Agency 100 Studio Session | LiveWorld: Getting creative while remaining compliant in social media

Mark I’ll give you two here.

Mmm agency 100 Studio sessions

live world. Okay, we’re

rolling.

Hi,

this is Marcus. I’m editor at large for mmm and I’m super excited for you to plug into this episode of a 100 Studio sessions a new podcast series, which gives members of the mmm agency 100 list an opportunity to Riff on what sets

them apart.

In this episode we’re focusing on the agency live world a digital agency specializing in social media and it’s approached to getting creative while remaining compliant. I’m delighted to be joined by Peter Friedman founder and CEO.

Peter welcome to MMM Studio sessions

thanks of delighted to be here

great. It’s nice to have you. So I like when you visit the live World website, you see two buttons one says Healthcare and the other one says everything else.

Yeah,

so that speaks to the unique nature of this industry, which is as we know highly regulated and we’re going to be talking about live world approach to staying within the bounds of mlr while creating compelling attention grabbing content that influences behaviors positively in the social media realm and I know that’s where your expertise lies amongst many other things which we’ll get into Peter. But let’s just first take a step back here as social media has been growing in importance and farm a marketing campaigns. How does Pharma go about driving engagement?

Well, the first thing is is to realize that the patients in the doctors have moved to social media. So you have to start with understanding that and second you have to recognize that Healthcare Market was pretty transformative Market. They’d be slowly moving but transformative.

Now is one where farmer companies have to start owning the patient Healthcare journey and the doctor Health Care journey and what that experience is what the emotional experience is. And today most farmer marketing. It’s been like here’s my product and here’s the data that goes with it particularly with doctors but also with patients and we get that and one of the reasons for that is sort of conservative because it’s regulated. There’s all this compliance. It’s like well we can’t do all this other stuff because we’ll be out of compliance.

But the customers the patients of the doctors are pulling it over and you have to own that experience. You have to be out of the box creative. You have to engage and have comments and conversations.

But you can do this while being compliant. That’s where we come in

and

then you have to say okay. I got to really research this. I gotta have data. I’ve got another emotional experience and then move into that not with you think this would be different today, but it isn’t a traditional broadcast. Your ads just happens to be in Social channels, but actually create experiences for people and be social which is comments and conversations. That’s how you have to do. It comments and conversations. Okay. That’s

Risky Business. We’re Farmers concerned out of the box creative comments and conversations while

being compliant.

Okay. So let’s get into it. What are some examples of how you better reflect, you know from perspective of the patient journey in your creative. Well, here’s an example.

We’re not allowed to say which is but here’s like a medication for specialty disease condition. We’re pretty big we do on specialty but we do a lot of specialty ones. This is one it’s only a few thousand customers, but it’s expensive and you know,

important society-wise and economics

and it’s needles people have to inject this stuff and they have to be on a regimen and a schedule and the schedule itself. We got to go to the doctor you got to do this got to do that mucks up their lives. Everything has to be around it, you know the kids everything in their life has to be wrapped around the schedule for these injections.

And the injections are painful.

And you get bruises and you’re sore and debilitates you here comes a company and they have an oral version of it.

Which is basically a huge Monumental Game Changer now traditionally people will go and here’s my thing and you get take it orally and now it’s all noisy and everybody knows the doctors have the inertia of the patients, aren’t sure.

So what we did is we spent time really learning what these patients experiences about and we came up with a creative campaign. That starts said this is how your journey starts. It’s like the needle a thing coming out of the needle and now this is where it goes and it’s a pill.

And then we had patient testimonials and the situation like that. You said comments and conversations is

risky.

if you take this thing and somebody else says all right, I didn’t have the ejection and I know what it is because like my arm looked like this or I did this and that

That other patient locks it on that like no ad will do no no Regular Ad will do and that’s how we marketed it with creative that got to the emotional experience wasn’t just about here’s the product the data. It was really going on and we encourage comments and testimonials because they could say what could happen. So you’re giving voice to your patience, which then gives more differentiation attention to your brand and similarly. We take those gonna jump to hp’s we take those patient experiences and we Market them to the doctors so they can feel what the difference of their patiently that’s just using the creative and adding in conversations and we had another one.

she ended up on The Cutting Room floor, but I really liked which was what you can now do with that bucket that you dispose the needles of

it can be a planter.

Stuff like that and I could tell you anybody using this drug in the needles locked in on that because that needle disposal thing is a Bane on their existence. And now you suddenly you don’t have to use it anymore. It becomes a positive element of your home

right? Turn it into a post

that’s bold out of the box relation to the patient type marketing.

What was it about the comments that really made Pharma fear and that year able to you know, sort of get around now that makes them feel comfortable as you said bringing that patient voice to life through the comments. Was it Adverse Events

Adverse Events? Yeah, and you know your regulated the FDA requires that when an adverse event comes in front of you on your Facebook page on your Instagram, not anywhere on Twitter, but where you can see it and response to your comments or ads anything like that. You have to catch it Mark it track it and report it through structure channels the FDA usually within 24 hours.

