And it certainly is an advantage, given the 50,000 members and 10% monthly growth of the platform. Growth which didn’t go unnoticed by pharma companies, such as UCB Pharma which recently partnered with PatientsLikeMe. So what’s in it for them? Jamie: “For them it’s a way to truly understanding the disease (epilepsy – EZ) and giving patients a tool that reflects their commitment”. Interestingly Jamie was clear in his message to the audience: “Patients who’s life is at stake want to hear from the pharma industry. They feel better knowing that Big Pharma is listening to them, working on their disease”.

Let’s tweet!
A clear message from Jamie, and pharma companies are looking for tools to open up these communication possibilities with patients. Take Twitter, for example. The ‘Social Media Darling’ of 2009. With a stunning growth of 1,382% earlier this year Twitter seems to be unstoppable as the new tool for some forms of communication. I say ’some forms’, because 140 characters

Tweeting away!

seems to be a bit short for your company’s brochure or CEO’s shareholders preso (though in many cases the latter one would be better if it would fit 140 characters). Although used in many conference (such as this one, see the Twitter feed here) more and more pharma companies starting to explore the possibilities of this platform. “Novartis, Boehringer and J&J belong to the top 3″, according to John Pugh, PR responsible for social media at Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH and together with Shwen Gwee crowned ‘Twitter kings of pharma’. So what do they tweet? “Headlines linking to approved press releases, links to digital resources and relevant media articles, dialogues, questions and answers”. And there it becomes tricky. What can you say in your answer, and what can you certainly not say?

Since it was time to get some answers from the audience, we decided to do just that during our 30 Minutes of Fame. No presentation, just debating on 4 statements. See our previous blogpost for more information. In the near future we will be diving much deeper into the outcome of our little survey.

In conclusion
Overall we went home with a positive feeling. Of course, still many things to do in order to go home with an absolute Wow-feeling (for example, don’t let the conference just fade-out but end with a big bang, a presenter which people won’t forget) but I think DigiPharm 2009 was worthwhile attending. Good venue, good program, professionally organized and great line-up of speakers (duh! ). We see a clear shift in the audience towards a more open and transparent way of communicating with their customers. Also authorities seem to understand the changing landscape, although I have the feeling that a lot of education still needs to take place. Not only at the level of the authorities, but also within the pharma companies. “We are preaching to the converted” was said many times during the congres. And in a way true, I guess. Despite some great initiatives shown to us by the various speakers, how many of us went back to the office, switched on their computers (IE6, no doubt), made their traveling report and dove into the hundreds of e-mails awaiting? Before you know it DigiPharm has become a nice memory, with hopefully some LinkedIn and/or Facebook connections. Who is going to make a difference? How are we going to organize ourselves to take pharma marketing into the 21st century?

We have interviewed Paul Dixey, Jamie Heywood and John Pugh. Stay tuned for these video interviews. Also, once the organization of DigiPharm has released the video of our presentation we will of course share this.

Let’s vote – Power to the People at DigiPharm

We thought, let’s do things different. And so we did. During our presentation at DigiPharm 2009 we used our slot to interact with the audience. After 1,5 day of talking about the (im)possibilities of Social Media for Pharma, sharing Best practices, visions of the future and panel discussions we thought that it was time to measure the opinion of the participants. Because, as James Heywood (patientslikeme) said on day one: “The pharma industry is the only health care stakeholder that really cares, because they measure”. OK, we thought, if that’s the case, let’s measure. Or, in our own words, let’s opinionate.

Before our exercise started, every participant was given a green and a red voting card (an analogue voting system symbolizing pharma’s current position in the evolutionary ladder of Social Media). We presented 4 statements. For each statement we gave a pro and contra argument after which the audience entered the discussion, giving their support to either of the two positions. Finally, the discussion on each statement was closed by a vote. Those who agreed raised the green card, those who disagreed the red.

And here are the results:

Statement 1: In 3 years Twitter will have become a valuable communication tool for pharma

Statement 2: In the near future pharma regulations will become more flexible, which will help Web 2.0 initiatives

Statement 3: Implementation of Web 2.0 tools in pharma will have a positive effect on the reputation of pharma in society

Statement 4: Using Web 2.0 tools internally will spur innovation within pharma companies

Interesting results. In our following blog-posts we will elaborate more on each of these statements. We will share some of the responses from the audience and will give our own opinion.

