I also like being “in the know” and there’s typically some backstory to the meme that you need to understand for it to make sense. It’s kind of like an exclusive club for the Internet set of us out there.

What I really like about memes is how you can use them to express a really simple concept.

For those of you who don’t really know what a meme is, here’s the official definition (thanks to Google’s handy “define” feature):

An element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation

So, the key feature of a meme is really it’s ability to be passed along from one person to another. Sometimes it’s a joke and sometimes it’s a movement and something far more serious. However, when I look at a meme, I do something different than most people. I try to look for a lesson. I look for the one thing that I can learn from it. I also look at memes and figure out how I can use them to explain something else and to try to better understand human nature.

I’m weird like that.

This is what I’m doing today. I’m going to use the top memes of 2011 to review everything I witnessed as far as digital marketing trends in 2011. There will be plenty of lessons mixed in along the way. Chances are that you haven’t seen or heard of all of these memes (maybe none of them). You might not get some of the jokes, but I’ll do my best to explain them and I’ll point you to the good folks at Know Your Meme to give you even more detail if you want it.

The list of the top 10 memes for 2011 comes from Know Your Meme. They just announced the “winners” based on a survey of its users. The nominees were drawn from the most discussed and mentioned memes of the year. I’ll review them (and tie them to a little lesson about digital marketing) in no particular order (though I saved my personal favorite for last).

Before doing that, you might want to watch Know Your Meme’s 3 minute review and explanation of the “winners”. That might help some of you for a little background on these memes, as some defy simple explanations. I did include a little, written explanation of each meme as well.

So, without further delay…let’s jump right in:

1. “Nope! Chuck Testa.”

Quick explanation:

Nope! Chuck Testa is a catchphrase coined by Californian taxidermist Chuck Testa and filmmakers Rhett and Link. The one-liner became immensely popular after the ad made for his business received massive attention through social news sites like Reddit in mid-September. The commercial features several family members of Testa being fooled into thinking taxidermied animals were alive before being told by the man himself who proclaims “Nope! Chuck Testa.” (source)

For those of you who are a little uneasy about taxidermied (is that a word?) animals, this isn’t going to be a big hit with you. Here’s the commercial created by taxidermist Chuck Testa that started it all:

This video was shared all over the place after appearing on Reddit in September.

The Lesson:

So, what does this have to do with digital marketing? Not a ton except for one line from the commercial:

“I specialize in the most lifelike, dead animals anywhere.”

Chances are that the content you’re creating for all of your digital marketing efforts including what you distribute via social media could best be described by this line. You are doing what you think makes sense to add a little sizzle. You’re trying to make your brand or company seem way more interesting than it really is by following some formula you’ve read about. That is, you’re taking marketing that’s dead and trying to make it lifelike. In the end, you’re really just pretending. This might fool some people from afar, but when they get up close, they’re not happy with what they find.

If you want to make content that isn’t dead, you probably have to do things a bit different. Yes, this means actually investing in content development. It means hiring someone who knows how to produce quality video content (and not necessarily James Cameron). It means that you have to go beyond your “core messages” and tell other stories that people might actually find compelling. Until then, you’re just making content that’s lifeLIKE and not actually alive. Big difference.

There was way too much lackluster content out there in 2011 (and in every year before that) coming from companies. 2012 ought to be the year you vow to change that for your brand.

2. Planking

Quick explanation:

Planking, often referred to as the “planking craze”, refers to the act of lying face down with arms to the sides in unusual public spaces and photographing it to share online. (source)

Rather than describe planking in more detail than this, this is a case where a picture is worth a thousand words:

You’re probably asking “Why?” right now. I don’t know. It’s just one of those things that people do. Sometimes human behavior doesn’t make that much sense.

The Lesson:

But there is a lesson in here for us and it’s a trend in digital marketing that I’ve noticed. There are a lot of hot fads that come and go. Some last for years and others for days. Brands that capitalize on them quickly can be very successful. However, there’s one thing for certain about these fads. They will all disappear. So, while you’re busy planning how to take advantage of one, know that you’re probably too late. You need to be able to react instantly if you plan on playing in the fad arena. You don’t want to be the brand who is talking about planking now any more than you want to be the brand showing off the new branded vuvuzelas you just made (how about that for a 2010 throwback?).

Be prepared to act instantly and not after 3 weeks of legal reviews if you want to capitalize on what’s hot. The other lesson in here is that capitalizing on what’s hot doesn’t always make sense for every brand. Use your head.

3. Occupy Wall Street

Quick explanation:

Occupy Wall Street is an ongoing series of protests in New York City and elsewhere across North America and Europe that seek to resolve socioeconomic inequality and curb the influence of corporate lobbying on Washington politics. Mostly coordinated via social networking services like Twitter and Facebook without a central organizer, the flash-mob demonstration began on September 17th, 2011 and the spirit of protests have since spread across dozens of cities and campus areas in the United States. (source)

You probably have been living under a rock if you haven’t heard about the “Occupy” movement. Usually a cultural movement like this wouldn’t really qualify as a meme, but based on the way it really spread via social media at first probably qualifies it as a meme.

The Lesson:

The lesson here is really simple. More and more brands are embracing social media and using it as one of their key marketing tactics. It pretty much became accepted, standard practice in 2011. However, at the same time, many brands still aren’t doing it right. They refuse to accept the notion that you can’t completely control what happens to your brand once you open yourself up to the world of social media. People aren’t going to do things exactly the way you want. They are going to want to ask questions that make your legal team uncomfortable. They are going to protest when you mess up. They are going to expect that you listen to them. You know…just like real life.

There were plenty of social media screw ups in 2011 (find a bunch of them here) and you probably nervously laughed at the poor companies that tried to recover from mistakes while you secretly hoped that you’d never find yourself in the same position. Knowing that you can’t always be completely in control and having a plan to deal with the unexpected is critical. You never know when a movement like Occupy is going to show up at your front door. You just have to be ready to handle it. I’m still amazed how many companies that use social media regularly aren’t prepared for controversy. Head into 2012 with something different.

