Welcome Jessica Seilheimer

Name: Jessica Seilheimer

Company: EURO RSCG LIFE MetaMax

Job Title: VP, Group Account Supervisor

Date Joined: 2-FEB-2009

I am an ePharma Pioneer and I have a lot to say about how I evolved into one.

I have been interested by all things “digitally possible” since I was given my first email address in college back in the Power MAC G4 days. However, I didn’t start my career off in pharma, I started in publishing--at Ladies Home Journal magazine and aided in the development and launch of More magazine and MORE.com-- my first foray into anything “digital” (which, at that time, equated to “website”) and I officially caught the E-bug.

I left publishing and moved in to pharma advertising in 2000 when product websites were nothing more than static flashcards and detail aids repurposed on screen. While working one of my accounts in 2002, I had the opportunity to concept, and lead the development of my client’s first grant-supported educational website for physicians. No one at my agency wanted to work on this project. I jumped on it. The objective was to offer physicians online CME, patient ed and tools to build their practice with a multi-disciplinary approach to patient care via an online channel.

This project took 13 months to complete and was the most movitativing professional experience because it was “baptism by fire”. It was the first website my agency had created; there was no case study, no process to base it on and we outsourced every web designer/writer and the youngest SEO specialist from a small PA “web” agency to get the project done (I’m not certain he was even out of college at that time, but knew everything there was to know then!) The site launched in August of 2004.

Via that opportunity, I learned a few things:

• I loved creating process where there is none
• I loved developing an interactive project that engaged the user (much more fluid that print)
• I loved designing the methodology for, and moderating unpaid market qualitative research to ascertain user experience feedback
• I knew that I had then crossed into a new era of my professional life

I continued to follow my instincts which led me into my next professional digital opportunity where I was accountable for the program management, content management, awareness efforts and growth of an independent, multi-grant supported educational initiative, another site offering online CME and practice tools to physicians. This was a shell of a site that needed populating, and fast. There was a content management system called Common Spot, so I had to learn how to write basic HTML code and manage the development and production of the content updates (archived webcasts, videos, animations, HCP interviews, real-time congress reports, etc…)

Following that, I yearned for greater marketing involvement, more creativity- overall greater brand presence. I went back to my roots in pharma and so began my 4-year tenure at Grey Healthcare Group.

Grey’s umbrella vision was digitally focused (as was the larger WPP vision) and change was in the air at that agency. I opted into every opportunities to learn about new digital offerings and trends by which pharma had opened its ears/eyes to through utilizing available channels/touchpoints for DTP and DTC promotional efforts.

For 2 years I focused my energies on a client’s multi-product franchise portfolio of professional and consumer business- print and then their digital business. Through collaborating with our seasoned interactive creative department we embarked on a journey of integrating a digital and print account (offline/online) at our agency- unchartered territory. A journey of trial and error lead to many failures and successes- all of which equated to positive learnings and applied best practices. I gained invaluable knowledge through working with innovative colleagues who challenged your mind and thinking (and the way we have traditionally done business with pharma clients) as to how we could engage and increase the reach to HCPs and patients through myriad initiatives via digital channels, including CRM programs and monitoring targeted social networks to inform strategic thinking. It was an invaluable overall 4-year experience and I applaud companies like WebMD, Sermo, J&J, Merck and AZ for leading the way and giving us digital case studies to learn from.

I just joined EURO RSCG LIFE MetaMax on a multi-product franchise that encompasses professional, consumer, MMR and digital business and have plans expand my knowledge and increase my experience within the pharm-tastic digital space.

I was excited to find the ePharma Pioneer Club. Having the opportunity to be an ePharma pioneer, network with, and learn from others who play and live in the digital space will enable me to further expand my knowledge, share best practices, unite others with innovative visions and contribute to the greater need of making web 2.0/health 2.0/semantic web (and whatever else everyone is coining this new digital era) a reality for pharma. From what I hear, all things 3.0 are peaking around the corner and I can’t wait to meet them!

