The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly Case Studies

There are literally dozens of pharma companies with their toes in the waters of social media, which include blogs, YouTube videos, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc. Only a few intrepid pharmaceutical companies, however, have dived deeper.

This article focuses in some detail on three interesting pharma social media initiatives: (1) Procter & Gamble's Asacol Community for Ulcerative Colitis Patients; (2) Novo Nordisk's Levemir-branded Race With Insulin Twitter account; and (3) UCB's sponsored epilepsy community on the PatientsLikeMe website. One of these is a good example of how pharma marketers can leverage social media, one is bad, and the other is just plain ugly! In baseball, one hit out of three at-bats isn't bad, but for marriages and social pharmaceutical marketing it's not that good.

Topic headings include:

• A Faux, Dysfunctional Community
• More Serious Problems
• What a REAL UC Community Looks Like
• UCB's Sponsorship Partnership with PatientsLikeMe
• Pharmacovigilance is Key
• "Race with Insulin" Branded Twitter Account
• The Three Big Pharma Companies & Social Media
• FDA Safe, But...
• A Reminder Tweet
• Is It Spam?
• Missed Opportunity to Educate