Can Guardrails Help Forward Your Social Media Efforts?

Ellen Hoenig Carlson

Ellen Hoenig Carlson has been a leader and brand champion in U.S and Global Consumer and Pharmaceutical Marketing for over two decades. Her record of growth and innovation includes over thirty diverse consumer, OTC, and pharmaceutical/device categories, in US and International, Developed and Emerging markets. While at Bristol Myers-Squibb (BMS), Ellen spanned numerous assignments in US Brand Management, New Products, Global Category Development, Licensing and Business Development, and Vice President of Direct-to-Consumer/Patient (DTC/P) Marketing. During this time, she was twice recognized by Advertising Age Magazine as one of this country’s 50 Most Powerful Marketing Executives. You can also find her at 'Notes from the Back of the Book' blog.

Fresh from two good pharma healthcare conferences, Digital Pharma (#digpharm) and ePatient Connections (#epatcon), social media and the upcoming FDA Social Media Hearing seem to be indelibly etched into every pharma person’s mind…

Bubbling up  is an idea around the use of  ’guardrails’ as a  potentially  helpful way for pharma companies to frame and contain the ‘social media beast’  long enough to move forward…

So what do we mean by Guardrails? The Wikipedia definition reads something like this:

“Guard rail, sometimes referred to as guide rail or railing, is a system designed to keep people or vehicles from (in most cases unintentionally) straying into dangerous or off-limits areas.”

Why Should Pharma Care?

First, I’d be remiss not to credit Marc Monseau (JNJComm) who used this term at both conferences: “We’re doing It and So Can You. J&J’s Use of Twitter”.

Creating ‘guard rails’ was part of Marc’s 7 suggestions to Pharma: 1) Create your business case, 2) Connect SM with other initiatives, 3) Establish your personality–interesting people are followed, 4) Set guides around what you will and won’t discuss…guardrails, 5) Gain legal/regulatory support for guardrails, 6) Create processes and tap into existing processes e.g. reporting AE’s, 7) Tweet, tweet, tweet. Advice from JNJ; More lessons from JNJ (pictures courtesy of Steve Woodruff). (You may also want to read a great interview with Marc Monseau: J&J On Twitter)

Guardrails can help provide a ‘safety net’ to Pharma social media tactics and those running them by helping to insure that clear and simple guidelines are set up around certain areas to help frame conversation and engagement, and to keep social media efforts on safe regulatory and legal ground… Guardrails can act to provide some structure to something that feels uncontrollable, and allow for positive ‘baby steps’ and expansion as internal teams become increasingly comfortable.

JNJ and other pharma companies have used the concept of guardrails successfully in their social media efforts. With FDA Social Media Guidelines at least a year away, can other pharma companies  and brands begin to establish their own internal guardrails so that they too can ’dip their toes’, learn and expand their social media and patient engagement efforts?  What do you think?

For more reading and content slides from the Digital Pharma conference, read my full post.