4. First World Problems

Quick explanation:

The frustrations of privileged citizens around the world has been a consistently trending topic on Twitter with#FirstWorldProblems, a hashtag used to make light of minor inconveniences that people of advanced societies often complain about, like having too many tabs open or still being hungry after brushing teeth. (source)

Here’s a great example:

The Lesson:

Yep…we’ve all got problems. That includes marketers. However, many of the problems marketers profess about the challenges of selling their brands out in the world come off to many people about as serious at First World Problems. To put it another way, people don’t care about the regulations or your company rules that make it hard for you to, for example, answer their questions on Twitter or cause you to take a month to respond to their email. People don’t want to hear your excuses. They want results.

To compound your troubles, people see other brands in other industries doing innovative things and they wonder why you won’t do the same thing. For example, Starbucks has My Starbucks Idea and solicits ideas to improve people’s experience with their morning coffee. What people then think is this: “If the company that makes my coffee is listening to me and implementing ideas to improve its product, how come the company that makes my HIV drug doesn’t do the same?” Point is, one is much more important than the other and yet you don’t see the latter. You can apply this to many situations and different industries. The takeaway message is that if people see one brand do it, then it becomes an expectation that you do it as well.

Your task for 2012 is to stop complaining and giving excuses and figure out how to do the things that your customers expect you to do.

5. Nyan Cat

Quick explanation:

Nyan Cat is an 8-bit animation depicting a cat with the body of a cherry pop tart flying through outer space. While dada-influenced images like Cat on a Keyboard in Space and Cat Bread have been around for some time, this particular combination of Pop Tart Cat and the Japanese Vocaloid song Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya! has captivated YouTubers and online art communities, spawning dozens of fan illustrations, video remixes and even musical tributes.(source)

Got it?

I’ve got to admit that this one really confounds me as well. You really need to see it in action to “appreciate” it. A bit of warning, after about 10 seconds of this video you’ll either start smiling and laughing or you’ll smash the device you’re watching it on just to stop the noise. Turn up your speakers now.

There you have it. Nyan Cat. I probably should have closed with this one.

The Lesson:

The lesson here is very simple and one that I wish more marketers would learn. Unfortunately, 2011 helped to ensure that this lesson will continue to be ignored by many marketers for the foreseeable future. 2011 brought us viral videos sensations from brands that included the “Darth Vader Volkswagon” commercial, “Doug, Ford’s Sockpuppet”, and the epically annoying (IMHO) “Kia Hamsters”.

When marketers see these along with hearing about the Old Spice Guy for yet another year, they think they can do the same. So, what happens? They go into a room and hatch a plan to create a “viral video.”

I’ll say it again, though I’ve said it about a million times before, you don’t create a “viral video,” if you’re exceptionally lucky your video could become a “viral video.” You don’t decide if it “goes viral,” we do. That’s right…we the people. If we don’t like it and find it shareable, then it’s not going to be a viral video. Sure, you can dump millions into paid media to promote your video and millions more to air it during the Superbowl, but that’s cheating just a bit. You paid for all those impressions. A true viral video is spread on its own just like Nyan Cat. It’s spread because people want to share it with others.

Please resolve that 2011 was the last year you’ll write down “create viral video” as a marketing tactic. Create video content for sure, but don’t expect it to be viral. Make it really good, seed it in the right places, and hope for the best.

6. 60s Spider Man

Quick explanation:

60’s Spider-Man is an image macro series based on still shots from the original Spider-Man cartoon series, typically featuring an absurd internal monologue that correspond with the actions depicted in the images. (source)

Once again, it’s hard to explain why the Internet does what it does. A picture might help a bit.

You’ve got to admit that this is a little funny.

The Lesson:

What makes the 60s Spider-Man memes amusing is the fact that they are typically depict an awkward situation and the intent of the original illustrators doesn’t remotely match what people have added on their own (here are a bunch more).

This is what a lot your digital marketing is like.

It’s a bit awkward. It might not fit exactly what makes sense for your brand and it confuses people. This is especially true when you factor in your social media efforts. The main reason for this is because many marketers don’t take the time to really integrate their digital marketing efforts with all of their other marketing. Again, this comes out with social media, as teams create a “social media strategy” completely in a vacuum while they forget all about the actual brand strategy.

What ends up happening is that you have a brand with multiple personalities disorder. Your brand has a happy-go-lucky, irreverent tone in social media, but a stern and serious personality in your TV commercials. Or your brand is known for fun, but your videos put people to sleep.

It’s all got to match to make sense to people. Your brand needs to have one personality and one voice. Your efforts across all the different marketing channels need to work together. This may mean getting together people that don’t normally review their plans together, but it’s essential to avoid what poor Spidey has to endure. Start out 2012 by really understanding how your brand is represented in every one of your marketing efforts and make it uniform.

7. Rebecca Black

Quick explanation:

The Californian teenage girl Rebecca Black‘s rise to national fame with her autotuned pop single “Friday” was a moment of realization for many aspiring singers and producers: you don’t necessarily have to be the best at what you do to be famous. Originally uploaded in early February, the video began receiving massive exposure on hubsites like YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr after coverage by The Daily What on March 11th, 2011. Within a week, the video gained over 10 million views and the digital single entered the top 100 on iTunes. (source)

This very well might be one of the biggest viral videos of 2011. If the Nyan Cat video didn’t make you laugh or smash something, this will. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “Friday” from Rebecca Black:

Bob Dyan she ain’t. But that’s okay, we can still learn something.

The Lesson:

This one is going to be hard for many marketers to understand. That’s okay, it’s hard for everyone to understand. Here’s the lesson:

Sometimes bad is actually good.

I think we can all agree that this song is awful. As the top YouTube comment on this video summed up: “This song kills babies in Africa.”

A bit harsh to be sure, but how does Rebecca take all the criticism?

To the bank.

