Follow Who's Following Me on Twitter. But NOT Phishy "pfizer" Please!

Lately I've been doing some research on who's "following" me on Twitter and I've discovered same really interesting things, including a phishy (ie, phony) "pfizer" Twitter account. More on that later.

If you don't know what Twitter is, shame on you! From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can send and receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS (receive only), or through applications such as Tweetie, Twitterrific, Twitterfon and Feedalizr. The service is free to use over the web, but using SMS may incur phone services provider fees."

I first discovered Twitter almost exactly one year ago (see "I'm All a Twitter Over Twitter! Viral Social Marketing at Its Best?").

Twitter is used by many people like Shwen Gwee, part of the Business Solutions group at Vertex Pharmaceuticals and mastermind behind med 2.0 blog. I follow Shwen on Twitter (find him here: http://twitter.com/shwen) even though he violates one of my conditions for following someone on Twitter: I'm not that interested in tweets like "I'm at the barbers waiting for a haircut. There's like 7 ppl ahead of me n I need to be home in 1.5hrs for a call - hope they cut quickly!", which was one of Shwen's recent tweets.

Shwen, however, makes up for mundane personal tweets by posting a lot of information that interests me. Not only does he often speak at conferences such as the recent ePharma Summit (see "ePharma Summit: Practicing What's Being Preached!"), he "live tweets" from them. Shwen's Twitter stats are impressive: he follows 797 people, 952 people follow him (including me), and he has posted 3,504 tweets.

Compare that to my stats: I follows 45 people, 517 people follow me (including Shwen), and I have posted 359 tweets. You can find me at http://twitter.com/pharmaguy

At first I thought I'd end up "following" more people than followed me, but it was soon apparent that I could not keep up with the hundreds of people who follow me. Lately, however, I've been thinking that the people who follow me on Twitter constitute a group of "readers" I should learn more about. So every time someone new signs up to follow me -- I get an e-mail notice when this happens -- I visit his or her Twitter page to learn more. Not only am I interested in who these people are, I am also interested in who their Twitter friends (followers) are. Based upon my review, I decide then and there whether or not I should follow them. I figure that by following the most interesting people with the most friends, that will help me attract many new followers of my tweets!

Why don't I just follow everyone who follows me? The main reason is that I would need to scroll down a long list of tweets from the people I am following to find the ones that really interest me. What I need is a way to automatically filter these tweets to display only the ones that are most relevant. I'm sure there is an app for that - right?

Of course, like everyone else, I am interested in the personal lives of people and I am amazed how much personal information people post to Twitter and other social network applications. Here, for example, are some things I've learned about a few of the people who follow me on Twitter (click on their names to visit their Twitter home page):

Anu Acharya - the founder and CEO of a global genomics outsourcing company called Ocimum Biosolutions. Anu makes some interesting observations such as "Am wondering why the cosmetic industry isnt doing much genomics work. My 'make up' should be mine right?" but she also seems to have a curious hobby: "Its time to let go of Lego and shift our attention to Siftables. They are the coolest little blocks esp the music ones." What are "Siftables"? A Google search reveals: Independent, cookie-sized devices with sensing, graphical display, and wireless communication. I learned something from that, but what do I do with it?

Julia Bigpharma - (I doubt that's her real last name!) I was interested in Julia because of her Twitter handle (bigpharma) and the interesting photo she uses as her Twitter avatar icon. She's into "Pharma gossip, drug wars, and meaningful meaninglessness." I really appreciate that she tweets about my tweets that refer to my blog posts and found this among her tweets: "I'M A DUDE PLAYING A DUDE DISGUISED AS ANOTHER DUDE. This is my life, Jack!" and "My childhood hero is now a gay icon. Discuss." I'll pass on that discussion but I note how Twitter can work to my benefit: a follower tweeted about my tweet and now HER followers know about me -- maybe some of them now follow me directly! I'd like to follow "bigpharma" because I admire big women with radical views who are into 'meaningful meaninglessness." But she only has 23 followers. Sorry, bigpharma.