We would like to thank all the delegates of DigiPharm for their co-operation in this ‘ad-hoc research’. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.

Third part of my presentation

Finally got some time to edit the final part of my presentation at the Digital Pharma congress in Barcelona: “Best Practices Using Internal Social Media”. Check it out here:

 

First two videos of my presentation at Digital Pharma

Found myself some time to make my ‘SteveNote’ way of my presentation given at Digital Pharma in Barcelona last month. For a detailed report on the event, see here.

I have split my presentation (Best Practices for the Use of Web 2.0 and Social Media Tools for Internal Collaboration) in three parts:

Part 1: The Need for Innovation in Pharma
Part 2: Social Media and Internal Collaboration
Part 3: Best Practices Using Web 2.0 and Internal Collaboration

In this blogpost the first two episodes (it was late, so the third one coming up asap).

Digital Pharma Congress 2009- Socially Challenged Pharma

We all know Social Marketing is the Next Big Thing. Or at least, that’s what we are all saying to each other. Making each other believe that the era of the 4/5/6 P’s is finally over. And of course Big Pharma can not stay behind forever. In a relatively short period the content of pharma congresses has changed dramatically. Two years ago a typical pharma marketing congress dealt with eDetailing, brand management and CRM systems. Now it’s about communities, Twitter, authenticity and transparency. Finally.

 

 

It was the first attempt for EXL Pharma to enter the ‘Old World’ with their Digital Pharma congress. Already an established event in the States, they now found the time right to see whether the Europeans are like-minded in the exciting area of new/social/digital media in pharma. And it seems that they are not the only one, by the way. This year alone we have been contacted by two other congress organizations which are planning to enter this space as well. It’s an interesting area to be in right now, especially when you have a story to tell.

We just returned from Barcelona (raining for two days, bummer!) and we look back to -in our view- a succesful first event organized by EXL. Of course not all things were perfect, it usually isn’t – especially when you do it for the first time. But I have to admit that Jason Youner and Bryan Main did a good job in pulling this thing off. Kudos go to them.

Now, let’s dive a bit into the program. I won’t cover all presentations, only the ones which were truly remarkable for me. For the Twitter feed with all tweets during the conference I refer to the EXL website with the Cover It Live feed (or search Twitter with #digitalpharma)

Old skool
EXL’s Digital Pharma Europe was organized in Barcelona on March 30 and 31. See for the full program here. The morning of the first day was reserved for a workshop entitled ‘Successfully integrating Digital Media into the Overall Marketing Mix’. Sam Trujillo, Director of Marketing Women’s Health explained in a three hour session the view of Bayer Schering on the way to engage with digital media in the marketing mix. Apart from the fact that a workshop usually involves ‘working’ and we didn’t do more than just listening, I did not find his story appealing and at it’s place at this event. His story was mainly focussing on digital media (fair enough) but it looked like the process he was presenting very much described the traditional approach of pharma companies using media: to stay in control. Seriously, I just do not think that putting your commercials on YouTube will generate a lot of traffic towards your channels. Who on earth is going to watch voluntarely a commercial of a pharma company, including the usual fair balance BS? It’s just not the channel for that.

The rest of the day was reserved for more Social Media stuff. So did Jeff Hithcock from ‘Children With Diabetes‘ (CWD) a touching presentation on his social network for parents and children with diabetes. Once started as a virtual space he created for his daughter suffering from diabetes, now a huge online community for thousands of diabetes children. Recently J&J acquired CWD. It’s not clear to me however what’s in it for J&J.

Pharma going social
Another great presentation was from Heidi Youngkin, Executive Director Global Marketing at J&J. She held an informative and engaging talk on her ‘Social Media Adventures’ within J&J. Intruiging to see that a pharma company is already that advanced. No doubt the fact that J&J is a huge company with a lot of FMCG might help, but still. I’m sure that her guidelines will be used as a ‘golden standard’ and reference frame within more pharma companies (I saw a lot of people making notes, since her presentation was not available online). Interestingly J&J started slowly with a blog about the history of the company (nice and safe). After they gained sufficient experience with this new medium they introduced a blog more specifically targeted towards their end users and dealing with more complex subjects. Now they have entered the third stage, going beyond blogs such as participating in the beforementioned community CWD. During the rest of the  conference J&J was quoted and cited as ‘Best Practices’ on several occassions.