That’s right. By now, she’s basically accepted the criticism and just goes with it (or ignores it). It turns out that it doesn’t matter if people really love your music or think you’re Mozart, it matters if they buy your records. And people did buy Rebecca’s song and made it a top 100 song on iTunes. That’s a lot of 99 cent purchases. The lesson for you, Mr. and Mrs. Marketer is simple: don’t take yourself so damn seriously. If people come to brand because they want to see more of a video you made that they find horrible, don’t immediately pull the plug on your site and take down the video. Figure out if you can, well, turn lemons into lemonade. Have a little sense of humor and people will respond to that. If it moves cases of your product and doesn’t do permanent damage to your brand, then you probably should just go with it.

Lighten up in 2012.

8. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

Quick explanation:

The epidemic sensation of My Little Pony in 2011 has been both formidable and persistent. Developed by the Powerpuff Girls illustrator Lauren Faust, the largely for-girls show has become an omnipresent fixture in the internet culture, triggering an epic internet fight between pro-bronies and anti-bronies, not to mention the moderates who think ponies are appropriate for only certain situations. Since its on-air debut in October 2010, the series became a popular source material for threadjacking, reaction images, and macro images on 4chan, YouTube and elsewhere online. (source)

On the surface, this meme seems to defy explanation…

Okay, it’s not just on the surface. No logical explanation can make sense of this.

The Lesson:

And, that’s the lesson. Human’s are, for the most part, completely unpredictable. We do our best to predict what a certain person or group of people (our “target audience”) will do or how they will react and we’re usually wrong. On top of this, we are really good at making excuses for why we were wrong, so we quickly forget that we aren’t really good at predicting the future or human behavior. It’s selective memory at its finest.

Yet we’ve built an entire industry around trying to predict human behavior. We call it “research.” We conduct focus groups and commission surveys. We pour over “behavioral trends” and create “personas.” All of this is designed to do one thing: predict the future behavior of a group of people. However, it’s always a group of people that we really can’t understand, that’s still very heterogeneous despite our attempts to lump them together, and that have far less in common than not in common.

And while we might be able to predict how one person might behave, we often fall down when there starts to be more factors. That is, we usually can understand one person, but we can’t ever hope to understand the millions of different interactions experienced by that person in a given day that impact his behavior. We can’t predict the interactions between people. That means we can’t hope to really predict the behavior of a large group. The reason for this is simple. We can’t understand every possible motivation of every individual in the group. We may understand a few motivations of a few people (or even all the people), but we don’t know them all. More importantly, we don’t know which motivations will actually impact their behavior.

When two groups that to all of our research techniques appear identical behave differently from one another, we try to explain this by providing group-level explanations. We might argue that we didn’t realize that one group was richer than the other or less educated or something else. In reality, these are convenient explanations, but probably aren’t right. The two groups could be exactly identical in every way except for one different person in one group. That one person could be one person in a thousand, so it would be impossible to observe him in the crowd. But if that person wanted to incite one group to riot, he might be able to do it. If that same person isn’t in the second group, there’s no riot. Our research would try to explain this after the fact by looking at macro factors when the real explanation is the presence or absence of one person. (For more about this, read up on Granovetter’s Riot Model [PDF]. Also, get the book Everything is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer, which talks about this concept and our inability to predict the future and explain away our mistakes.)

Okay, so what does that have to do with My Little Pony?

Everything.

There was no way to predict precisely who this show would appeal to. It was designed and marketed to young girls and yet it found a place with a huge and disperate set of people. How’d this happen and why didn’t “research” predict it? It happened because a few people wanted it to happen. These were people who you couldn’t have identified in research. Their behavior and interactions with others couldn’t be quantified and yet they were the key factor in explaining this phenomenon. Remember that predicting behavior and being able explain why the behavior happened after the fact are very different things. A great quote from Everything is Obvious explains this well: “…our impressive ability to make sense of behavior that we have observed does not imply a corresponding ability to predict it…”

So, when you’re conducting research in 2012, be realistic about what is possible to know. Expect to be wrong. This is okay. Don’t use this an excuse not to do good research. I’m not saying that. Research is stil critical, but be realistic about what it can tell you. To ensure that your plans and product aren’t a failure, you need to recognize the limitations of your research and plan differently. You need to create marketing plans that are flexible and can quickly be adjusted as new information comes in. Take this new information and construct a new hypothesis and then act on this. If your plans are completely inflexible, they have a much higher chance of failing or at least missing big opportunities. Will 2012 be the year of your own “My Little Pony” and will you be ready for it?

9. Scumbag Steve

Quick explanation:

Scumbag Steve is an image macro series featuring a young man with a sideways fitted cap standing in a hallway. As the name suggests, the joke illustrates a wide array of “d-bag” stereotypes from high school and college years, like that guy who borrows your lighter and never returns it. (source)

And the image…

The Lesson:

Okay marketers, this one’s going to hurt, so get ready.

You’re all Scumbag Steve.

All right, not ALL of you, but many of you. I’ve created my own version of the meme to describe the problem:

That’s right. You make these hugely elaborate websites with flashy (literally and figuratively) designs and videos playing and all sort of other bells and whistles. Then you add in a million of your “core messages” and soon enough you’ve created a site that looks great, but is impossible to navigate. It might make sense to you and that’s because you worked on it since day one, but it doesn’t make sense to everyone else and that’s all that matters.

Or you create a great looking site that has a search box, but it doesn’t actually work. It doesn’t actually search the content of your site because you didn’t build it right (the search function or the site). That annoys the hell out of people. Or maybe you have a great looking site with a ton of broken links that lead to uninformative 404 error pages. There’s no reason you should have any broken links on your site. Spend a little less on adding one more flashy element and index your content the right way first. It’s not sexy, but it’s what people need.

There’s a little analytics stat that you can track to measure some of this. It’s perhaps the most misunderstood and, in my opinion, wildly overrated measurement of website performance: time on site. I’ve read goals for major sites from huge brands that have the stated objective of improving “time on site” or increasing it to X number of minutes. Well, here’s some news for you: increasing time on site might not be a good thing. If I come to your site looking for one piece of information, but your site is so poorly organized and difficult to navigate that it takes me 10 minutes to find the answer, don’t pat yourself on the back. Sure, your time on site is really high, but so is your customers’ blood pressure. The reverse is true too. If you make a site that enables people to quickly find what they need and then get on with their lives, your time on site might be really low. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

So, bottom line, fix your site so that it’s easy for people to use. Concentrate on user experience before you worry about design. It’s got to work and make sense for people to navigate first before you make it look great. That’s your mission in 2012…and fix your broken links.