And this is actually how we got into Pharma because we’re like big on moderation. We’ve been where the highest quality moderation company in the world. We’ve been doing it for 27 years. We have all these people for it. We have those technology process.

expertise people and Technology

and we can manage that with compliance and we have tracking models and everything in the way we do it that doesn’t it’s empowered by technology, but wouldn’t rely on it. You need human judgment for this so that we can manage for we mitigate that risk, so you can have you can have conversations. You can manage it. If you have a moderation engagement partner who knows how to do it and how to manage it and can scale it and most companies can’t do that.

and in the creative

Going back to that. You have to have people who really understand the need and know how to execute the creative. So the all the regulatory stuff and just what mlr and everybody wants and what the social media networks are doing you bring that together and when it changes which like Facebook just did a bunch of things changed it again Bang You’re right over and you can redo it all.

Quickly and the client needs to have confidence that you can do that and then

the right.

Okay, you give an example on the consumer side earlier when you give some examples on the hcp side because as we know they of course as you said been using social media for professional purposes, have you been able to get creative with that audience? Yeah,

you know 81% of Physicians. Now you social media for professional purpose. So like 30 or 40% change their treatments even right prescriptions differently because of what they learned on social media and this divides it to two forms. There’s kind of Pride more private doctor or nurse only communities like sermo or doximity. We do a lot of work there but you know urologists are loading up cancer scans on to Instagram and sharing him and talk to you about them there too. So there’s a lot going on there. So here there’s a patient voice ones. But another thing we do is we try to get them here information or we try to help them break out of the inertia of what they’re doing. Remember doctors are just Avalanche by stuff coming from every direction, so

Did is there’s one particular especially drug again, and we created a quiz an interactive quiz with leaderboards and everything where you could answer questions and basically by answering the questions you found out the answers. They didn’t know the answers, but they realize these are questions of what you can do. So we help pull them out of the inertia of what they’re doing and gave them the knowledge they needed to do it. They also like peer information a lot you want to have them in peer communities and bring authoritative doctors. We have a chief medical officer and he’ll bring things forward and we work with a clients take their knowledge for in a way that the doctors can do something with it. Not just

I mean you need all this data stuff you do need it because they’re gonna want to look at that. But you need to break them out of that situation and again patient stories and Journeys how somebody got healed. I mean these people are in this profession because they want to help people and if you personalize their patience,

And the effect these things have that catches their attention

sure make it personal emotional. Not just data-driven. You said earlier, you know, we’re talking about the 64,000 question of how you get mlr to be agreeable to make sure that what you’re doing is compliant on social media despite, you know the or you know, even with the comments and conversations involved but one nagging question that some people might have is okay, you know, you you say that you you know, your partner that knows how to monitor these things but traditionally historically Pharma has still been reticent. So how have you been able to kind of get them these brand managers to get their mlr departments on board and accepting of using social media given the opportunity for your use your generated comments and therefore Adverse Events and comments the first thing you have to do.

Is help the brand marketing people the marketing people understand to partner with mlr upfront and look at them as a partner to reach the business objectives. Not an obstacle theater.

You make it a partnership to achieve the objectives of everybody. Yeah. Well our people are trying to mitigate manage the risk for the company and when they understand the marketing people and their partner are there to help them do that. It changes the entire dialogue then what we do is we give them examples. We show them work we’ve done for other people and how we’re doing it right there. The risk of version goes way down. Then we show them the process structures and the technology systems we used to do it and it drops again and we read this legal departments and consumer packages too. Almost the same thing. So you have to show them. No, we have structure. We have management. We have a process we archive everything. It’s secure it can be audited when they see that now all of a sudden this program is the less risky one because you’ve got what’s going on. So that really that really helps a lot and we have screenshot library that we keep just to show them things like that and other examples and then another thing that we do

Is we help them develop their process. It’s actually one of our products go playbooks where we develop a playbook for the company that deals with every social media channel all the rules of what you do and we help the company to find the process by which mlr stuff for social media is done.

So now then instead of like every brand comes along with a new thing, it’s basically Reinventing the wheel we Empower every brand to work it away that is acceptable to mlr. We streamline the process. We make it efficient. Now, I’m always very happy because we actually improved that’s working circumstances the company and reduce the risk from where they were before

it almost makes it seem like as you said the less risky option if there could be such he comes the less risky option, right you have any tips or techniques for accelerating the mlr review and approval process?

Well, the Playbook I would call it streamlining more than accelerating. Well, it does make it happen faster. The Playbook one is the best one.

Yeah,

because that creates a structure discipline process that everybody knows ahead of time.

