Pharma ads aren’t trying to be clever – just compliant

My son’s hockey team was down 1-0, and the third period was drawing to a close. I sat in the stands watching anxiously, trying to focus on the game. However, I couldn’t help eavesdropping on the parents next to me talking about pharmaceutical advertising. As someone who’s worked in pharma advertising for years, my ears perked up.   

“What I don’t get is why they won’t tell us what the drug is for,” said the parent. “It’s all just, ‘See your doctor.’ I mean, What’s with the mystery?!” 

“Well, I’m sure there’s a good reason,” said the other parent, oblivious to the score. “Maybe they are trying to be clever.” 

I’m grateful there was a youth hockey game to distract me because every fibre of my being longed to leap out of my seat and shout at the top of my lungs: “We’re not being cute! We’re being compliant!” 

To those who aren’t well-versed in the complexity of pharmaceutical advertising in Canada, pharma ads can seem purposefully vague and mysterious. No mention of what the drug actually does and what condition it treats. Just a cryptic “talk to your doctor” at the end. What many people don’t understand is that in Canada, direct-to-consumer, or DTC, marketing is subject to Section C.01.044 of the Food and Drugs Act, which states that if advertising a prescription drug to the general public, only the brand name, the price and quantity of the medication can be referenced.  

It is quite literally against the law to mention the therapeutic use of a prescription drug in Canadian consumer advertising. Additionally, all pharmaceutical content undergoes rigorous internal reviews – by Medical, Regulatory and Legal Departments – and external evaluation by Ad Standards Canada. 

This makes marketing pharma very different from marketing other products; imagine trying to create an ad for paper towel where you can’t mention it cleans up spills! But, DTC is vital because there is a need for pharmaceutical communication and brand building. Canadians need encouragement to speak with healthcare professionals about disease care. Canadian patients want to be educated and empowered with the tools to engage their healthcare providers in dialogue about their health. Pharma ads are an important part of that education. 

For example, look at a common – and growing – disease like diabetes. According to Diabetes Canada, there are millions of Canadians living with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes (T2D) who don’t know it. T2D is one of the fastest growing diseases, with more than 60,000 new cases diagnosed annually. And the effects of T2D can be debilitating. Encouraging Canadians to speak with a healthcare professional, which is what advertising and communications do, is vital to our health.  

DTC that connects 

Because the stakes are high, research-based pharma would love to be more direct with Canadians. But strict regulations require a different approach. So how can pharma engage their audience in a compelling way while navigating the complexity of the regulations? Some best-practices our award-winning team at ChangeMakers has used: 

• Memorable creative – As with all advertising, you need content that gets noticed. And because the content will be light on details, there’s room for exciting creative. Compelling images, quirky dialogue or a catchy jingle can help grab attention. Also, develop an emotional connection to the viewer by depicting realistic scenarios that speak to shared experience. It all serves to create something memorable for consumers and helps encourage them to start a conversation in their physician’s office. 

• Surround sound and inclusivity – Don’t approach your audience from just one direction. You need an appropriate mix of out-of-home, print, digital, video and in-clinic mediums. Community and multicultural papers and websites are also great places to meet your audience. But don’t just translate copy for diverse audiences, develop new – culturally appropriate – creative and taglines for commonly spoken languages across Canada like Hindi, Italian, Mandarin, Punjabi and Spanish. 

• Earned media – When there’s compelling creative, business and marketing reporters will often take interest. Marketing trades, dailies and online news sites can profile the strategy and creative insights that drive DTC development. In fact, the restrictions on advertising often make stories about campaigns that much more compelling. Through compliant editorial engagement, you can support disease understanding with consumer health reporters who are interested in addressing complex conditions impacting Canadians.   

• Evaluate and course-correct as required – As with other campaigns, you must have a clear measurement plan to assess the success of your DTC initiatives. Stay flexible to allow for adjustments to the media buy to drive key performance indicators. 

Sometimes being in a restricted environment prompts innovative thinking. Some of the best campaigns I’ve worked on were pharma – not in spite of regulations, but because of them. Necessity is the mother of invention, and being hemmed in can bring out the best in creative and strategy. 