10. X All the Y!

Quick explanation:

“X all the Y” is a snowclone and exploitable cartoon used to make a hyperbolic statement about performing an action. First published in the comic “This is Why I’ll Never be an Adult” (shown above) by illustrator Allie Brosh, she apparently sought to convey frustration with her inability to maintain a consistent enthusiasm for her daily responsibilities. (source)

Here’s the original version of this meme:

I love this one. It allows for so many different uses. People have created thousands of these to reflect all sorts of exaggerated expressions about certain topics.

The Lesson:

I’ve actually created two of these just for the purposes of this lesson. Can you tell what the theme of the lesson is?

And this one…

Figure out the lesson yet?

There was a lot of enthusiasm this year around two things: building mobile apps and putting QR codes on EVERYTHING.

Let’s deal with the mobile apps thing first. If you want to build an app (and chances are you’re only talking about making an iPhone app), that’s fine. But, before you do that, how about taking care of some other things first? Item number one, since we’re talking about mobile, build a mobile version of your website. Forget about making an app, make a mobile site first. That’ll be used far more often by people than your app (more on that in a minute). Building a mobile site might not be the sexy thing to do, but it’s the most practical one that will actually be a benefit to people. And it doesn’t need to cost a fortune either. There are plenty of companies and services that can get you up and running fast with a quality mobile (and tablet) marketing platform. While I’m at this rant, make sure you add a link to the mobile version that lets me view the full version if I so desire. There’s nothing that frustrates me more than being automatically redirected to a mobile site, finding out that I can’t access the info I need, and then not being able to get back to the full version. Don’t do that.

So, you’ve got a mobile site already, eh? Congratulations. Now you want to build an app for your brand. Chances are you this app to prominently feature your brand. That’ll likely guarantee that people won’t download it or use it. People don’t want an app that amounts to a non-stop commercial for your brand. Okay, maybe your app isn’t a commercial. That’s great. However, it does the same thing that a million other apps that people already use do. Again, you’ve just wasted your money. Don’t go down the path of creating an app unless you’re going to create something unique that people really want. That’s hard for many brands to do and won’t work for many. That’s okay. Spend your money elsewhere, there’s plenty of other opportunities out there.

And QR Codes.

It seems like everyone wants to put a QR code on everything. You’ll even put them on billboards. Yes, billboards…alongside a highway. I’m not sure I could devise a more dangerous premise for a billboard than asking someone to slow down in their car, take out their phone, open the QR code reader app,  line up and focus the camera, and snap a picture all while not crashing. Perhaps a billboard that shot high power lasers directly into drivers’ eyes in an attempt to burn the URLs onto drivers’ retinas would be slightly  more dangerous. Here’s a great post from my colleague Bob Gilbreath on this disturbing trend (including photographic evidence in case you don’t think any marketer would be this foolish).

QR codes aren’t the saving grace or marketing holy grail that they have been billed as by some people. It’s a transitional technology that will soon disappear as NFC (near field communications) become more widespread. For all the reasons outlined in this great BI post, I agree that QR Codes are (or should) be on their way out. Here’s a relevant snippet from their post about why these things are terrible:

“Most people, before scanning their first barcode, have to download scanning apps manually and figure out how to use them. Then, each time there’s a barcode to scan, they have to make sure they’re using the right scanning app for the right barcode. That’s because different types of barcodes, like Microsoft’s “Tag” codes, don’t always work in all the same apps. And then there are the inevitable delays in finding the barcode app in your phone, waiting for the camera to prepare itself to shoot photos, getting the right distance and focus on the barcode, and hoping the mobile data network responds to your query quickly enough to be worthwhile.”

Only a tiny minority of people (5%) have ever used a QR code according to Forrester. To put it another way, 95% of people who look at your QR code have no idea or no interest in doing anything with it besides wonder why marketers keep sticking them on things.

Again, don’t expect QR codes to perform some sort of magic for you. If for some reason you still feel compelled to use one, then have it do something that makes sense. My “favorite” is when a QR code points to a website that is made entirely out of Flash and isn’t mobile-ready. I can’t see a thing on my iPhone and you look ridiculous. Also, don’t put QR codes in places like subways where there is no mobile service. I need to be able to access the Internet for your QR code to work. And yet, I find myself on the New York subway and every ad has a QR code on it and I have zero bars of service. Common sense, people.

So, for 2012, use your head and don’t get overly excited about anyone technology or trend. This includes mobile apps and QR codes. I’d also appreciate if you stopped putting QR codes on billboards. My drive home is already dicey enough without the added risk of drivers attempting to actually use these codes.

And there you have it. The year in memes for 2011 all tied to some important lessons for digital marketers.

Did I miss any meme that you think would teach a valuable lesson? Feel free to add it to the comments.

I had seen and heard a lot of what was discussed at this meeting before simply because I get to spend a lot of my time thinking about it. For others that have a different focus in their day-to-day jobs, I’m sure they took away even more than I did. For me, the best part of the conference was the informal, “unconference” discussion that took place for the last two hours of the final day and was lead by Brad Pendergraph from Novartis. There was no stage, no slides, no official speakers, just a bunch of people really interested in digital pharma marketing talking to each other. It’s perhaps not surprising that the conversation almost exclusively focused on social media, as it seems like THE thing to talk about right now (and has for a while). The upcoming FDA hearings on this topic naturally make it more relevant and top of mind (PS: I’ve been invited to speak at the hearing and can’t wait to get in my two cents).

The participants of this final discussion were a good mix of pharma employees and agency/consultant types like me. I mostly listened to the conversation and took a few notes. At some point, I heard one of those simple statements that suddenly helps it all make sense. The “ah-ha” moment.