Marc Monseau - who works at Johnson & Johnson, and "will Tweet about topics that I'm familiar with and that I write about on our blog, JNJBTW." Of course, I also know Marc because he writes the JNJBTW blog. I follow him because of that and also because he has 381 followers and follows 304 people. That's impressive since he just got started with Twitter about a month ago! Marc also tweets about me: "Colleague Tricia corrects blog discussion: http://tinyurl.com/byralc", which demonstrates how pharmaceutical companies SHOULD be using Twitter.

Pfizer Poser on Twitter
"pfizer" may appear to be Pfizer's entry into Twitter, but I suspect this is a "phishy" account; ie, a Phony Pfizer or Pfizer Poser. What tips me off to this? Tweets like "St. Clair County woman filed suit against Pfizer & one of its employees alleging she was injured after the employee collided w/ her vehicle." Why would the REAL Pfizer post something like that, without a link to more info? Also, take a look at this one: http://tinyurl.com/apts9t -- that's the entire post! Nevertheless, the ploy worked! With only 47 tweets made, "pfizer" has attracted 347 followers and follows 346 people -- I suspect whatever bot is running this automatically follows everyone that follows it! Which proves my point about how to leverage Twitter.

It occurs to me that the REAL Pfizer should go after this phony "pfizer" and shut it down. But that's NOT my yob. What I should do is BLOCK "pfizer" from following me. But then I would not benefit from all the dupes who follow it in the belief that it is the REAL Pfizer.

Ah! You've got to love social media marketing!

P.S. Other (Possibly) Phishy Pharma Twitter accounts:

http://twitter.com/merck
http://twitter.com/bms
http://twitter.com/jnj
http://twitter.com/amgen

Pfizer Pfires Thousands of Americans, Outsources Tasks to India

"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country."
-- Typewriting exercise.

"Typewriting" has been replaced by "keyboarding," but should American jobs be replaced by "slumdog" jobs in India?

Take Pfizer. It's buying up other US companies, pfiring thousands of American employees and outsourcing "tasks" to Indian companies who hire cheap "slumdog" laborers to work on these tasks while Pfizer managers sleep!

According to BusinessWeek Magazine, "Pfizer now lets [David Cain, an executive director for global engineering] punt .. tedious and time-consuming tasks [creating PowerPoint slides and riffling through spreadsheets] to India with the click of a button. PfizerWorks, launched early last year, permits some 4,000 employees to pass off parts of their job to outsiders. You might call it personal outsourcing." (See "Outsourcing Tasks Instead of Jobs").

Some might call it "shameful!"

"Pfizer itself announced some 8,000 job cuts in January," reported the same BusinessWeek article. I'll bet some of those people that Pfizer has "laid off" or will lay off know how to do "web searches, number crunching, and other tasks" that Pfizer is now farming out to India. I am sure some of them who are in-between jobs and off unemployment insurance will be happy to work the night shift on these projects even if it means getting paid only a fraction of what they used to get paid while employed.

I've seen at least one story on the Nightly News of a former executive who had a salary of $75,000 now working as a janitor for near minimum wage! Maybe -- just maybe -- he gets health and other benefits as a perk. But those benefits are rapidly disappearing.

Kerry Ramsey said in a comment to the BusinessWeek story, "Rather than outsource this work to India why doesn't Pfizer outsource that work here in the U.S., to help this economy?"

Good question Mr. Ramsey.

Any answers Pfizer?

DTC Ad Spending Decreased 18% in 2008. Worse Than Expected!

As reported in DTC Insights published by DTC Perspectives, "According to preliminary data issued by The Nielsen Company today, the spending for DTC ads fell dramatically in Q4, which led to an 18.4% decline for full-year 2008 results. The "reported" dollar total for 2008 is $4.344 billion, compared with $5.325 billion in 2007. The 2008 total for DTC ads is comparable to the level of DTC spending in 2004."

