The FDA is a very well known office for all Americans. As the Food and Drug Administration, it controls the safety of food, medications and cosmetics. The FDA is known for its rigorous rules regarding drugs’ approval. The rules force the pharma producers to apply very specific procedures and inform their customers about the risks of taking the drugs.
Healthcare marketers complain that the FDA does not provide them with clear guidance regarding drugs-related communication in social media. One might then be surprised by how much this regulatory agency is using social media! The first campaign in social media, the peanut-product recall list, reached the public via blogs, You Tube and Twitter. The @FDArecalls started in the end of March and has posted already over 600 tweets notifying its followers about the Food and Drug Administration’s recalls, market withdrawals and safety alerts. The number of FDA followers is growing every day. Other social media tools in use by FDA include a blog, You Tube videos, podcasts, social networks, second life and widgets. It seems like FDA is doing more in social media then pharma companies themselves! European Medicines Agency on the other hand, a corresponding body to FDA in Europe, does not have a Twitter profile neither a blog. One may expect that official tweets about the swine flu would be of big interest at the moment.
Consumers go online and discuss their concerns, they give each others recommendations and answer others questions. Why not listen to them and respond to their questions? As there are concerns on how much pharma companies are entitled to participate in social media, the good start is always to listen to what is out there. These insights can be used for example to better plan product launches based on the understanding of topics that are important for customers. So why not adapt the communication to what we, as customers, are interested in and would like to know?