I am a member of the HBA, HMC, both since 2006. I began my career at Interlink Healthcare Communications in Lawrenceville, NJ in January 2000. I graduated from William Paterson University with a BA in Journalism in 1997.

Welcome Eileen O'Brien

Name: Eileen O'Brien

Company: Compass Healthcare Communications

Job Title: Director, Online Promotions

Date Joined: 28 Jan 2009

Facebook Profile * LinkedIn Profile

I built my first healthcare website for consumers in 1995 and have been passionate about Internet marketing ever since!

As a marketer, the web was always part of my job, but since 1999 I have been dedicated to emarketing. I work at Compass Healthcare Communications, an interactive agency focused exclusively on pharma.

My current interest is adapting social media for the unique pharma space, and have spoken at several industry events on the topic as well as leading a CBI webinar.

Since 2000, I've acted as an expert judge for the Web Marketing Association WebAwards, the eHealthcare Leadership Awards and the WWW Health Awards. Also, I'm addicted to learning from colleagues and building relationships on Twitter.

I received my AB in history from Brown University and an MS in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Back to the future

Social media stories are everywhere now and a lot of marketers are worried that if they don't have a social media strategy then they are losing a valuable marketing space. According to an article in Fortune almost 70% of of marketing social media programs are doomed to fail. Most pharma companies have not made the leap into social media yet for good reason: do consumers really want to engage pharma companies in conversation and can that conversation be attributed to ROI?

Let's step back a moment and look at the marketing environment. This is the worst economic period since the great depression. As a result consumers are spending less, have less to spend and going to the doctor less. According to Consumer Reports almost 70% of those patients that get an Rx are either not filling it, splitting tablets, or engaging in some other non-compliant behavior.

The growth numbers for social media are stunning but remember that people are spending a lot more time at home now, are angry and want to vent, and are using social media for to stay in touch with friends. Some marketers have a major presence on social media sites but the debate about ROI (i.e. linking to sales) is still up for serious debate.

So should pharma experiment with social media programs? Well first there has to be a fundamental change in the way pharma looks at marketing of prescription drugs. Marketing today is not about products it's about relationships and the relationship between consumers and big pharma is broken. The change from product to relationship starts with complete transparency on all levels of the organization. This is a new concept for pharma and they have to tread lightly because there are a swarm of sharks ,known as the legal profession, who would like nothing better than for pharma to admit a new side effect for drug currently on the market. Still pharma's efforts to reach out to current customers has been dismal at best. It would be easy to build a database of customers to update them on ongoing clinical trials and allow patients to share information and tips but then the legal and regulatory people would need megadoses of Maalox.

This gets me back to my original point: do consumers want to have a relationship with big pharma? The answer to that is if the relationship is beneficial then YES. How can it be beneficial? Pharma has a lot of medical expertise in the form of thought leaders and inhouse medical people. Consumers want access to these people because they don't often get the time to truly have a conversation with physicians. Chain drugs have tried to enhance the patient-pharmacist relationship but it can be embarrassing to talk about your prescription while others wait on line.

DTC marketers are seeing huge budget cuts now and they have to ensure that every dollar they have goes to drive business. They can try and educate and inform senior executives that marketing has moved from product to conversation but that discussion is always going to come back to "what's the ROI". Until senior management understands the change in marketing pharma will just dabble in social media and until they understand that it's what of value to the patient/customer not marketer that drives the conversation we'll just be headed back to the future.

Welcome Xavier Petit to ePharma Pioneer Club!

Some interesting people have filled out my online form telling me why they are or want to be an ePharma Pioneer Club member. Today, I'd like to introduce you to Xavier Petit (that's him on the left as seen on his facebook page).

Here's his story in his own words [with my remarks in red]. You can contact him by e-mail at xpetit@xpetit.com or follow him on Twitter (http://twitter.com/xpetit).

I started my career in pharma with Shire in May 08. So there, you can scratch the 2nd criteria. While you're at it, scratch number 3 as well. I don't have much experience in using innovative digital media. Hopefully I can now demonstrate that I have either 1 or 4 or perhaps both.