The source of these data is the Nielsen Company: "U.S. Ad Spending Fell 2.6% in 2008, Nielsen Reports". The Pharmaceutical sector's decrease was even greater percentage-wise than the Automotive sector, which experienced a 15.5% drop in ad spending in 2008. Data does not include Internet or B-2-B spending.

New Media Ad Spending Decreased for All Industries
According to Nielsen: "New media was also hit by the tough economic climate. Internet ad spends dropped 6.4% and Network TV took a 3.5% hit. Nevertheless, television continued to be the dominant medium for advertisers, with 60% of all ad dollars spent on Network, Cable, Hispanic, or Spot TV."

It appears than when times get tough, advertisers tend to stick to "tried and true" media, or at least the media they are most comfortable with. Many pharmaceutical marketers, therefore, may feel it's a bad time for them to experiment with new media like social networks.

I have revised my now infamous DTC Spend Trend chart shown below to include this revised 2008 number:


The black bar represents my estimate of what DTC spending will be in 2009 based on a recent survey (see "DTC Spending Will Be Decimated in 2009, Experts Say" and "The Future of DTC Advertising").

I'll keep my estimated 11% decrease for 2009 DTC spending for now, but if the general economy in 2009 is worse than in 2008, we can expect to see an even greater decrease.

Who Are the "Anti-DTC" Bloggers? This Blogger Wants to Know

It's Friday and you know what that means! The John v. Bob show, where I respond to Bob Ehrlich's weekly DTC Perspective's blog post. When I started doing this, I thought it would be a win-win scenario: I'd mention Bob's blog and he'd mention mine. We would both gain interested readers from each others loyal following.

Lately, however, it's all been one-way: Bob has not mentioned Pharma Marketing Blog at all in his posts, let alone linking to my blog. I continue to mention his blog, but have dropped the link -- you can find that over on my other blog that tracks pharma-related blogs (Pharma Blogosphere).

Today Bob takes on -- and mentions frequently -- Jim Edwards, the author of BNET Pharma, in his post entitled "The DTC Myth?" It's all about an Ad Age story about sleep aid drug sales rising despite a drop in DTC ad spending in that category. Edwards claimed that "this data strongly suggests that patient demand is most sharply triggered by drug efficacy, not by pretty pictures flickering in a fluorescent tube."

Bob takes exception to that conclusion. Turns out I agree with Bob and refuted Jim Edwards last week in my post "Economy Down, Insomnia & Depression Up. Result: Less Ads Needed to Sell More Drugs?" in which I said: "I don't believe these numbers can be interpreted to mean that DTC advertising does not lead to increased sales of brand name drugs." More importantly, I also questioned the "data" that AdAge cited and concluded that not much decrease in DTC spending occurred at all.

But that's not what I really want to talk about.

I want to discuss what Bob means when he says "I am sure the anti-DTC bloggers will try to make the sleep aid story a big deal but DTC will be evaluated objectively at big pharma." Specifically, I want to know who Bob is talking about when he says "anti-DTC" blogger, which he often does.

Being paranoid and an "it's-all-about-me" kind of guy, I immediately think Bob is talking about me. But he could also be talking about the Wall Street Journal Health Blog or BNET Pharma (Jim Edward's blog).

It's too bad we have to sully the discussion of issues with labels like "pro" and "anti." At times, I am as guilty as the next person, putting people into categories. For example, I categorize some blogs as being "anti" industry or "pro" industry and have even surveyed blog readers to see who THEY think are biased for or against the drug industry (see this summary of the first Pharma Blogosphere Survey).

Am I an "anti-DTC blogger?" You can vote below, but first let me say this: First of all, I did not use the AdAge article to rant against DTC and did not make a "big deal" out of it.

