Originally published on marketingandpharma.com.
Featuring Davitha Tiller, head of social and integrated communications at Havas Red North America.
The days of the Kardashian celebrity influencers are waning in pharma and health care marketing.
Not exactly literally—although Kim and Khloe Kardashian were once high-profile influencers for drug brands Diclegis and Nurtec, respectively—but in general, celebrity influencers with million-plus social media audiences are not as sought after, or effective, as micro-influencers and content creators today.
As pharma companies adopt more robust influencer strategies—now considered key to most marketing efforts—brands are moving beyond celebrity influencers and looking for content creators to build trust with wary consumers tired of too much direct-to-consumer drug advertising.
That’s not to say pharma and celebrity social influencer partnerships will disappear, but if used, they’ll be augmented by real patient voices who bring authenticity over audiences, experts said.
“It’s no longer just about finding XYZ person who checks these certain boxes so that we can contract them,” said Priscilla Ramos, senior director at entertainment marketing agency starpower, part of Real Chemistry. “It’s evolved into ‘let’s find someone who is not only going to bring value to the story we have to share, but we see value in the story that they have to share—their perspective, their lived experience.’ ”
Starpower currently counts 15 to 20 different pharma and health care clients at any one time they’re working with in the influencer space, with interest surging among life science and health brands.
“Influencers have gone from a very new pilot type of tactic to being everywhere. Almost every client we work with understands they need to be doing something with influencers,” said Juliana DiBona, Ogilvy Health senior VP, head of influence and social strategy. “People trust people more than brands. You’re much more likely to be impactful and really breakthrough if you have authentic human voice—especially trusted human voices—sharing your messages.”
As the real patient (and physician) pharma partnerships increase, there’s some discussion around what to call the storytellers. While typically still called influencers, there’s also a move to refer to them as content creators.
“The word influencer comes with a lot of connotations,” said John Ponsoll, managing director at Symbiotix communications agency in the Havas Health network. “We’ve been advocating in the life sciences space for distinguishing the role of content creator from the traditional view of what an influencer does. … In other verticals, like consumer packaged goods, influencers see themselves as a brand to build equity around and a following around. In health care, it’s much more of a mindset where people want to connect to community and share information with others that might benefit from their experience with a health condition or treatment.”
While the terms influencer and content creator are used almost interchangeably, there are differences. Influencers tend to have larger audiences that pharma companies want to access through partnerships, while content creators make content on behalf of brands and companies. To add to the confusion, sometimes patients and physicians can be both.
Ramos agreed “the definition of influencer is a bit fluid, and it’s also subject to interpretation” but she takes a broader view of the word—and its value.
“Today it’s fair to say an influencer is anyone who has an influence on any community, whether very small or very large. There’s great benefit to working with large scale influencers who have massive followings, but there is equal benefit to working with influencers who have smaller more niche followings,” she said.
The key for pharma and health care brands is sourcing authentic voices over audiences, said Michelle Anderson, co-founder of the CLFA Collective.
“Genuine patient stories, not just paying for their audiences, will outperform every other marketing that the brand does. Because that’s what people want—they want to hear from patients who have gone through the same thing,” she said.
Consider the migraine drugs Pfizer’s Nurtec ODT and AbbVie’s Ubrelvy. Both brands launched with celebrity spokespeople who are also migraine sufferers—Nurtec with reality star Khloe Kardashian under Biohaven and then superstar musician Lady Gaga under Pfizer, and Ubrelvy with tennis phenom Serena Williams.
Today Gaga is still a Nurtec influencer, but has been joined online by social media influencers including Alexis of @aforeignerabroad; Courtney Thomas of @cupofconsuella and Alessandra Mayr Vinelli of @alemayr. And Gaga is just one of more than 50 migraine sufferers who tell their stories on Nurtec’s website.
For Ubrelvy, Williams is no longer featured on the brand website, but real patients Crystal, Kendall and Cat are.
“Patients are influential because they’re sharing their own experiences. It’s an authentic point of view which can be extremely compelling … and much more authentic than the brand doing it on the patients’ behalf,” said Davitha Tiller, head of social and integrated communications at Havas Red North America. “What we’re seeing more and more now is brands are further amplifying creator-led content through paid campaigns.”
And that’s the value of authenticity of over audience. Pharma and health care brands can sponsor a popular celebrity or influencer with a large audience, but as Tiller noted, they can, and are more often, use the creators’ original work or co-create content with them, and then broadcast those messages to larger audiences with paid media.
Ponsoll added, “We’ve seen several brands that would heavily script content to a creator who might have a huge following and typically great engagement with content, but the pharma content falls very flat because it looks and smells just like a regular pharma advertisement. When we shift to adopting the storytelling vehicles of the creators and influencers in an authentic way, the content performs well—and far surpasses what their paid advertising can do.”
