Google and Facebook and Twitter, oh my!

Today's the day you pharma marketing folks have been waiting for: The beginning of FDA's two-day public hearing on social-media and online drug promotions. If there's any doubt that inquiring drugmakers want to know, hear this: Some 900 people tried to register for the event, Reuters reports, far outstripping the meeting site's 350-person capacity.

Here's why. Dazed and confused [1] by the array of new online marketing options--and understandably wary of FDA's response to said array--drugmakers have either tiptoed very very carefully or simply abstained. And still, the FDA sent out 14 warning letters on search-engine advertising this past April, prompting lots of pharma firms to just say no to Google promos. Meanwhile, pharma marketers have been wanting to practice their craft on Facebook [2] and Twitter [3] and other up-and-coming online venues, but absent any FDA guidance, why take the risk?

So when FDA announced it would solicit ideas from the industry and other interested parties, a great outcry was heard in the land. Besides the many who signed up to attend the hearings, a whole host of folks volunteered to speak. Including drugmakers such as Sanofi-Aventis, of course, but also vested-interest types like Google.

We'll keep an eye out for the avalanche of ideas that's sure to come out of that Washington-area ballroom. Already, PhRMA pitched the idea of a universal drug safety logo for online ads, clickable to safety info from FDA or someone else. Sanofi regulatory affairs VP Craig Audet suggests that TV-ad rules could serve as a springboard for Internet-ad regulations.

- read the Reuters coverage [4]
- check out the Health Blog post [5]

Related Articles:
Online pharma just got more treacherous [6]
Social media still uncharted for pharma [1]
Is Twitter less troublesome than blogging? [3]
Facebook, Twitter, ect., new marketing tools [2]
BIO: Promoting your biotech through social media [7]