The first day finished by a lively panel discussion moderated by Len Starnes, Head of Digital Marketing & Sales General Medicine at Bayer Schering. The panel discussion covered the paradigm shift of web 2.0 in the pharma world. Or should we say how pharma lives in the past not using (some of) these technologies. Interestingly it turned out that the FDA was present as well. Silently sitting in the back of the room, observing how Big Pharma is struggling with this paradigm shift. It sure is a pitty they (or anybody else for that matter) didn’t take the opportunity to start the conversation. And where were the European authorities?

Doctors and communities
Len must have done a great deal with EXL because the next day he kicked-off the second day of the event with his presentation entitled ‘Healthcare Professionals’ Social Networks – The Beginning of the End of Pharma Marketing As We Know It’. We’ve met Len at several other congresses and it’s always good to listen to his vision on digital marketing within Big Pharma. This time he gave a sound overview of all possible social networks available for the HCP (Health Care Professional). Although a few big players (Sermo and MedScape) there is still room for niche players like Ozmosis for example. And what about Europe? Well, it seems that Doctors.net.uk and DocCheck Faces are the biggest players on our continent but they will soon face competition by the Powerhouse Sermo which intends to introduce here in the not so distant future. Main question of course is how Big Pharma can participate in these communities. Sermo has a partnership with Pfizer, so is this the way to go? Len was firm in his statement that the pharma industry should observe, research, engage and discuss, but under no circumstances should hard sell. He also did a small poll on LinkedIn which showed that 86% of his network believes that Social Networks will have an impact on pharma marketing within the near future.

Enterprise 2.0 and innovation in Pharma
My presentation was next, talking about the internal use of Social Media in the light of innovation in marketing services. I am always surprised to see that an entire industry just jumps on the bandwagon of using social media for external use and just forgets that they first have to deal with yet another -equally important- community: their employees. Why is it that I can’t find more about my colleagues in Outlook’s address book other than their name, telephone number and office number whereas when I check on Facebook and LinkedIn I can find half of their life? Why is it that even a New Media Specialist is blocked access to YouTube at the office because she ‘might watch YouTube videos all day long’? Get seriouss, executives. Wake up in a new world and embrace yourself for the entrance of the digital natives, people who are actually used to share information with each other (and are hence not afraid to lose their ‘power’ when they do). Or read this for a change. We want to create a common platform within our organization where employees can find our internal blog, wikis, podcasts and share ideas. And if that means that we have to pull-in some people screamin’ and kickin’, so it is. Change is never without some pain.

 

 

 

 

YouTube genius
Yet another great presentation was from Kevin Nalty, Marketing Director Dermatology at a large pharma company which name could not be revealed but starts with an ‘M’ and ends with ‘erck’. Besides his serious job he moonlights as an official YouTube Comedian. His website Willvideoforfood is described as ‘a blog for online video, advertising, viral marketing, consumer generated media and blatant self-promotion’. Don’t know if he really needs a site doing all this since he’s one of the top-10 most viewed YouTube comedians with more than 750 videos seen in excess of 60 million times. He even wrote an e-book ‘How To Become Popular On YouTube Without Any Talent’. Well, I don’t have to explain you that we 100% agree with his vision about the power of video in communication. What we do differ in opinion is that although content is still king, form is becoming more and more important. By that I mean that the basic elements of filming should be carried out well (e.g. sound, lightning, basic rules of camera movement). That doesn’t mean that I think one should make a slick commercial. Please don’t. Some ‘rough edges’ gives it most of the time a bit more genuine look. But I will skip videos where the sound quality is poor, even if they have a nice story to tell.

Now, online video is exploding: Pharma, wake up and start using it!

The last presentation was an overview of the possibilities Google has to offer big Pharma. Interesting in that respect is Google.org, a CSR initiative of Google helping the community with their innovative concepts.

A quick wrap up ended the Digital Pharma Congress in Barcelona. Main take home messages of the audience (well, from people who actually dared to shout it out loud):

That last point was not put in by me, but most probably due to me…

The future
I think it was a good start for such an event. I hope that for next congresses dealing with this subjects participation of European authorities is paramount since they are the gatekeepers of communication possibilities within our industry. Compared to the US Europe is different in that respect, also because we (still) have many different local authorities which can play and are playing according to their rules. The market is changing, people are getting more informed. The question is which information they use in order to get informed, and to what respect the quality of information is improved if Pharma can participate in the discussion. Pharma on the other hand should take it’s responsibility too, by being open and transparent about their products and claims. Pharma is low on the trust-scale, time to open up and fix that. Looking to the people in the audience I have the feeling that Pharma is ready for it. Now authorities, give them the opportunity to do so.

Stay tuned, soon I will post my presentation including the video online.

Cloud Computing. What it is and why it is important

In a relative short period we have seen a sharp rise of online applications completely being operated through your browser. The latest developments in web technology such as Java, Ruby on Rails and AJAX make websites interactive as never before. Almost daily I discover sites which look profoundly better than an average desktopapplication, even -dare I say it- Mac applications. Many of these sites depend on a technology called cloud computing.

Now instead of trying to explain in text what cloud computing is I suggest you look to the below video.

So basically cloud computing is the flexible use of a bunch of servers and in combination with a clever idea you can create some innovative applications. For example, I am currently typing this blogpost on wordpress.com in a web application which looks suspiciously similar to a standard word processor. But I don’t have to save anything to my hard disk, it saves it automatically to the cloud. I can upload pictures to the cloud which I can embed in my blogpost, and if I exceed a certain storage amount I just pay for more storage.

Other examples of cloud computing we often use:

Google docs

CashBoard

FileQube

BackBoard

Yunoo

EverNote

Flickr

Vimeo
 

Obviously there are hundreds, if not thousands of other applications.

The interesting thing about cloud computing is that it is a disruptive innovation. Why? Because it tears open existing processes in application development and business processes. 

With the proper cloud computing service, knowledge about web technologies and a credit card almost anybody can start a service. No need to pay for expensive computers or IT-related stuff. Just buy storage and a platform and start building. A good example of that is the app development program of Salesforce.com.

At the same time that is the biggest fear for corporate IT departments. Suddenly John Doe doesn’t need the nerds anymore. He can just start using applications without the involvement of corporate IT simply because nothing needs to be installed on the computer. Prohibiting installation of ’strange’ software on the company computer was always the ‘coupe-de-force’ of the IT department. Not anymore. And they don’t like that, at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that a certain level of standardization on IT-related matters within organizations is absolutely necessary. You just don’t want people to download all kinds of stuff and consequently bothering the helpdesk with questions about obscure error messages caused by even more obscure apllications. However, I do think that an IT department should be much, much more proactive in looking for ways to improve the way we work with computers and how the can actually enrich our productivity and collaboration. And frankly, I’ve experienced in most cases that IT is more like a burden to new developments rather than an added value.

But cloud computing will survive and will change the computing landscape yet again. What we are seeing now is just the beginning. If you think logically you just know that a) the internet is getting faster and b) web technologies will get more and more features. Suddenly it’s not so strange to understand why Google decided to develop their own web browser. The OS is getting generic, the future of user interface is in the cloud and hence on your browser. It’s also not so strange to realize why the netbook is the only category growing within the hardware segment. Because people don’t need computer power. People need connectivity and portability.

To finalize I would like to blundly copy and paste an interview with James Staten, Principal Analyst at Forrester which I found on MeetTheBoss. He outlines the findings of his research into cloud computing to find out why it is such a compelling business proposition.

Can you outline the finding of your research into cloud computing?

James Staten. The research we’ve done so far into cloud computing has specifically looked at infrastructure offerings, this means they’re not a SAS offering, they are a platform or an infrastructure upon which you can build and deliver your application. Our cloud computing research found that the majority of the users of these platforms are startups, small businesses, and in some cases interactive agencies or consultants who build specific projects or test bed projects for enterprises.
In doing this analysis what we also found is that there are some people in enterprises who are looking at or using cloud computing without the knowledge of their IT department. And the reason they’re doing this is because there’s a tension point that has risen and been present for quite some time between the IT developers in the business units and central IT, and the tension point comes around the availability of resources for experimentation and for ad hoc projects.
Typically the IT department needs a plan, they need a budget, they need some timing ahead of time in which to allocate the resources, and that simply doesn’t work in the business unit developer’s mind where he needs to have new offerings available and experimenting with new things right away.

