The year has hardly ended on a good note for pharmaceutical content and advertising. After inconclusive hearings in front of the FDA in Washington the industry was stung once again this past weekend by new lawsuits and accusations regarding Wyeth’s past promotion of hormonal drugs to reverse the effects of menopause. However, some in the industry have started to turn away from the constraints that have been placed on content and advertising and have started to turn toward what will work.

“Healthcare organizations large or small can do a better job of giving patients better resources to make decisions,” says Pat Griffin, CEO of Manchester, NH-based “marketing innovations” company Griffin, York and Krause. “There can be a relevant bridge between content and advertising if we have sound messaging. That messaging can lead to powerful viral components. In short we want to see healthcare focus on what we call the ‘customerness’ of their content and advertising.”

Griffin’s approach has worked for four regional hospitals in New England, as it took home six awards from the nationwide CardioVascular Advertising Awards. Griffin says customer-focused relevance was the key to all six of the awards, as well as a strong social media presence. “There is a fundamental debate in healthcare regarding the enormous amount of access to choice that patients have,” he says. “And the goal of advertising is to provide enough relevant information to keep them in the system. In that regard good news travels fast and bad news travels faster.”

Since 2006 the number of U.S. hospitals engaged in social media has skyrocketed.  Over the past three years more than 350 hospitals throughout America have engaged their brand in one type of social media.  According to the blog “Found In Cache” by Ed Bennett, a hospital Web manager who is engaged in the social media space, as of September 21, 2009 there are 186 hospital YouTube channels, 190 hospital Facebook pages, 267 hospital Twitter accounts and 35 hospitals that have their own blogs. 

However, the pharmaceutical industry has not found a comfortable position yet. Part of the problem comes from Griffin’s point about relevancy and the system. Pharma companies have been criticized for using information to keep patients on drugs when they might not need to be, and they have been accused of leading doctors to overprescribe. A relevant, customer-focused approach would simply allow access to information on the content side, and point to that information from the ad side.

“The best thing the industry can do right now is educate consumers about the product they manufacture,” says Rich Kahn of search marketing firm eZanga. “It’s about a proper education. You know we have given consumers the ability to do anything on the internet. You can find good things, bad things, you can find anything. I think we should focus on giving access to the basics about what your product was designed for.”