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We find ourselves in the teenage years of the dominant social media platforms – Facebook is 20 years old; Instagram is 14; and 18-year-old Twitter has angrily changed its name to X. As with any teenager, volatility is the norm. Recent years brought us the mountainous rise of TikTok, the faltering of Twitter, the birth of Threads, the rise and fall of the metaverse, Bill C-18, Apple’s app tracking transparency, and generative AI for all. There’s been a tremendous amount of change. 

Constant change and disruption are woven into the fabric of the digital landscape. So how do communicators and marketers navigate these rapid transformations of technology, norms, and tastes? There are really only two choices – radical change every quarter or create a long-term, stable social strategy. The former is going to consistently get you into trouble, the latter will set you up for success for years to come.  
 
Just because platforms are volatile doesn’t mean brands have to be. Amidst the chaos, the smart move is to create integrated strategies that bring together social, creative, media, and web teams to curate moments and create ownable content focused on measurable goals.  

If users don’t win, everyone loses  

We are in the midst of a fierce battle for attention. Consumer ability to jump toward shiny new platforms is forever shifting how social media properties operate. As communicators, we should be rooting for more success, not failure. A healthy, competitive social media ecosystem is better for all of us as it incentivizes communicators to create compelling messaging.   
 
Meta’s platforms, along with TikTok’s, increasingly suffer from a proliferation of out-of-touch and socially disconnected ads. A surge in poorly crafted – and often auto-generated messaging results in user disengagement; they post less frequently, see less of what they want, and before you know it, you’re in a platform death spiral. This cycle creates a worse environment for users, contributing to declining diversity, doom-scrolling and deteriorating mental health – which is a lousy environment for organizations to communicate in with users.    
 
No one should add to this deterioration. Marketers and communicators must be thoughtful about what we bring to the party. Audiences want to be seen and acknowledged, and they crave relevant content. Brands who lead with authenticity and demonstrate they understand the diversity of their customers’ values will continue to flourish.  

Paid and organic: BFFs  

Organic reach is dead. But that doesn’t mean organic efforts should be abandoned. It just means that paid campaigns and organic publishing shouldn’t operate in silos, and certainly not with distinct teams behind them. Organic and paid should be part of the same strategy conversation – with creative and media at the table. Paid and organic can complement each other strongly. Organic audiences are engaged supporters, driving content views, comments and organic website sessions. Organic content nurtures and informs those who know your brand or your perspective. These audiences are your most loyal, and insights from their actions and interests will inform your paid audience targeting, and your next round of creative content planning. On the flip side, within your best-performing social media content – that’s tested across millions of targeted impressions and dozens of AI-powered creative treatments – lies the spark for your next most engaging organic content.    

Bigger! Better! Fewer!  

Face it, very few are waiting for your organization’s next social media post. You should be communicating when you have something relevant to say. It’s more effective to focus your integrated social media efforts within your brand’s own schedule. Find your most meaningful and most impactful moments. Pick your times to speak, and break through with meaning, authenticity, and the weight of a focused ad spend to drive higher exposure for the moments that matter (to you and your audiences). Less is more!  
 
Bigger moments are more likely to align with strategic outcomes. And social media outcomes should be a means to an end, aligning with actual business objectives. Your organization is not powered by impressions and likes. Calibrate your conversions and turn on an ecosystem that is fine-tuned to nurture first-party customer data – data from which you can grow more meaningful relationships. Engaged audiences are more likely to connect through to your websites, your ecommerce shop, your CRM initiatives and your physical assets.    

Embrace platform formats  

The smartphone is the TV of today. And vertical video is its 22-minute sitcom. XDR screens and 5G networks have made social media feeds the perfect place for vertical video entertainment. Steve Jobs dreamed of an entertainment and communications device for the park bench, the bus and the bathroom. And now we have it, full-screen and lightning fast. Today, content carrying your message needs to resonate with your mobile viewer within just 2 seconds. This is why your creative and social media teams should integrate from the start, so that possibilities are never missed. Your content planning and production stream can be designed to incorporate native platform truths, from the start. The format is vertical, short, and quickly engaging – with branding and key message right up front. 
 
Because social media is so volatile, we as marketers need to be extra-focused on stability. When users, platforms and policies ebb and flow, integration and cohesion are our secret weapons. Increase the proximity between social, creative, media and web teams. Lead with authenticity. Embrace and test new platform formats. These are the efforts that enhance immediate success during these platform teen years and prepare us for weathering the expected volatility ahead.  