[Xavier is referring to the 4 criteria for membership in the ePharma Pioneer Club. These are:

1. A passion to engage, educate, and entertain through digital media,

2. Long-standing involvement in the field of pharmaceutical e-Marketing or e-Communication,

3. Specific experience developing or using innovative digital media, and

4. A need to help pharmaceutical marketers achieve success in the "e" realm.

Every member of the ePharma Pioneer Club should satisfy one or more of these criteria or demonstrate a willingness to take them on as goals.]

I work in the integrated marketing department leading the consumer database marketing. I am not involved with setting the strategy and tactics but support the brands in building capabilities to optimize current tactics and implement new tactics and programs. As such I am looking at the infrastructure we need to build or who to partner with in order to execute tactics on new platforms such as digital.

[Maybe some other Club member can help you with that! I see that you are in the Philadelphia area. Let's get together some time!]

I spend a large amount of my time researching the technology and best practices behind implementing new marketing channels. I recently completed a research on mobile phone marketing in pharma with the help of a firm called Envision.

[Ah! So you already know Fard Johnmar, another Club member!]

We look at where the us market was not only in the technology life cycle (capabilities) but also in terms of usage and acceptance compared to Europe and Asia. The document that we drafted will serve as the guidelines and established a time line of level of involvement in Mobile for our brands (I have secured 3 shortcodes to ensure their availability when the brands are ready).

[Can you share some facets of that document with Club members? Maybe you'd like to write this up for publication in Pharma Marketing News or be a guest on Pharma Marketing Blog?]

I am currently researching social marketing and building a case for establishing a framework within the company to create guidelines and policies to govern our social marketing.

As you can imagine, this will take time and education as I will need to engage MLR, IT, as well as the senior management.

[It may help to have your colleagues take the "Rate Your Social Media Marketing Readiness" self-assessment questionnaire -- read about that here. I can set up a unique, private version for your people to fill out so you can see how they rate independent of all other respondents. They can remain anonymous.]

The people I work with in my immediate surroundings are all aware of the benefits of engaging consumer and HCPs via digital and social media. I am offering them my support in creating business cases to support the adoption of these new tactics. We all believe in a more authentic communication with our customer and prospect and in providing transparency and education.

As mentioned at e-pharma, digital and social might be the opportunity for pharma to redeem itself and offer a meaningful engagement to consumers.

[Have you heard my conversation with Fabio Gratton on that very subject? Go here to find the link to the podcast archive. You can also hear more in this Pharma Marketing Blog post: "A Tithe on Pharmaceutical Marketing for Promoting Health"]

While offline has its place in the pharma marketing mix, it should be targeted at driving traffic online. Online and social only, can deliver an emotional connection with the consumer and educate them in an engaging manner.

One way to help marketers achieve success in the e realm is to measure and provide analyses that focus on the impact on behavior: Are we changing behavior? This is not achieved by the typical multivariate ROI analysis that only look at sales revenue. This takes building data warehouses with opted-in consumer data, web analytics, APL data, 3rd Party data, survey data and a deep understanding of the goals we are pursuing. This is where I am acting on #4...Hopefully my #4 is strong enough and/or you can find a little bit of #1 in the statement as well.

VOILA! Xavier

[Tres bien! Bienvenus au Club!]

Measuring Social Network Communications Success and Much More

Today's guest on the Pharma Marketing Talk streaming audio show was Fabio Gratton, Co-founder, Chief Innovation Officer, Ignite Health, and ePharma Pioneer Club™ member.

We talked about why so few pharmaceutical companies have leveraged the power of social networks to communicate with consumers/patients and how marketers should think differently about the metrics that constitute success. Also, at the end of the show, Fabio had some ideas for how pharmaceutical companies can leverage social networks to improve the health of all US citizens while improving their public image.

You can get some more background relating to this podcast here. Listen to the podcast archive here.

