Andrew Levitt is the Founder & CEO of HealthTalker, a word of mouth agency that specializes in the healthcare industry. He will present at WOMMA Summit 2010, Nov. 17-19 with his client Shire Pharmaceuticals on their case study of a year-long program that drove conversations, insights and motivation for ADHD solutions.

What approach to WOM should Pharma brands take?

It’s really important for Pharma companies to understand and outline the goals and objectives that they have for a WOM campaign and recognize that it is likely not a silver bullet but rather can serve as a really nice complimentary approach to other marketing tactics. It needs to be treated as a distinct and unique marketing tactic that has potentially different outcomes, calls to action, or lifecycles than other forms of media. It should be looked at with the intent that WOM should become part of the DNA of how these brands market themselves by tapping into the power of the consumers that are passionate about the products and conditions that they’re treating.

What are the specific challenges that Pharma encounters when the enter into Word of Mouth and Social Media?

There are a few things that I think cause them the most concern. Since so much of the Pharma industry is based on controlling the message, they are worried about a lack of control. There’s good reason for that because it’s a highly regulated industry. But a company needs to be able to embrace the fact that they should let go of some of that control in order to enable people to have conversations. With that said, there are obviously certain ways that that can be accomplished that doesn’t put a company at risk. If they use some smart approaches, we can help those companies structure programs to do just that.

Another key thing that they’re concerned with is the burden of potential adverse events reporting. As drug companies do more to enable a two-way dialogue and no longer just push out messages and content, but instead opening themselves up to capture real feedback from their customers, there’s the chance that they’re going to hear stuff that they don’t necessarily want to hear about. There’s a burden requirement of reporting. Because they may not totally understand how a program can be structured to fulfill the reporting requirement, it causes them concern to think of what the potential impact or fallout could be.

Whether that’s valid or not, whether there would even be adverse events reported, whether people would be talking about their drug or just a condition to raise awareness, the potential for hearing about those adverse events exists. Those are the issues that require a little more discussion and intelligence to go through a process to understand how to structure something that can work in the industry.

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Summit 2010 is full of great speakers like Andrew. Learn more and register here.