For Pharma Marketers, Celebrities + "Social Media" = Gold Mine!

Today, I learned from a @Novartis tweet that yet another celebrity is  teaming up with a pharmaceutical company to leverage "social media" for marketing purposes. The celebrity is singer and LGBT rights activist Cyndi Lauper, who admits she she has "moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis (PsO)."

Lauper is featured on the "THAT's PsO ME" website hosted by Novartis in conjunction with the National Psoriasis Foundation.

Novartis recently won approval from FDA to market Cosentyx  (secukinumab) for the treatment of moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis in adult patients.

In a PEOPLE magazine article published yesterday, Lauper reminds us that "It's not just a rash. It's a disease" -- a statement straight out of the pharma marketer's playbook.

Of course, like many other aged celebrities hired by pharma (e.g., Monica Seles admitted she suffered from binge eating disorder for many years; she too came out in PEOPLE magazine after signed on with a pharma company; read more about that here), Lauper suffered from her condition in secret for many years before being paid by pharma to come out in the open. "You don't have to suffer in silence or live in pain," says Lauper after doing just that for years.

Not only is Lauper shilling for pharma in PEOPLE magazine, she also "joined" the THAT's PsO ME "community." What's that all about?

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A Patient Journey Story Pharma Wishes Wasn't Told

Attend any pharma marketing  conference these days and most likely you will hear these buzzwords: "storytelling" and "patient journey."

For example, at iPharma 2015, Brandon Graham, Chief Creative Officer, EUXmedia, talked about "storytelling" and the "patient journey" and how to effectively use video to follow a typical patient in their "journey" from pre-diagnosis through therapy (read more about that here).

I hate to tell you this, but the news media does a much better job following Graham's advice than any pharma company I know. But media stories more often than not portray pharma as the villain, not the shinning knight that rides in to save the damsel in distress!

Take, for example, last night's NBC Nightly News story about Lauren Baumann, a cancer patient who manages her chronic myeloid leukemia by taking Gleevec, a medicine developed by Novartis (after much pushing & shoving by cancer patient advocates -- but that's another story).

What's her story? Why was it told on national TV? And what should have been done to prevent the story in the first place?

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