It’s the best of times; it’s the worst of times. What to do about social media? Like a child looking through a sweet shop window, pharma companies are both mesmerized and, at the same time, self-constrained from joining the throng of consumer businesses sampling the tasty delights of Facebook, Twitter and all those other socially frosted comms channels.

In a recent survey of healthcare marketers we found almost one third of responders said they had no plans to use social channels in 2014 and of those that did, more than half were pessimistic about their likely success. As an industry, there is a strong feeling that the opportunity to connect with patients via social and digital media is passing them by.

And it’s not just the companies, it’s their agencies too. For too long the formula of pushing comms through doctors and other health professionals has been a profitable cookie jar – and if the client doesn’t want to pull their hand away, then why should agencies risk losing that which feeds them?

Of course, there are good reasons why pharma and other healthcare companies are reluctant to sweeten their comms pills for public consumption. There are significant and necessary regulatory barriers, particularly relating to the reporting of adverse events. For many senior managers, the return on investment just does not justify the costs involved in all that extra monitoring.

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