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In our modern world is The Medium still the Message? 

Everybody has heard the phrase “The Medium is the Message,” Marshall McLuhan’s famous contribution to the study of communication. It may seem like a complex theory from a philosophical genius, but it’s actually quite intuitive. McLuhan is saying the medium through which information is transmitted shapes and influences our perception and understanding of the message itself. If you watch a commercial on TV, the very fact that it’s a TV ad is going to change how the audience understands it. McLuhan was thinking about this in the 60s just as TV was rising to mass media prominence, reaching tens of millions of people simultaneously. If VW had a commercial at half-time at the Super Bowl, we all saw the same thing at the same time, in the same context. And context is what McLuhan was focused on. 

But people no longer watch TV in the traditional sense – they consume content on multiple devices: casting, streaming and binging content free from a set time and location. The proliferation of digital media has transformed the traditional mass communication model into a more personalized and one-to-one communication paradigm. Context is now continuously changing as digital messaging can follow us from browsing, to streaming, to scrolling – constantly shifting mediums. This begs the question: do we still need to consider McLuhan’s thesis? Can’t we, as marketers, advertisers and communicators now just focus on the message? 

The answer is a resounding no. McLuhan’s insight is more significant than ever, but with one huge difference. Marketers during TV’s reign had to take TV’s context into account to craft relevant messaging; now we need to actively create relevant context alongside relevant content.     

TV: The King of Reach 

We can’t ignore the fact that McLuhan’s world looked vastly different in the 1960s, when TV was the silver bullet to achieve reach. The duopoly of Google and Meta collectively could begin to approach something resembling that reach a decade ago, but a multitude of changes (technology, competition, further fragmentation in the digital space) have made it increasingly difficult to achieve true mass reach with any one channel. Audiences have never been more fragmented. So, we’re faced with a difficult challenge: with reach being a fundamental predictor of success, it has become increasingly more difficult to achieve, and is further complicated by challenges that make it difficult to evaluate true reach. Measurement of reach is hindered by the closed ecosystems of the big online giants, limitations around cross-device tracking, ad-blocking and privacy regulations.  

Digital: The King of Precision 

TV brought us tremendous reach – but it was a blunt instrument. Scale, yes. Ability to be relevant to individuals? Not so much. We can approximate some of the scale with digital, but we now have tools to deliver messaging with incredible control over the who and the where. As we plan communications to deliver maximum results, precision vs. scale becomes the quandary. A broader reach strategy will achieve a broader audience, but at the cost of precision. This broad approach has its place; it is effective for awareness, driving household penetration for brands, campaigns and organizations, reaching people who may not fit neatly into specific segments. Yet mass is no longer the silver bullet it used to be as today’s consumers expect creative content to be relevant to their needs, interests and preferences. They want content that addresses their specific pain points, desires or challenges. We see that McLuhan is still as right as ever, the Medium is the Message – but now the medium (and thus the message) is personalized.   

The who and the where are the priorities for effective digital communication. Creating the who and the where must go hand in hand with creating the messaging for it to be relevant. We know relevant messaging drives engagement and builds stronger connections. And in a medium that promises continual personalization, users will become desensitized to generic or repetitive messaging. Relevancy helps combat fatigue while delivering results: boosting CTRs, driving higher conversions and continuing to engage and retain audiences. 

Personalization 

As today’s media landscape continues to evolve, communicators and advertisers need to strike the right balance of reach and relevance to deliver successful campaigns, resulting in messaging that is not only seen by the right people but is seen in environments where they make sense and resonate with their audience. With relevance comes the seemingly impossible task of achieving scale while delivering personalized content. 

McLuhan is as relevant as ever. The medium is speaking as much as the message, and everyone needs to listen to what it’s saying: personalization. From strategy to creative, media-buying to execution, ChangeMakers understands this core truth, and we’re equipped to bring the right data sets together to ensure an audience-first approach is embraced across our disciplines and departments. When the quality of attention you achieve is arguably more important than scale, having a deep understanding of audiences and context is not only a fundamental pillar in communication, but arguably the starting point for everything.  

How to navigate change on social media.  