If anything, I am anti broadcast DTC advertising because it soaks up too much of the DTC marketing budget, wastes money, is not educational, and opens the door for ridicule of the industry and contributes to its bad reputation. So, if that makes me an "anti-DTC" blogger, so be it. I'll have to live with that label.

Is John Mack an "Anti-DTC" Blogger?
	Yes, he obviously is against all forms of DTC advertising.
	Maybe, since he admits he is against broadcast (TV) DTC.
	I'd say no. But he definitely is a DTC critic, which is not the same as anti DTC.
	Come on! The guy is DEFINITELY anti-DTC all the way!
	This is not important to me and it's a waste of my time to even reply!

Why It's Important to Monitor & Engage in Social Media

This morning I posted about Debbie Phelps being "purged" from McNeil Pediatrics ADHD Moms™ Facebook page (see "Debbie Phelps Purged from McNeil's ADHD Moms Facebook Group. How Cruel!").

That blog post was picked up by Jim Edwards on BNET Pharma in his story, "McNeil Axes Michael Phelps' Mom From ADHD Facebook Page."

Now, both Jim and I have egg on our faces! McNeil's Tricia Geoghegan wrote the following comment to my blog post:

Debbie Phelps' departure from our ADHD Moms(TM) community was scheduled to occur in January 2009 and to prepare for it, we shared this news with fans in a few ways that month. Starting on January 7, 2009, we sent a notice to our Facebook community fans about Debbie's departure; it was sent to the "Updates" section of fans' personal Facebook pages. It read:

"New Year, New Start!
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
New Year, New Start! ADHD Moms will unveil new features and new faces in 2009. This month, Debbie Phelps passes the torch of advocacy to ADHD Moms fans and shares a note of thanks for the memories and support in 2008. Be sure to visit ADHD Moms frequently as we introduce new resources to the community in the coming weeks."

Additionally, from Jan. 7 through Jan. 30, 2009 we posted Debbie's good-bye letter along with a farewell letter to her from our community on our Facebook website homepage.

I should have contacted the company before I made my post to avoid this embarrassment and bad press generated because of my post. I regret not doing that. The only thing I can say in my defense is that whenever I have called the PR people at pharmaceutical companies in the past, I have never received a reply.

Shift Happens!

It appears that pharmaceutical companies are paying more attention to bloggers and other "consumer-generated content" and are willing to engage in the conversation, especially if they feel a need to correct a mistake.

Just today, Jeff Trewhitt, Senior Director, PhRMA Communications & Public Affairs, made a comment to another post ("As Innovation Shifts to Small Companies, How Will Big Pharma Defend High Drug Costs?"). He was interested in my survey on how pharmaceutical companies can improve their public image.

"This is one time when it is better for me to sit back and read and learn rather than respond, though on other occasions, I may weigh in if you don't mind," said Jeff.

I don't mind at all! I invite ALL my pharma friends to sit back, read, enjoy, and by all means weigh in whenever you feel like it!

------------
P.S. Who is Tricia Geoghegan any way?

It occurred to me that I did not verify that Tricia Geoghegan is employed by McNeil Pediatrics and has the authority to speak for that company. I guess I could call the company switchboard, but I haven't got time for that!

So, I searched for her on Twitter and found out she has a Twitter page (http://twitter.com/triciageoghegan) and follows Marc Monseau, communications director at J&J, who also has a Twitter page. But I can't see Tricia's tweets unless she wants me to -- so, I sent her a request for permission to follow her on Twitter.

I also found her on Facebook where she says "My goal in life is to be the person my dogs think I am..." Her Facebook friends are Marc Monseau and Peter Justason, also of J&J. Both Marc and Peter are friends of mine on Facebook (in real life too!). Tricia plans to attend the 2009 National Walk for Epilepsy and attended Obama's inauguration on CNN, just as I did! Sounds like a person I'd like to know better, so I made her my friend on Facebook!