Including like when an adverse event or a crisis of a different kind comes up. How does it get dealt with it? Everybody knows ahead of time. Then we train people on it things like that. So you make it faster by educating everybody putting a structure process in place at streamlines. It makes efficient

right

processes and procedures bring the blood pressure down. What are some of the keys to developing attention grabbing and behavior influence in content in social media.

Well that goes back to the emotional.

Resonance of the patient journey and really understanding what happens and doing your creative in the context of the people. And so what you do is you create interesting interactive experiences, like quizzes and testimonies and sharing experiences and giving voice to the customers. So you make it an entertaining and engaging experience where you give voice to them in their stories. And again anybody who has a condition

And it’s an ongoing chronic condition that affects their lifestyle. This is deeply emotional to them. And if you give voice to that emotion through your creative, then all the other people go to resonate with an immediately.

Have you encountered situations where?

The customer the client rather is is not thrilled. You know with what’s coming back in the comments. How do you handle that?

Now, assuming not adverse event related, but just kind of experience that type of thing.

Well, we point out to them. This is what your customers are saying. We had a consumer package Goods guide. He had like the products. That’s a GMO stuff which by the way most people are somewhere between positive and neutral about but there’s a loud voice it isn’t and

Um, people are beating them up on their Facebook page. This via Market is like living about it. You know, it’s okay, but they’re doing it and it’s not, you know you they’re gonna say it, you know on the internet you can go anywhere. It’s just one click away. So when you get it in your social media now, it’s revealed to you. Now, you have to decide what you’re gonna do about it and this ranges from customer feedback where you should learn that like the way you’re communicating isn’t resonating or there’s something about your product or the experience that they’re not liking and you should change it.

Or it could be activists and antagonists that are organized against you and there’s ways of handling all these different things. So you want to understand it as a extremely valuable Insight mechanism that can inform you on what you want to do and how to do it and there’s techniques for that the old PR technique of command and control and shut it down doesn’t work.

Social media doesn’t let you do that. So what you have to do is embrace it even if they’re beating you up on your own page, listen mitigate redirect. And sometimes you have the opportunity to flip it you wanted attention. Now, you’ve got it depending on what it is you say, you know, that’s really interesting but it turns out here’s what’s really going on. Don’t argue about it you get in the information to show you really care and

My experience from when I was at Apple, which is an emotional product and working for the biggest brands of the world the Procter & Gamble and Walmart big Pharma companies like Pfizer happy and Bristol Myers is people care more about are you listening to them?

And are you paying attention to them more than the actual issue that came up unless they’re like an activist antagonist. There’s another methodology. I’m dealing with that.

So if you give them that attention you’ve gone a long way and if you they start feeling you’re an advocate for them.

Then they’re gonna understand that it was always issues.

Hmm, right? There are aren’t there and that’s kind of like you reminded me of the Twitter episode with Lily, you know, when someone created a frequently account after Elon Musk retired the blue check system and and then they did have to take take their their handle down or pull out of you know, they’re they’re paid social campaign. So there are times when you need to do a little command and control.

Well that’s triage. But you know, there was an opportunity

in there

for my point of view just say, okay. We got a big authenticity and reliability problem going on here.

courtesy of Twitter

and you know in healthcare authenticity and facts and Science and connecting with people’s important. So here we are the bread and now we’ve created this.

That you can rely on I would have done that.

Right and that would have gotten that would have gotten them a lot more attention a lot more people to their websites or social maybe not on Twitter which you know as authenticity issues. We’ve got a lot more people to their other social channels and website and would have showed that they

care.

Yeah, don’t don’t watch this. Watch this.

Yeah, Proctor gamble is a client for us for many years and Pampers is their biggest business. I think it’s six State billion dollars a year now Big Brand and a bunch of years ago and managing their social media for the time. They introduce dry Max first product Innovation, and their number one product line forever.

And then a bunch of moms start blogging about diaperesh.

and

Initially, it was a command and control response recovers. Hey, you can’t do that that they listen to us and then it changed into you know, we love babies. We love babies. We have a lot of information on the product here, by the way. It doesn’t cause these problems and diaper rash is kind of a bad set Awards doesn’t exist is something else but we love babies. If you’re having a problems all we care about let’s come in and look at it and they just every other sentence. We love babies and they brought these moms in they did all these different things try to listen to them.

Yeah,

and they just keep saying, you know, the number one thing is the baby. Let’s you baby. And if our products are problem it isn’t but if it is we’re gonna deal with it.

Yeah,

so they position themselves is really caring about it and was a long haul and Slug and we had to find surface pause because they were getting very depressed with time. The product was released in Europe. They were ready for it.

And they came out with like watch out for this. It’s not our product. But this is what happens and lots of things like that

use it. So that’s a learning a way to really

take another view

and

embrace it.

