EphMRA – one big social, or was social the big one for EphMRA?

EphMRA this year – a theme of the 360 degree future, with a strong and consistent message of improved customer engagement with ‘social media’ (apparently a now redundant term but that’s a topic for future discussion), as a means of both ensuring participation with and a route to sourcing research and insights. 

Speed, breadth, depth, FUN (who’d have thought participation in some quantitative form-filling research could be fun?).  It’s all there if we can harness the approach, ensure validity, manage compliance with ADEs and codes of conduct and are confident we can gain the insight we are seeking.

Is “traditional”, standard research dead? Absolutely not – but then none of us should be doing ‘standard research’.  We still need to be asking the right questions, to the right people in the right way – delivering insights that inform and impact upon real business decisions.  So it’s evolution not revolution.  We all have work to do to truly understand the ‘under the skin’ emotive drivers and motivations to behaviour – both patient and healthcare professional – but we shouldn’t ignore the opportunities presented by online developments that we can tap into. 

To know more on how Branding Science can help you join the dots (or docs in the pharma world) and both engage and gain insights through a more social and engaging approach to research, give us a call.   Whilst our Customer Councils TM, CompComs and similar co-creation tools have been doing this for years we can provide the means to harness an online approach to tackling those issues that would gain from a new approach.

The author: Simon Noble-Clarke is Managing Director at Branding Science. He previously held various positions in sales and market intelligence with some of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies.