{"id":6343,"date":"2012-09-11T18:25:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T18:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pharma-mkting.com\/mirror-mirror-on-wall-whos-mos\/"},"modified":"2019-02-21T01:18:44","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T01:18:44","slug":"mirror-mirror-on-wall-whos-mos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ec2-54-175-84-28.compute-1.amazonaws.com\/pharma-mkting.com\/blog\/mirror-mirror-on-wall-whos-mos\/","title":{"rendered":"Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Most Innovative of Them All? Pharma, Social Media Wise, That Is."},"content":{"rendered":"
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The pharmaceutical industry has consistently promoted itself as an “innovative industry” by which it means it discovers new, innovative drugs through research. No one ever claimed the drug industry was very innovative in marketing in general or in its use of social media. However, consultant and strategist Andrew Spong, just came close to doing that in a post titled “Innovation: the name of the game for Boehringer<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

“By dint of the sheer weight of evidence that has accrued over the past three years alone,” says Spong, “Boehringer Ingelheim may reasonably be identified as the pharma company that sets the pace for the industry in digital environments…Boehringer merits recognition as the digital leader in the pharma industry not because of what it has achieved, but because of what its activities say about the cultural evolution that has taken place within the company.”<\/p>\n

Spong and many others are lauding Boehringer’s Facebook Syrum game based solely on hearsay evidence — Syrum won’t be officially released until September 13, 2012 (see “BI to Launch Beta Version of its Syrum FaceBook Game on September 13, 2012<\/a>“). The “weight of evidence” comes almost exclusively from tweets, blog posts, and press releases written by BI PR people and John Pugh, BI’s Director of Digital.<\/p>\n

I doubt if Spong or any other laudatory commentator has actually played the game. If they did, I am sure they would have mentioned it and actually written something new about it.<\/p>\n

I am not sure what kind of “cultural evolution” is going in within BI, but I know that the company has exhibited some PR and marketing behavior that regulatory agencies have frowned upon (see, for example, “BI Masters the Art of WOM through Its ‘Parrots,’ er, Spokespersons<\/a>“). This is not indicative of a cultural evolution in pharmaland.<\/p>\n

Spong also mentions BI’s “experiments with outr\u00e9 humour” and links to this “Famously Unpronounceable” YouTube video as an example.<\/p>\n