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Originally published on marketingandpharma.com.
Featuring Davitha Tiller, head of social and integrated communications at Havas Red North America.
The days of the Kardashian celebrity influencers are waning in pharma and health care marketing.
Not exactly literally—although Kim and Khloe Kardashian were once high-profile influencers for drug brands Diclegis and Nurtec, respectively—but in general, celebrity influencers with million-plus social media audiences are not as sought after, or effective, as micro-influencers and content creators today.
As pharma companies adopt more robust influencer strategies—now considered key to most marketing efforts—brands are moving beyond celebrity influencers and looking for content creators to build trust with wary consumers tired of too much direct-to-consumer drug advertising.
That’s not to say pharma and celebrity social influencer partnerships will disappear, but if used, they’ll be augmented by real patient voices who bring authenticity over audiences, experts said.
“It’s no longer just about finding XYZ person who checks these certain boxes so that we can contract them,” said Priscilla Ramos, senior director at entertainment marketing agency starpower, part of Real Chemistry. “It’s evolved into ‘let’s find someone who is not only going to bring value to the story we have to share, but we see value in the story that they have to share—their perspective, their lived experience.’ ”
Starpower currently counts 15 to 20 different pharma and health care clients at any one time they’re working with in the influencer space, with interest surging among life science and health brands.
“Influencers have gone from a very new pilot type of tactic to being everywhere. Almost every client we work with understands they need to be doing something with influencers,” said Juliana DiBona, Ogilvy Health senior VP, head of influence and social strategy. “People trust people more than brands. You’re much more likely to be impactful and really breakthrough if you have authentic human voice—especially trusted human voices—sharing your messages.”
As the real patient (and physician) pharma partnerships increase, there’s some discussion around what to call the storytellers. While typically still called influencers, there’s also a move to refer to them as content creators.
“The word influencer comes with a lot of connotations,” said John Ponsoll, managing director at Symbiotix communications agency in the Havas Health network. “We’ve been advocating in the life sciences space for distinguishing the role of content creator from the traditional view of what an influencer does. … In other verticals, like consumer packaged goods, influencers see themselves as a brand to build equity around and a following around. In health care, it’s much more of a mindset where people want to connect to community and share information with others that might benefit from their experience with a health condition or treatment.”
While the terms influencer and content creator are used almost interchangeably, there are differences. Influencers tend to have larger audiences that pharma companies want to access through partnerships, while content creators make content on behalf of brands and companies. To add to the confusion, sometimes patients and physicians can be both.
Ramos agreed “the definition of influencer is a bit fluid, and it’s also subject to interpretation” but she takes a broader view of the word—and its value.
“Today it’s fair to say an influencer is anyone who has an influence on any community, whether very small or very large. There’s great benefit to working with large scale influencers who have massive followings, but there is equal benefit to working with influencers who have smaller more niche followings,” she said.
The key for pharma and health care brands is sourcing authentic voices over audiences, said Michelle Anderson, co-founder of the CLFA Collective.
“Genuine patient stories, not just paying for their audiences, will outperform every other marketing that the brand does. Because that’s what people want—they want to hear from patients who have gone through the same thing,” she said.
Consider the migraine drugs Pfizer’s Nurtec ODT and AbbVie’s Ubrelvy. Both brands launched with celebrity spokespeople who are also migraine sufferers—Nurtec with reality star Khloe Kardashian under Biohaven and then superstar musician Lady Gaga under Pfizer, and Ubrelvy with tennis phenom Serena Williams.
Today Gaga is still a Nurtec influencer, but has been joined online by social media influencers including Alexis of @aforeignerabroad; Courtney Thomas of @cupofconsuella and Alessandra Mayr Vinelli of @alemayr. And Gaga is just one of more than 50 migraine sufferers who tell their stories on Nurtec’s website.
For Ubrelvy, Williams is no longer featured on the brand website, but real patients Crystal, Kendall and Cat are.
“Patients are influential because they’re sharing their own experiences. It’s an authentic point of view which can be extremely compelling … and much more authentic than the brand doing it on the patients’ behalf,” said Davitha Tiller, head of social and integrated communications at Havas Red North America. “What we’re seeing more and more now is brands are further amplifying creator-led content through paid campaigns.”
And that’s the value of authenticity of over audience. Pharma and health care brands can sponsor a popular celebrity or influencer with a large audience, but as Tiller noted, they can, and are more often, use the creators’ original work or co-create content with them, and then broadcast those messages to larger audiences with paid media.
Ponsoll added, “We’ve seen several brands that would heavily script content to a creator who might have a huge following and typically great engagement with content, but the pharma content falls very flat because it looks and smells just like a regular pharma advertisement. When we shift to adopting the storytelling vehicles of the creators and influencers in an authentic way, the content performs well—and far surpasses what their paid advertising can do.”
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