Do you think that’s going to change?

JS. Well, what’s happening is the IT departments are starting to respond to this and they’re trying to figure out how they can better accommodate these needs, as any good service-oriented organization should do. Their attempt initially is going to be an internal cloud which is an effort to try and take either their existing virtualization infrastructure, like VMware based infrastructure and make it available to those developers for these types of ad hoc projects.
The challenge in doing that is that most IT departments are under significant budget constraints. They don’t have available free resources and so it’s very hard for them to build a very sizable cloud that could accommodate a lot of these applications. As a result, what they would like to find is a way to either accommodate those needs within their own walls some way, and they’re looking to the vendor community to try and help them with this, or they want the ability to have their small internal cloud flex into a larger public cloud. Their concern with that is that they’re concerned that the large public clouds don’t have the necessary security and the necessary procedures to meet their business needs.

And why, in your opinion, is cloud computing such a compelling business proposition?

JS. Well, the reason that cloud computing has had so much attention is that it provides a dramatically lower price point to get started with an infrastructure deployment. So if you are two guys in a garage, for example, and you want to create a new business from scratch and you don’t have a lot of money, you can actually create the business, have it live worldwide on the internet and across multiple geographies with just a credit card. And that’s what’s so compelling. Not only can you do it as a business example, but if you also have just a short-term project and you need access to 100 servers for one day, you can do that for an incredibly low price. You can do that for $150, for example.
That’s really what’s so compellingly different about cloud computing. In most of the service provider offerings that were available prior to this you had to sign up for a minimum of a six month contract, if not a year contract, you had to know what amount of infrastructure you were going to need to consume. There really wasn’t a play area or an experimentation area, and that’s really what cloud computing has provided.

So we’ve touched on a few, but what are the main obstacles for the enterprise adoption of cloud computing?

JS. Well, right now the biggest obstacle to the adoption of cloud computing is your level of knowledge as an engineer or developer. If you’re going to use the low-end platforms like Amazon compute cloud, you can’t just know your application. You need to know middle ware, you need to know low balancing, you need to know scalability and availability services, and you need to know how to configure and set up the OS the way you want it. That’s a lot of work for a developer who really just wants to concentrate on his cloud computing application, so to fill that gap we’re starting to see some integrators that are coming in that have sort of a fast on ramp for these types of developers where they take care of all the infrastructure for them.
If you’re a developer that’s using one of the higher end platforms, then all of that’s taken away for you. If you just know Ruby on Rails, for example, you can use Google App Engine right now. You don’t have to have any knowledge beyond Ruby on Rails to accommodate that. For Force.com it’s mostly the same, but it’s more open to different development platforms. So whether you’re building a .NET or Java or Ruby or whatever you can run it, build an application and run it on Force.com today and you don’t have to have a lot of the knowledge of the things below.
Where you start getting into trouble is if you’re not all that experienced you may realize that, yeah, you can build your application and take advantage of the services they have, but if you decide you want to move off of their platform you might find that very, very difficult.

I’ve read that there’s been some resistance to cloud computing; why do you think this is?

JS. Well, that’s because a lot of the clouds don’t let you choose, nor do they let you understand what the infrastructure is that they’re basing you upon. So a lot of these clouds, they provide you with a virtual machine or they provide you with this abstracted platform, but if you have questions about well, exactly what hardware is it running on? Exactly what version of the operating system is underneath? What’s the exact hypervisor? What’s your security process? What do you do to back things up?
Often the answer is we don’t disclose that and for a lot of businesses that’s a very uncomfortable answer. So we’re seeing more and more that they’re starting to open this up and they’re starting to tell companies, either under nondisclosure or in private agreements, about what the infrastructure looks like so that they can get more comfortable with it, and in turn use cloud computing. But there’s actually a really good reason for why a lot of these service providers don’t want to tell the world what infrastructure they’re based upon. The reason is because they want the opportunity to change it.
They’re providing you a layer of abstraction, which at that layer they will make very clear APIs, they will make a standard platform, and that’s what you care about. But everything below that they want the right to change out.