Fabio Gratton is the Chief Innovation Officer and a founding partner of Ignite Health, one of the fastest-growing healthcare agencies in the US. Gratton works closely with the agency's creative and account teams to develop Internet strategies for all agency clients. Gratton, a graduate of UCLA's acclaimed film program, worked as a screenwriter prior to channeling his passion for storytelling to the medical marketing industry. Ignite recently launched Incendia Health Studios, a purpose-driven media company focused on creating media properties that leverage rich media, video, and interactive technologies to engage people living with chronic illnesses and those who care for them. In addition to helping develop Internet strategies for existing Ignite clients, Gratton has assumed President and CEO responsibilities for Incendia.

How I became an eMarketing Pioneer

Name: Richard Meyer

Company: Online Strategic Solutions

Job Title: Principal


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I started my eMarketing career in healthcare as the first emarketing person hired by Eli Lilly for the US Affiliate. The first brand that I worked on was Prozac and Prozac weekly and we successfully launched the first online advertising campaign to support both those brands. As Lilly became more aware of the potential for the Internet we recruited the an interactive agency and several brands used online agencies to style and launch websites.

While at Lilly I also was launched Sarafem, a drug for the treatment of PMDD and was selected to the Cialis Brand team as emarketing lead. With Sarafem I was able to include a message board for patients as research had shown that women like to talk to each and relate stories related to PMDD. This was a huge breakthrough for a company like Lilly and a great success as in the first week of approval we had over 250 posts from patients who were thankful to have a voice about what they felt was a serious condition.

The Cialis launch was among the best business experience of my career. As we were a joint venture with another company everything we did had to go through two approval processes, one for Lilly and one for Icos. Cialis quickly became the number one site in conversion to Rx but we were also able to do a lot more. For example, I knew that most men surfed the Internet at work but very few have an office where they can surf the web in private. We therefore decided to take the message to our audience where they were online by creating a mini-site via FLASH that communicated all the key brand messages and product benefits. I also launched the Cialis 3-Point challenge in conjunction with March madness via Yahoo ! where visitors could play an online game while being exposed to brand messages. The results were extremely positive.

On the physician side I launched a series of 3-minute online video details on Medscape which were viewed by 95% of our target audience via a list match. Working on Cialis was hard work but it was rewarding. I worked with some very brilliant DTC marketing people as well.

Four years ago I moved out to California so that my wife could take a position with Amgen in Global Marketing. I worked for Medtronic Diabetes for two years but decided to leave as I tend to be passionate about Internet marketing and did not feel that Medtronic was willing to invest in online patient solutions to support the number one brand of insulin pumps while competitors were investing more dollars in online marketing solutions.

I currently have my own consulting company but it is my hope that someday I will be able to get back to work in pharma Internet marketing. My BLOG on DTC marketing and Internet marketing have over 500 daily readers and I also write a column for PM 360 magazine. I hope that I never stop learning and sharing what I learn because to me it's all about patients.

My hobbies include listening to jazz, collecting and drinking wine, cooking, classic movies and history. DTC marketing has a long way to go before they acknowledge empowered patients but being passionate about this industry makes it fun and rewarding. I Tweet quite a bit about pharma marketing, or lack thereof, and I am happy to talk with anyone anytime about the DTC industry and marketing on the Web.

Will eMarketing survive the cuts?

John's survey indicates just how bad DTC will be cut this year and in this economy with fewer people going to their physician who could argue the need for such cuts. While companies like GSK have already decided to reduce DTC spending I wonder just how bad the cuts will extend to the Internet. Think about it: more and more people are using the Internet for health research and only 3% of those searching will go to pharma health sites. Rather than take the message to consumers where they are online pharma continues an outdated model of driving people via TV and search spending. They all but have ignored the empowered patient and continue to talk to consumers like they are idiots.

Smart companies are starting to invest in Web technology that will bring them closer to their customers and allow them to engage more segments on their terms. Pharma, for way too long, has hidden behind the "we're a regulated industry argument" but if you take the message to consumers where they are using third party health portals you can get around this. In addition more companies are companies are coming to realize that they have to make marketing resources, in the form of experts of thought leaders, available to consumers to engage them.

My guess is that when the wheel goes around eMarketing initiatives will be cut over other programs and that for reason marketers will continue to hold onto the belief that TV is the best channel thus ignoring consumers needs and wants.