With constant debate of can we?/can’t we? in pharma companies when it comes to social media, I’ve been saying for a long time that we’re making it too complicated. While there are a lot of objections and concerns within pharma companies when it comes to social media, the one I hear most often and that really bugs me is about the internal regulatory/legal process. There are a lot of other objections that come up, but this one seems to particularly bother me. Here’s what I’m talking about. Let’s say your company starts a corporate blog and (imagine this) allows people to comment. Sure, moderate the comments if you’d like. No problem, just let through the legitimate ones.

Now, here’s where I get frustrated. Let’s say one of the comments is something of a question…something like this: “Great point, but don’t you think that [insert whatever ending you want]?” Clearly, it’s something that the person would like an answer to. They want to engage with you and have a discussion. It’s a great opportunity, right? You know that, so you decide to respond…and that’s when the wheels come off.

Since you’re going to create a response to publish, you have to send it through your review process. It takes a solid two weeks to do that using your normal channels. Or, maybe you’re lucky, you have an expedited process for this type of thing and you can get something out in a couple of days. Of course, by this time, the commenter probably has forgotten all about you. You likely missed a chance to make a major, positive impression. But why? Why did your response have to go through your whole process? “Well,” you say, “you know the answer to that Jonathan. If we post something online, then it has to through our regulatory process. Same rules as if we created a printed piece. What’s wrong with you…have you forgotten everything you learned working at a pharma company?” Okay, so maybe you’d leave out the last part, but you’d say the first part pretty much exactly as I wrote it.

“But, why?” I ask again. I have actually struggled to come up with a simple response to why you could justify NOT putting something like this through your official review process, but hadn’t come up with something yet. As pharma expands its social media efforts, at some point, this becomes a major issue. Are you going to review every tweet, every Facebook status update, and every “Hi, welcome to our forum” comment? You must either really love those regulatory meetings or you really have way too much spare time. Clearly, this isn’t going to be practical. At some point, you have to trust that people will do the right thing and follow the rules without reviewing every single thing they say before they say it.

Crazy…I know. Or is it? As I said, I struggled for a way to simply explain why this isn’t pure madness. It came to me while in the discussion at the conference. My epiphany came courtesy of Brad, who I mentioned earlier. He had the perfect analogy. I’m going to paraphrase just a bit, but here’s the gist:

When someone calls your company’s call center with a question about your product, do your representatives answer the question or do they tell the person that you’ll get back with them in 2-3 weeks?

Not to be outdone, Steve Woodruff, added to this (again paraphrasing):

When your reps are talking to a doctor and the doctor asks a question about your drug, does the rep have to pre-clear a response and get back with the doctor 2-3 weeks later?

Think about both of those statements for a minute. Obviously, we don’t make our call center representatives or sales reps wait for our regulatory process to review their answers before responding to a customer’s question, so why would we have to do this to respond to a customer question on our company blog? Do we trust our sales reps more than the person responsible for our blog? Do call center people get a special set of rules?

I don’t know the answers. I really don’t. You might argue (especially if you’re a lawyer), that the blog response  is “on paper” and therefore, more discoverable while the two analogies are just conversations that aren’t recorded. I suppose it would be harder to “get in trouble” if they aren’t recorded. Of course, this doesn’t put too much faith in your representatives to follow the rules and, the last time I checked, we had these things called voice recorders. If someone really wanted to get you in trouble, they could. Does anyone know the answer to this? I’m not saying that you should let every Tom, Dick, and Harry at your company respond to blog comments, but shouldn’t someone be allowed to do this without having everything approved before they say it?

One final comment that was said around this discussion came from Xavier Petit from Shire. His point related to the fact that we simply can’t ignore that people want to talk to us, so, basically, we have to respond when they come to us. We can’t just ignore them. His analogy was something like this (again, paraphrasing because I can’t write fast enough):

When we realized that people were going to call us on the phone when we gave out our number, did we suddenly decide to cut all the phone lines?

Of course not, but isn’t that what we’re doing when we don’t respond when someone asks us something via a social media channel? We create places for people to comment, but when we realize that they’ll actually do it, we cut off the communication. Actually, it’s exactly the same thing.

So, why are you still here? Shouldn’t you be calling your IT group and telling them to turn off the Internet?

This one is called: “Emerging Media in Healthcare and Pharma.”

Here’s a brief summary:

“There are a significant number of emerging media areas that will affect healthcare and pharmaceutical marketing campaigns in the future. Some will have an enormous positive impact on current marketing practices, while others will have devastating negative consequences on these same practices. The good news is that there are alternatives to the way many current campaigns are conducted that leverage the best in consumer understanding, interactive technologies, and solid marketing strategy (all while staying within DDMAC rules).”

I identified eight emerging media trends that about which I think every healthcare and pharma marketer should be aware:

• Medical Social Networking: Beyond Facebook and MySpace, patients are now connecting with one another online and taking each other’s advice, sometimes over their physician’s advice.
• Live and (Almost) in Person: YouTube is fine for delivering content, but it is instantly outdated. Consumers want to use video to interact with a real person to get the freshest information all from the comfort of their homes. This includes their doctors.
• Secure Communications: People will begin to trust more of their confidential information online, but will expect that it be protected through constantly secure channels.
• Micro-targeting: Targeting consumers has evolved dramatically in the past 10 years to the point where it is possible to find and communicate with a small group of brand supporters in a highly cost effective manner.
• Instant, Dynamic Content: Online content must now immediately change based on user inputs. Providing the same content for everyone regardless of what they do on your site is a losing proposition.
• Mobile Grows Up: Typically seen as a marketing platform that could only reach teenagers, older users are beginning to adopt some of the same habits as younger consumers, opening up a range of new promotional options.
• Managing and Leading Word of Mouth: Tracking down everything that someone says about your brand was impossible without Internet-based technologies. Now brands are expected to track, and where appropriate, join in the conversations that people are having about them.
• Print Goes Interactive: Print isn’t dead, but it needs to leverage interactive technologies to stay relevant and match consumer behaviors.

