You have to double-check that a recent tweet out from Pfizer’s official corporate account was in fact real and not from the slew of imposter accounts set up in recent weeks designed to tweet controversial statements under the guise of an official account.
That tweet, which it turns out is indeed from its official @pfizer account, reads: “Wouldn't it be great if a few internet searches could land you a PhD? Thank goodness for real scientists,” and underneath is a meme image of a man at a laptop with the statement: “Incredible! Area man now full-fledged scientist thanks to one internet search.”
The point being that Pfizer, the company that markets COVID vaccine Comirnaty and has borne the brunt of years’ worth of disinformation on social media about its shots, has apparently had enough and, instead of using the British royal family’s line of “never explain, never complain” is, through the power of memes, hitting back.
Typically, Pfizer’s tweets are, let’s face it, pretty boring; the company is no Elon Musk or Donald Trump and plays it very straight with its tweets, something of course it and all pharma companies must do in order to remain compliant with tight drug marketing regulations.
That tweet is a real departure from the norm for its social media team, though they had the good corporate sense to effectively stop any replies to the tweet by only allowing those who Pfizer tagged to reply, which of course was on-one.
There are, however, more than 3,000 quote tweets, where people are able to take the tweet and comment on it indirectly. Those tweets are overwhelming negative against the company, with people asking “what are you afraid of” by removing comments and attacking the company for what has been perceived as a mocking tone.
This comes amid a major shift change for Twitter itself, with new owner Elon Musk landing in hot water with the pharma industry when his blue check subscription idea, which allowed anyone for a monthly fee to have the official blue Twitter check, backfired when one user, claiming to be Eli Lilly’s officially account and came with a blue tick, caused havoc for the company with a tweet declaring insulin was free.
This cost the company billions of dollars in its market cap as investors reacted badly and saw Lilly, and a host of other companies, either pause or rethink their Twitter commercial and strategy plans. That plan is now on hold, but it remains to be seen what the future holds for pharma on the platform.