Online channels have many advantages over the traditional marketing channels used by the pharmaceutical industry, according to GSK senior brand manager Greg Gear.
PharmaDispatch was speaking with Mr Gear about GSK's ‘More than once a night man’ campaign that targets men aged over 55, a population at risk of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), and their partners.
The campaign, which has run for two years and might run again in 2016, has been designed to encourage older Australian men with bothersome urinary symptoms to see their general practitioner.
Mr Gear says he and his GSK team began planning for the campaign with a focus on the traditional channels of print and broadcast media but that they decided to also consider the new digital channels.
"For a start, I wanted to get a better understanding of whether our target audience was online and used social media. What we discovered is that they do use it - and then use it a lot more when they retire.
"Our research showed that around 80 per cent of the age group go on YouTube and share videos with their friends.
"Looking back, it was surprising the extent to which we underestimated the use of social media in that age group."
He describes the discovery as a personal "eye opener" as someone who has enjoyed a long career in the pharmaceutical industry as a "traditional marketer".
"The world has completely changed and pharma is still a long way behind - I think we have a lot of catching up to do. It might take 3-5 years and the first step is a mindset change, starting with individuals."
While industry is some way behind, other parts of the pharmaceutical sector make extensive use of online channels and specifically social media, particularly pharmacy, led by Priceline.
According to Mr Gear, once the evidence was clear the decision to use online and social media channels for the ‘More than once a night man’ campaign was easy - as part of a multi-channel approach.
One aspect of the online channel he really likes is the ability to target and measure performance virtually in real time.
"We could very clearly target our audience, which is much more difficult using traditional channels, and be much more flexible in how we do that.
"When we started the campaign, we used a lot of banners on websites we knew our target audience was accessing, like superannuation and news. We found that it wasn't working in one spot so we were able to quickly redirect the budget to sites where it was working.
"I've never had that ability to measure engagement and level of flexibility before, such as in a traditional advertising campaign where we have to book things months in advance and it is very hard to measure outcomes."
Cost was also a big advantage, he says, pointing to the ability to more effectively target the audience, which along with the lower spend associated with online channels makes the investment more cost-effective than traditional channels.
"Dollar for dollar, I believe online is a better spend than TV, but our thinking is that both can be part of a multi-channel approach. One question we now always ask is how we can adapt something to the online channel, which has also meant we've changed what we need from our agencies," he says.
The campaign results were positive, with the number of men with BPH symptoms treated up 18 per cent. More than 115,000 people viewed related videos on YouTube, 60,000 visited the campaign website and 3,000 men completed a symptom assessment form for their GP.
The use of the online channel has had a wider impact, says Mr Gear, because it has forced the company to reconsider how it uses the multi-channel approach in other parts of the business, including for medical education.
GSK is using online channels to promote wider distribution of its medical education programs, a development set against the backdrop of its decision to no longer make direct payments to healthcare professionals to speak on its behalf about its products.
He says the online channel also has wider implications for how industry engages consumers. Health terms are some of the most searched online and Mr Gear says companies need to engage accordingly. While acknowledging the strict compliance requirements of the Medicines Australia Code of Conduct, he says that is just a part of doing business that needs to be managed.
"Most sectors have some kind of compliance regime so that can't be an excuse for not doing it," he says.