If you want more information on each of these trends, then you can download my full white paper on this topic: Emerging Media in Healthcare and Pharma  (1687 downloads)

As an added bonus, I want to share a copy of an article I had published in Pharmaceutical Executive last year called “Exercising Your Brand.” This paper outlines these rules healthcare marketers must follow to help ensure a successful digital program. I’ll share the link with you via DM on Twitter if you send this tweet about today’s post (PS: make sure you’re following me, so I can DM you). Deal?

If you want to be informed of any new white papers I publish, just fill out the form below. Your information will only be used for this purpose and will never be shared under any circumstance.

Note: Stay tuned for an updated version of this paper in the coming months. Emerging media changes quickly, so it’s difficult to stay current no matter how often you’re updating.

We see them everyday on pretty much every site we visit…except for pharma. We often use them to make decisions about what products we buy and which we keep buying…except for pharma. We give our opinion to manufacturers, as the people who know what the product really does, to help them improve…except for pharma.

I’m talking about the product review. If you have bought anything online or researched a future purchase online, chances are that you referenced user-created product reviews. It’s becoming fairly standard practice for most companies, as they’ve come to realize that this is pretty much an expected feature among today’s consumer. But it wasn’t always this way. (note: I mentioned product reviews in my article “The Myth of Adverse Event Reporting.”)

One of the big reasons that product reviews were slow to appear for a long time is that companies were afraid of negative reviews. It turns out, of course, that simply having reviews can increase traffic, conversion rate, and average order value (see more detail here). In addition, negative reviews aren’t an issue so long as there aren’t only negative reviews.  Consider this situation. You’re checking out a product online and all the reviews are glowing. What do you think about that? You’d probably feel like the results might not be all that authentic. Instead, when there are negative reviews, it actually can lend credibility to the product (and site) because people know the reviews are actually genuine. Negative reviews don’t immediately turn people off. They read them and consider whether the negative would actually bother them. For example, someone ranks a product 1-star and says “this didn’t work on my Mac.” Well, if you have a PC, you aren’t worried. Simple example, but you see how it works.

AdAge just published an article about product reviews with a great title (good article, too): “Forget Twitter; Your Best Marketing Tool Is the Humble Product Review.” This title says it all. We’re talking an awful lot about Twitter lately, but let’s get back to the basics. Yes, it’s important to monitor Twitter to see what people are saying about your brand, but if you’re expecting some major insight or great new idea, you’re looking in the wrong place. AdAge quotes Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice, a” company that manages product-review platforms:” “His offline analogy is a room where everyone is there to talk about your product [product reviews] vs. a room where they are there to talk about anything [Twitter].” Tough to find the important conversations about a specific product in the latter.

Product reviews have become so mainstream and so important in brand consideration that many companies use product reviews received online in their offline advertising. Makes sense, right? If product reviews drive conversion rates and increase order values, why not advertise your reviews?  Best Buy was one of the first to do this. Bazaarvoice’s blog (company CMO quoted above) had a good article about this and reprinted this example picture of a Best Buy Sunday circular:

With all of this increased adoption of product reviews (and increased sales from them), are any pharma companies using product reviews on their sites? I haven’t found one, so please correct me if I missed one. I’ve seen content reviews, where users can rate thumbs up or thumbs down or assign a number of stars to a specific article or page, but not product reviews. At least, I haven’t seen them on pharma websites. But reviews of pharma products do exist. Meet iGuard. iGuard has user ratings on thousands of drugs including aggregated stats and comments. As an example, you can view the profile for Lipitor on iGuard here (registration required).  Here are some of the overall ratings for Lipitor:

But, how reliable is this information? The Lipitor ratings are based on 45,430 surveys sent out by iGuard (more on their process here). That’s a pretty good sample to me. iGuard also collects information about what patients wish they knew about the drug before they started. For Lipitor, 18% wish they were told more before starting treatment. iGuard used to include what specifically people wished they knew in the drug profiles, but it appears that they no longer post this information. My guess would be that they would be more than happy to sell you the information. This is a great opportunity to figure out what to include in future patient educational efforts.

There are also 80 comments (i.e., product reviews on the site). That’s going to tell you a lot about Lipitor. I’m going to warn you right now, the comments aren’t pretty overall and do include quite a few “adverse events,” but there are some great comments as well. Here’s a sample of each:

“I have taken lipitor for many years and have recently developed chronic inflammation of the pancreas and a triclycercide count of 636. I am not overweight at all, don’t drink, exercise and eat healthy. Can lipitor cause this.? [note: comment unedited]“

“I am a 62 year old female who with out this I can not walk to shop or any thing in my home that took any being on a step stool or walking in my home, now I can walk 8miles to do shopping, do the shopping & with a full 4 wheel personal cart walk back. [note: comment unedited]“

Yes, you will have to deal with adverse events if you go with product reviews. With a simple process, you can moderate every comment and deal with it appropriately. It’s ironic that pharma companies always cite this issue of adverse events when it comes to getting feedback from patients particularly when discussions about social media come up. However, at the same time, more and more companies are voluntarily adding links (which I bet will be required soon enough) to the FDA website and a phone number encouraging people to report adverse events directly to the FDA. This tells me that pharma companies aren’t necessarily afraid of what they might hear, but rather that they simply don’t want to deal with the information. That is, they don’t want to create a process to deal with it. But all these companies already have processes in place for adverse event reporting. An electronic version would flow quite simply into this. Also, keep in mind that you aren’t required to post every comment or review on your site. Those that are inappropriate (not just negative, but contain rants or foul language, for example) can be taken out. You simply need to ensure that you are transparent about your policy on how you moderate comments and which you post and which you don’t.

So, how is adding product reviews going to help you sell more of your product? One of the first things they teach you in sales and marketing is that a customer saying “no” to your sales pitch isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The reason why is because, with some questions, you can figure out why they aren’t interested, and deal with these issues. But going through all of this effort is very expensive. Just look at the budgets pharma companies allocate for field sales teams if you don’t agree. When it comes to pharma, or any industry, keeping your current customers is always cheaper than finding new ones. The people writing reviews on iGuard, for example, are already on your product. You’ve spent money on DTC TV, iMedia, the sales team, print ads, and a thousand other tactics, but now you’re about to lose them. Unless you don’t.

