His answer was, “By the overall actions of the company,” the good stuff that they do, their transparency, etc.
Guess what: That’s not working. Think about it, folks – when someone betrays you in some way (whether they meant to or not) and then showers you with attention and love but never acknowledges the betrayal in the first place, are you won over?
If the burn is minor, you might forgive them in time, but the bigger the hurt, the more impossible it becomes to forgive. So when someone posts on Facebook or Twitter that a drug hurt them or a loved one, or points to seeming evidence of coverups, the carefully crafted corporate platitudes aren’t going to cut it.
They’re not cutting it now. They will never cut it.
Ignoring the query or accusation won’t help either, because social media being a public arena, everyone else can see that you are ignoring the person (even though you may have reached out privately, if you don’t say publicly that you have reached out, it leaves a bad taste in onlookers’ mouths. People take conversations offline all the time, but if the conversation was a public argument, letting others know that you’re trying to be adult about the situation wins points in your favor and can defuse people from jumping into the fray).
In the end, pharma efforts on social media would go over better if they sounded a lot more human. (For more thoughts in this vein, you can see my editorial in the November issue of Med Ad News.)