We find ourselves in the teenage years of the dominant social media platforms – Facebook is 20 years old; Instagram is 14; and 18-year-old Twitter has angrily changed its name to X. As with any teenager, volatility is the norm. Recent years brought us the mountainous rise of TikTok, the faltering of Twitter, the birth of Threads, the rise and fall of the metaverse, Bill C-18, Apple’s app tracking transparency, and generative AI for all. There’s been a tremendous amount of change. 

Constant change and disruption is woven into the fabric of the digital landscape. So how do communicators and marketers navigate these rapid transformations of technology, norms, and tastes? There are really only two choices – radical change every quarter or create a long-term, stable social strategy. The former is going to consistently get you into trouble, the latter will set you up for success for years to come.  
 
Just because platforms are volatile, doesn’t mean brands have to be. Amidst the chaos, the smart move is to create integrated strategies that bring together social, creative, media, and web teams to curate moments, and create ownable content focused on measurable goals.  

If users don’t win, everyone loses  

We are in the midst of a fierce battle for attention. Consumer ability to jump toward shiny new platforms is forever shifting how social media properties operate.  As communicators, we should be rooting for more success, not failure. A healthy, competitive social media ecosystem is better for all of us as it incentivises communicators to create compelling messaging.   
 
Meta’s platforms, along with TikTok’s, increasingly suffer from a proliferation of out-of-touch and socially disconnected ads. A surge in poorly crafted, and often auto-generated messaging results in user disengagement; they post less frequently, see less of what they want, and before you know it, you’re in a platform death spiral. This cycle creates a worse environment for users, contributing to declining diversity, doom-scrolling, and deteriorating mental health – which is a lousy environment for organizations to communicate with users.    
 
No one should add to this deterioration. Marketers and communicators must be thoughtful about what we bring to the party. Audiences want to be seen and acknowledged, and they crave relevant content. Brands who lead with authenticity and demonstrate they understand the diversity of their customers’ values will continue to flourish.  

Paid and organic: BFFs  

Organic reach is dead. But that doesn’t mean organic efforts should be abandoned. It just means that paid campaigns and organic publishing shouldn’t operate in silos, and certainly not with distinct teams behind them. Organic and paid should be part of the same strategy conversation – with creative and media at the table. Paid and organic can complement each other strongly. Organic audiences are engaged supporters, driving content views, comments, and organic website sessions. Organic content nurtures and informs those who know your brand or your perspective. These audiences are your most loyal, and insights from their actions and interests will inform your paid audience targeting, and your next round of creative content planning. On the flip side, within your best performing social media content – that’s tested across millions of targeted impressions, and dozens of AI powered creative treatments – lies the spark for your next most engaging organic content.    

Bigger! Better! Fewer!  

Face it, very few are waiting for your organization’s next social media post. You should be communicating when you have something relevant to say. It’s more effective to focus your integrated social media efforts within your brand’s own schedule. Find your most meaningful and most impactful moments. Pick your times to speak, and break through with meaning, authenticity, and the weight of a focused ad spend to drive higher exposure for the moments that matter (to you and your audiences). Less is more!  
 
Bigger moments are more likely to align with strategic outcomes. And social media outcomes should be a means-to-an-end, aligning with actual business objectives. Your organization is not powered by impressions and likes. Calibrate your conversions and turn on an ecosystem that is fine-tuned to nurture first-party customer data – data from which you can grow more meaningful relationships. Engaged audiences are more likely to connect through to your websites, your ecommerce shop, your CRM initiatives, and your physical assets.    

Embrace platform formats  

The smartphone is the TV of today. And vertical video is its 22-minute sitcom. XDR screens and 5G networks have made social media feeds the perfect place for vertical video entertainment. Steve Jobs dreamed of an entertainment and communications device for the park bench, the bus, and the bathroom. And now we have it, full-screen and lightning fast. Today, content carrying your message needs to resonate with your mobile viewer within just 2 seconds. This is why your creative and social media teams should integrate from the start, so that possibilities are never missed. Your content planning and production stream can be designed to incorporate native platform truths, from the start. The format is vertical, short, and quickly engaging – with branding and key message right up front. 
 
Because social media is so volatile, we as marketers need to be extra focused on stability. When users, platforms, and policies ebb and flow, integration and cohesion are our secret weapons. Increase the proximity between social, creative, media, and web teams. Lead with authenticity. Embrace and test new platform formats. These are the efforts that enhance immediate success during these platform teen years and prepare us for weathering the expected volatility ahead.