When comments are on a 3rd party site like iGuard instead of your own, you can’t be involved in the conversation. Imagine instead that they were on your site. This would allow you to do two things. Since you would require people to register to leave a comment (and you would), they also would provide their contact information. You can ask them if they’d like someone to contact them about their issue when they sign up. In this case, when someone posts a review saying they are having a certain side effect, you can do something to keep them on your product. Chances are that if this patient doesn’t get an answer, they’ll stop your treatment. So, you can have a nurse or other professional call and talk about the person’s issue. You can even go so far as to contact with the person’s doctor (with his or her permission) and explain the problem. The doctor can then follow up with appropriate actions like dosage adjustments, side effect management, or, where necessary, switching the patient to something different.

Think for a minute how this would be perceived by the medical community and patients. Wouldn’t doctors like to know when their patients are having a problem with their medication? As you know, patients aren’t always forthcoming with this information, as many simply stop treatment on their own before talking with their doctor. So wouldn’t this be a really valuable service? Wouldn’t this also give you an opportunity to talk with the doctor about your brands? I’m not saying you should “detail” the doctor when you make one of these calls, but you would be sharing relevant clinical data about the product during your conversation such as side effect rates and efficacy. This would certainly keep your products top of mind in a meaningful way. As for patients, they’d also find this service useful. Sometimes they don’t know how to communicate effectively with their doctors. Maybe you can bridge this gap.

This is one way that pharma companies can start doing Marketing with Meaning instead of trying to get people’s attention via interruptive  advertising that people are tuning out. It’s not without complications and it would take a unified effort across a number of different divisions in a pharma company to make this happen, but it would be worth it. The impact you could have on physicians and patients would be far larger than any investment and could go a long way to changing the perception of pharma in the public’s eye.

As we all know, big pharma could always use a bit of good PR and this is some of the best it’s had in a while. Some cynics might mention the limitations of the program or that it’s tied to losing your job instead but does not include those with jobs who still can’t pay for their medications. You could also note that higher cost (and higher profit) oncology products aren’t included in the program according to Ad Age’s review of the program. However, the cynics seem to not be making a big splash this time around as most of the buzz is positive. 

Overall, this has got to be a positive PR coup for Pfizer. At the same time, I’m going to guess that they’ll actually not have that many people who fit the requirements for the program. You need to be on branded Pfizer products for three months and then lose your job. Yes, many people have lost their jobs recently, but the employment rate is still (historically-speaking) relatively low and job losses seem to have slowed. The other piece that limits the number of people who might qualify is that patients have to have been on treatment for three months. Assuming people tell the truth, with adherence rates dropping dramatically in the first three months, most patients never make it to month three. My point? This program might not cost Pfizer that much at all. Compare that to the PR value that they are getting (and could never have bought) and overall it seems like  pretty smart move. 

Let’s also remember, Pfizer has a lot to gain from this program. People who lose their job may cut back on medical treatments along with everything else. Those on Lipitor may ask their doctor for something that’s almost as good but much cheaper and they end up on generic Zocor. Pfizer gets nothing. However, when the patient gets his job back, he’ll probably continue with what was working. Pfizer would rather make sure that their drug is the one the patient is taking when they get insurance coverage once again. So, instead of losing them forever, Pfizer basically loaned them some money until they can get back on their feet and start paying once again.

As an aside, Ad Age included this in their article: “A former high-ranking pharmaceutical company executive said the cost to Pfizer for this new push may not be as high as people think. ‘Most of the money [drug companies spend] is in [research and development],’ said the former executive, who asked not to be identified. ‘It doesn’t cost a lot to manufacture the pills or package them.’”

Perhaps this comment explains why he/she is a “former” executive. If this were the pharma business model, then they could be selling every pill for 3 cents. Technically, I guess they’d have to sell the first pill for $800 million and then the next one could be 3 cents. The point of the higher prices is to re-coup the investment in development throughout the life of the product. Giving them away doesn’t have a high costs of goods sold, but it has a tremendous opportunity cost (or sacrificed revenue “cost”). So, seriously with this quote? But, I digress…

The point of this post isn’t supposed to be a Pfizer-lovefest, so I’ll get to it. My challenge to Pfizer is how they could have (can?) bring digital (and relationship marketing) into this program to make it even more valuable and actually turn a profit on it later on. It’s pretty clear that this program isn’t going to be advertised (which also keeps the number enrolling down) and I’m not suggesting that Pfizer advertise it. There also are some rules around offering enticements for getting someone to use your products and free samples (which is what this basically is) can fit in that category in some cases. So, I know that they have to be careful with how they tie this program to current and future sales and marketing.

That said, there’s an opportunity here. On the application form, Pfizer asks for the patient’s email address. I would guess that people would readily turn over this piece of personal information because they feel that they are getting some value in return (my take on this value exchange). But the question is: what can/should Pfizer do with these email addresses? Again, keep in mind that they’ve offered something very valuable in return for information and have people who are likely to be willing to accept some offers in exchange for these free drugs. So, is Pfizer asking each of the people in the program to opt into one of their product-specific CRM programs? For example, an applicant who is taking Lipitor should be offered the chance to enroll in My HeartWise, the product’s CRM program. If Pfizer believes in the value of these programs, then why not try to get more people enrolled?

Since those who get accepted for program are likely to have a very positive attitude towards Pfizer (and rightfully so), why not leverage this while you can? Perhaps they’ll agree to share their story for use on your website. Maybe they’ll write a blog post about you (or send a tweet). Maybe they’ll tell their friends about how great of a company you are. You can help them do all of this by providing them with simple talking points about the program and the company. Let them be your ambassadors while they’re willing and have a great opinion about your company. 