So where do you see cloud computing heading in the next six to 12 months?

JS. In the next six to 12 months we expect to see significantly more XSPs offering cloud computing offerings. We expect to see two or three more super sized vendors provide a cloud computing offering based upon their large infrastructure they’ve built for their own web services. So that could be a Yahoo, a Microsoft, an eBay, one of those class of companies could jump into this cloud computing space. We expect to see the hypervisor platform vendors get into this space as well. In fact two of the major ones have already made announcements in this regard recently: VMware and Citrix both announced cloud computing initiatives. They don’t have a platform yet for the service provider to buy, but they’re starting to put those together.
We’ll see those platforms come to market and I suspect that we will also see a fair number of enterprises who build out their internal clouds. It’ll be, like I said, experimental. They’ll be short-term, but they won’t have the flex capability yet, that flex capability to tap into a public cloud and what they would like to call a virtual private cloud probably won’t come until beyond that six to 12 month horizon.

And beyond the 12 months?

JS. Beyond the 12 months I fully expect that we will see a big menu of services from your preferred service provider that taps into software and services offerings, persistent hosting, and cloud computing offerings. And they’ll probably have two variations of cloud computing offerings: they’ll probably have a low end do-it-yourself one that they offer themselves, which will be the highest margin for the service provider, and then they’ll have a relationship with one of these large super clouds that is available to you, that they resell to you.
Now of course you can of course bypass your local service provider and do this yourself. A lot of companies will do that who have very strong IT expertise internally, but those that use a lot of outsourced resources will rely on these service providers to provide them that service plus other services.

One other thing that we’re probably going to see in this, I suspect this will happen in the next 12 months is I think that all of the hype around cloud computing is actually going to diminish. The reason it’s going to diminish is because right now the expectations of change that the market believes cloud computing will drive are getting out of whack. So I suspect in the next 12 months we’ll see a lot of people say, “You know I see cloud computing is here, but where are the profits? Where are the big customers? Where are the big wins? Where is the proof that productivity is revolutionized by this?”

None of those questions are realistic, yet they’re out there and so when we come back in six to 12 months with the answer being no to all of those questions, the bubble’s going to burst and a lot of people are going to start saying, “Oh, cloud computing was a flash in the pan, it wasn’t as big of a deal as we all thought,” and that’s when it’s going to get really interesting because at that point is when you’re going to see people that don’t care about the hype, but are investing in cloud computing, are going to start turning on big productivity gains. But it’s going to take six to 12 months beyond that point to be visible to the market.

Are you following me?

A long time I have been avoiding Twitter. Like it was nothing for me,  one step too far in the entire new/social media plethora of stuff. But hey, when you preach new media you at least ought to know how that stuff works. So some time ago I signed up for Twitter. And never looked back since.

Twitter is a curious thing. You communicate with people you don’t know, people just out of the blue start following your tweets, and it is one of the most difficult thing to explain to normal people (i.e. people who are not new media zealots as we are) what it is and what the benefits are.

I am still amazed by the feeling I get when somebody starts following me. As if that person suddenly can have a peephole look into your life. But I feel also priviledged that apparently my bio and tweets are interesting enough to be followed. However, when you get the message that somebody is following you the immediate ‘Twitter Power’ start to kick-in: should I now follow that person as well? Is that Twitter courtesy (twourtesy)? 

The e-mail you get from Twitter saying that ‘[username] is following you’ usually doesn’t say too much. I always have to go to the followers page and check whether that person is equally interesting as I am (hey, otherwise I would not be followed, remember?). The boys and girls from Twimailer thought that this could be simpler. Just add your e-mail address on their website, past a newly provided e-mail address in your Twitter account and suddenly those boring e-mails from Twitter will change into a well-crafted information-rich curriculum of the Twitterer. Including bio, number of followers and following, last 10 tweets and a big button saying ‘Follow Back’. Saves you a few clicks…

See for yourself in the video and check out their website.