One last question, but about platforms if I may be talking about Twitter a little bit. We didn’t talk about Facebook Instagram, but you know tiktok seems to be you know, obviously the hottest platform right now. Are you seeing a big movement of you know, where is farmer with tic tac right now?

Tiktok is really big. It has created a very engaging usage pattern which people like and they’re seeing other people and things like that. It’s not all dances. Lots of different things Healthcare is actually quite big on tiktok and and Rose to prominence during the pandemic where you see like a hospital staffs. Just we’re leaving the pressure by doing dances and things like that. There’s lots of influencers nurse influencers and other things there.

Farmers tiptoeing in

we actually worked with tiktok in the last couple years for them develop an API where a third party technology such as ours could moderate it.

And you now can there are some things are still working on such as geofencing and age demographic fencing in different ways. So that the Pharma companies could feel comfortable. They’re following Regulatory and what’s in front of who but they’re doing that and you can do some things now and there’s some farmer companies that are doing some different things on there. It’s very tiptoeing, but I think we’re gonna see a lot more and we’re really big in the tiktok. So,

Mordecai that we can moderate it and they’re I think you can do a lot with it because it’s an emotional experience. Each of these things is different the thing about Instagram when you use it, right is you’re putting people into the experience that you’re having.

A tiktok is the experience.

So just have to recognize that and you’re gonna see there’s a lot of educational stuff going on. Now that’s not from a farm recoveries do from doctors and nurses and things influencers and people sharing stories, right? The farmer companies have the wealth of knowledge.

that everybody needs and they also have

the ability to follow it through where you need more and they have visibility into all the science and many many more patients. So as they come into it embrace it that’s going to be real positive impact on health care and then hospitals when they recover from the pandemic Crush

because they’re they’re economics are crushed.

They have the structured follow-up.

So I think we’ll see Pharma companies and then eventually when the hospitals could not get out of the crush. They’ve been in a lot of Hospital stuff to give enhanced the healthcare Journey.

Yeah,

we do right now. We’ve done a dementia Community from Mount Sinai navigating dementia, usually adult patients adult children of dementia patients.

And it’s to help them take care of their parents. But so to help them take care of their own lives because it’s very hardship when you have a dementia patient. What do you tell your kids? What do you do in your own how and because Mount Sinai can follow up with the structure path to health care really makes a difference. So we’ll see both there eventually.

If it’s amazing how much younger Generations go to tiktok First for Health Care information and but what I found really interesting was how many https from the younger generation going there for medical education as a really eye-opening you will see you will see.

as the people

born after like 1980, you know the eighties nineties as they’ve come into the 30s and 40s now they stopping they take the social media with them because when you grow up with something like that

It’s not a fad. It’s not a novelty. It’s a utility in your life.

And we’ve talked to some younger so 30s to early 40s doctors and we talk about our vision what we want to do and and I had one I said, well we could make it easy for you to have conversations with your patience.

continuously

started to cry

She said I can’t treat right current patients as much as I want let alone take on more because I’m constrained by all these barriers. If you can make this stuff HIPAA compliant and you can give me the structure that I need. You’re giving me back.

Why I want to do this

and

you know somebody who never really did it. I mean there’s some older people get into it.

But if you know, this is the way people experience it live and you’re dedicate the healthcare. You’re just dying for them to come together.

So we’ll see that more.

Yeah. Well one final question, I’d lied earlier when I said was the final question this being the a100 studio sessions. I got to ask you what was the last song you listened to?

Oh the last song I listened to was why I was a coming up here. My Instagram was Taylor Swift in concert talking about Mother’s Day and her mother and starting to cry and the stadium broke out and Applause. She didn’t stop saying you just see it.

All right. She’s on tour now right ever somebody here. Yeah. Yeah,

I get a lot of Taylor Swift on my Instagram because I click that. Yeah, but I like her songs a lot.

Yeah. It was a reason she’s so

popular.

Okay, well to that end also want to belatedly welcome you to the 100

and another song by favorite artists of my up and coming in New York Big Valley Latina

Valentina, okay.

All rights what genre is oh it’s a mix of folk and pumpkin pop she’s

got a very unique sound okay is around bars and clubs around the city.

Okay, cool local band and a friend of giving a plug. Okay. All right, I plugged her. Yeah, we’re gonna give them I don’t expose. Yes. Okay good,

but I did I did that was those were the two in the car?

Yeah. All right. Thank you for being honest the tune into those on Spotify and as the agency progresses new member of the a100 congratulations on that as you progress in the mission of helping Pharma compliantly participate in social media. I hope we can have another conversation down the road

that we great. We’re excited to be in the 100 and we’re excited to work our way up from the top 100 to the

The top 10 and we will alright, so thrown down the gauntlet. Okay. That was a great

conversation come back for another one. This has been Marcus with repeater Friedman. We’ll see you next time.