Maybe now’s the time to start collecting product reviews for inclusion on your site later on (when you can sell it to your regulatory team). Surely, these people would be more likely to give you a positive review (or any review at all). All of this is very common in other industries where they do a much better job at finding, energizing, and supporting their biggest brand advocates. They look for the right people through a variety of channels (social media being the big one now). They get them excited about what they can do and the difference they can make. Finally, they give patients simple ways to spread the word to others. It’s not a quid pro quo, as you’re not making their participation in the program contingent on their agreeing to help. Pfizer can follow this same model: find, energize, and support. 

How? The find part is really easy. They’ve got the names, street addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of those that should be the biggest advocates for the company (i.e., those that were accepted into the program). Energizing is hard regardless of the industry, but it can be done here for sure. Let those in the program know the value of what they are getting, how the drugs are going to help them (i.e., they made the right choice to find a way to stay on treatment), and how many other people could benefit, but aren’t. Yes, a little bit of a guilt-trip, but I think fair. Support is the final part of the model and that could be as complex as mailing a PR kit to every member of the program who is interested or as simple as adding a ShareThis button to every product site. Either way, you have to make it very easy for people to share your story otherwise they won’t.

So, hats off to Pfizer for taking on this ambitious program, it’s a 7.5 out of 10. My challenge to you is for you to figure out how you can make this even better and bring it to a 10 out of 10.

• FDA Uses Social Media, But You Can’t
• How to Avoid FDA Regulations Using Mobile Marketing
• The FDA Is Already Creating Digital Promotion Rules
• FDA Isn’t Ready for Us…Stop All E-Marketing

The critical part of the letter was as follows:

“As you are not a manufacturer, distributor, or seller of pharmaceutical products, we have limited jurisdiction over what you post. However, in cases like these, the Act allows us to assume executive powers as indicated under Section OU812 of the Act. These powers can only be assumed when FDA has determined that any marketing (as quoted from the Section in the Act) “makes it appear as though FDA is not a subject matter expert” or “infers that FDA is not in touch with the realities of the marketplace.” Your blog posts violate both of these clauses.”

There’s quite a bit more detail in the letter including some potential penalties, so check out the actual warning letter for more details.

They’ve given me 15 days to stop writing and/or remove all the FDA related content from the blog. I’m not sure what I’ll do now, but I’m not really up for a massive fine at this point. While I’m deciding, I thought we could start something of a petition. So, if you believe that this is inappropriate harrassment by the FDA, then please leave a comment with your thoughts. Maybe that will sway them a bit, but I doubt it. Alternatively, you can write directly to the Director at the FDA who sent this letter, Trevor Manfranginsindin, Esq., Director, Office of Compliance.

So, if you haven’t read my posts about the FDA, now’s the time, they might not be there for long. Thank you for your support in this difficult time and have a wonderful April.

First a story…my company, Bridge Worldwide, is one of a handful of WPP agencies that is “certified” to deliver WPP’s course for marketers called Digital Acceleration. It’s a roughly full-day course that includes practical, hands-on lessons on everything from user generated content to social media to gaming to search to mobile marketing. The idea is that your average marketer walks out of the program with at least a passing understanding of many digital marketing channels (contact me if you’re interested in having this for your company). One of the most important parts of the programs is the hands-on learning. Of course, you get a lot more out of any lesson if you’re forced to participate. So, that’s what we do. For those who don’t have one, participants will create a Facebook and MySpace profile, start a blog, upload photos to Flickr, set up an AdWords program and many, many more activities. This is all pre-work, as we build on these basics in the program (e.g., adding applications to your Facebook page). Many of you likely take these basics for granted, but they are far from basic in many companies and here’s where I noticed the problem.

We were invited to deliver this Digital Acceleration program at a large (top 5) pharma company. They were (are?) enthusiastic about rolling it out to the marketing teams. We shared the scope of the program and the pre-work and got great buy in. However, when it came time to practically doing the program, we hit a snag. Turns out that no one in this company could access most of the sites required for the pre-work. No Facebook, no MySpace, no YouTube just to name a few. There’s an internal firewall blocking access to all these sites. Presumably, this is to keep people from slacking off at work (not that I agree that using these sites is slacking). 

Here’s the real effect…you’ve created a generation of marketers in your company that don’t know the benefits of these types of platforms because they aren’t exposed to them. I know many of the people at this particular company and they work very hard. They are in early and stay late. They don’t have time to go home and investigate the different digital marketing channels on their home computers. If they are going to learn marketing and what’s out there, they are going to do it at work.

But they can’t.

The result…an impossible situation. The brand team members can’t see the benefits of these new channels because they don’t fully understand how they work. There’s a bunch of frustrated agency partners who don’t know where to begin when they are told to bring new ideas. And there’s also an executive suite that wants to do what other industries are doing digitally and can’t understand why their company isn’t doing it. 

In order to create digital programming, you have to live it. If you want your company to understand Facebook and similar social media platforms, for example, you probably need to allow them to access it. Case in point, our company Facebook page has 187 members…not a lot by many standards, but 85% of our employees are members of the group. When you ask us about Facebook, we can tell you everything about it. The good, the bad, the ugly and those little things that only come from using it everyday. That’s the information that is  really valuable. It’s the information that only comes from experience and doing it.

So, this one goes out to all the senior healthcare/pharma senior leaders out there. You say you want your company to be digitally savvy, well then you’d better let them. Take down the firewalls. You trust your people not to do a lot of other stupid things that could jeopardize the company much more than what providing access to YouTube might create. If this is your worry, then you need to go. You can’t have both. You can’t expect your people to be smart when it comes to digital and then not let them use digital. The simplest analogy I can give is this. Imagine Delta decided that their pilots only needed to read about flying (and it was optional) as their training to fly a 747. How do you think they’d fair? I’m betting they wouldn’t be able to get off the ground, but hours in the flight simulator would change all that. Are you letting your teams into the simulator or are you asking them to fly before they’ve even seen a plane?

Going back to the title of this post…if things don’t change, the firewalls of today foretell a bleak picture for pharma digital marketing in the future.