Sanofi is top of the pharma pile when it comes to online presence across the globe, but there is more work to be done when it comes to digital communications from the industry at a local level.
That’s according to the latest “Digital Health Monitor” report by PR group Worldcom Healthcare, which ranked the 25 biggest pharma companies by size and geographic footprint on their global online presence.
They did this across 25 countries and focused on 11 digital channels, including apps, blogs, corporate and local company websites such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.
Worldcom Healthcare's last report, released in 2021, saw medtech company Abbott secure the top spot with Pfizer and AbbVie second and third, respectively. Two years down the line, and it's all changed, with Pfizer relegated to fifth place and neither Abbott nor its drugmaker spinout AbbVie in the top five.
Instead, French pharma Sanofi tops the ranking for 2023, coming after it revamped its corporate image, logo and digital communications last year.
Novartis, always a major digital player, came in second this year, and Roche took the final podium position.
That’s good work from all three, given that none of them were in the top five back in 2021’s report. The five lowest ranked this year are Organon, UCB, Eisai, Gilead Sciences and Lonza.
Worldcom noted that it's difficult to directly compare this report and former years as it uses different research partners and looks at things slightly differently each year.
Because of that, the report does not focus on just ranking pharmas but dug down and saw a pattern the researchers believe needs to be challenged and changed. Namely, they saw that while companies have a strong global reach, they are often failing to engage strongly at a more local, country-based level.
“While the use of social media continues to increase, pharmaceutical firms continue to miss out on local engagement,” said Serge Beckers, chair of Worldcom Healthcare, in a press release. “App use has increased but visual platforms like YouTube and TikTok and mainstream social media platforms like Facebook, remain underutilized at a local level."
Beckers adds that the pandemic and other crises have “raised expectations that companies should be more purpose-driven” but argues that pharma companies “are missing the opportunity to convey, at a local level, how they satisfy heightened consumer expectations around topics such as DEI and ESG.”
While Beckers understands that many countries have strict regulation on commercial topics, he said “the human issues relating to purpose present a significant opportunity for pharma companies to build emotional equity with consumers and influencers.”
Doing a deep dive on the issue, the report highlights several problems. It found that while all but two of the 25 companies it assessed have a "global blog," local blogs “remain hard to find.”
It did find that Sanofi “makes most use of the opportunities blogs offer,” but notes that Swiss manufacturing company Lonza, which was 25th and in last place, “does not use the potential of this medium at all.”
It was a similar story with Meta’s Facebook. Here, all but Astellas and Merck have international Facebook accounts, but Worldcom found that the social media site is “only being used to 10% of its potential,” which it found was “mainly due to the lack of country-specific accounts and content.”
International Twitter accounts have been set up by nearly all pharmas bar Japan’s Astellas. Pfizer, Roche, AbbVie and Janssen top the list with 25%, 25%, 22% and 20% in average use scores, respectively. All other companies score below 20% on what the company deems “efficient Twitter use,” the report found.
And how well does pharma use TikTok? “TikTok isn’t used at all,” the report found. “This highlights that these pharmaceutical companies may be missing an opportunity to engage and build trust with younger generations on platforms they use.”
There were also 0% usage scores on image-sharing site Pinterest and messaging app WhatsApp.