Johnson and Johnson saw patients take to social media after the McNeil Healthcare product recall.  Sanofi-aventis stood by as a group of angry patients first created a fake sanofi page to voice their concerns and then took to the official corporate page.  Even Astra-Zeneca took a social media beating when a vendor it was working with inadvertently left a database open for public viewing that contained insights  from a social media listening program.  This succession of missteps has caused many a marketer to panic thinking all of the progress on the pharma social media front will come to a grinding halt.

On the contrary, I think each of these situations is a good thing for pharmaceutical social media. Certainly, product recalls and disgruntled patients are never a positive, but the impact it had on social media will only stand to move efforts forward in the future.

I know what you are thinking: how could realizing every executive’s worst fear of social media aide progress?  Because it made it real.

If there was one thing that has most hindered social media efforts it was disillusionment.  Disillusionment on the part of pharma executives that thought it could reverse poor brand images.  Disillusionment on the part of social media advocates that mistakenly believed taking to social channels was the key to languishing marketing efforts.  And most importantly, disillusionment on the part of both pharmaceutical companies and agencies that thought social media occurred in a vacuum—insulated from the mistakes of other parts of the business.

Welcome to reality folks.  Social media is not a silver bullet.  It doesn’t exist in some alternate universe where your businesses problems do not reflect on your social media presence.  And for heaven’s sake, social media does not sweep problems under the rug—it rips the rug clean off the floor.

This recent string of social media challenges for pharmaceutical companies was a good thing.  It will weed out the folks that are selling social media as THE tool that will reverse the image of the pharmaceutical industry.  It will dispel the notion that social media is immune to crisis and that a comprehensive crisis communications plan isn’t needed.

These challenges will make us better.

• Previous Entry: Pharmaceutical Call Centers: A Path to Social Media Success
• Next Entry: Social Media for Pharma Crisis Communications