Influencers, Ivermectin, and the Informational Divide: Pharma’s Big Opportunity to Grow a More Sustainable Attention Economy

Influencers, Ivermectin, and the Informational Divide: Pharma’s Big Opportunity to Grow a More Sustainable Attention Economy

By Isaac Simpson, Associate Creative Director at PRECISIONeffect

As global corporations reach deeper into every part of our lives, marketing is evolving into something unrecognizable. According to Michael Farmer, in the Mad Men Era of the 1960s and 70s, your average creative agency was responsible for roughly 350 deliverables a year—whether they were print copy, radio scripts, or billboard headlines. Today? The average number of deliverables per creative per year is over 10,000.

Facebook posts, podcast partnerships, experiential activations, and yes, influencer campaigns, the work of our day hasn’t replaced the old, it merely exists on top of it. The resulting concoction looks less like marketing and more like brainwashing. We’re hacking the minds of our audiences on every platform at every second of the day. We don’t just want them to buy our products, we want them to be our friends.

In this new landscape, pharma marketers face a new opportunity—and a new responsibility—both of which we’re seeing laid bare by the COVID pandemic. The opportunity is to connect health, science, and the individual in profound new ways towards a healthier world population. The responsibility is to do that without actually brainwashing anyone. That means accepting that the science of medicine is constantly changing.

Influencing the Influencers

If you’d told David Ogilvy that advertising in the 21st century would include “influencers” recording themselves promoting vaccines for the federal government, he would’ve never believed you. But sure enough, self-made entertainers like Benny Drama have supplanted Elvis as the public health advocates du jour. 

Gen Z is twice as likely to make purchases based on influencer marketing than the general population, and is the most vaccine-hesitant segment of the population. Thus, using social media influencers to encourage vaccination is just common sense. Why, then, isn’t it working very well?

The answer is that influencer posts aren’t magic bullets. I’ve created influencer campaigns for some of the biggest brands in the world, and also some of the smallest, and the gap between expectations and reality is always the same. Leadership wants influencers (the more influencer-friendly term is “creators”) to translate the brand’s story into “young people speak,” driving measurable engagement and hopefully conversion. Creators want to get paid to make the stuff they’re already making. The result is almost always disappointing: the brand’s story remains untold, and the influencer posts something that they’re less than proud of. In the pharma context, this is particularly glaring. Influencers almost always delete pharma-related posts after their contractual period ends, while fashion, food, and tech brand partnerships are often kept up as badges of honor. 

With consumer brands, the fact that the content isn’t great doesn’t matter that much. As long as the product appears in enough prominent creator feeds, the message will get through. In the health context with something like a vaccine, it’s not so simple. There is authority inherent to medicine not enjoyed by consumer brands, so we must tread more lightly. People are naturally more reactive when it comes to their health and their bodies, and are thus more likely to divide on ideological lines. When that happens, they won’t just ignore your message, but react against it.

Interpreting Ivermectin

The FDA learned this lesson the hard way with their tweet attempting to draw people away from ivermectin as a COVID treatment. Ivermectin is a cheap and widely used anti-parasitic that grew in popularity amongst vaccine-skeptics. It’s also used in animals, which led some individuals to self-treat with ivermectin meant for horses.

Many skeptics were reacting against a perceived over-reach by public health authorities, so when the FDA tweeted, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it,“ to deter ivermectin use, it wasn’t exactly well received by the people it was trying to deter. Did it go super viral and get tons of attention? Absolutely. Did it move the needle? Probably not. Rather, it’s mocking tone probably further alienated its target audience.

While the misguided tweet in question wasn’t an influencer post, it grew from the same objective—not just to reach target audiences, but, well, to influence them. But while that “parachute in” strategy might make sense for a consumer brand, it needs to be more carefully considered in the pharma and public health contexts. 

When Nike works with controversial influencers, or launches a politically charged campaign, what’s the worst that can happen? It may anger some people, but it more than makes up for that in earned media. An individual’s choice of shoe simply isn’t important enough to divide along pro- and anti-Nike lines. But when it comes to what we put inside our bodies? That implicates a much deeper level of identity.

Bridging the informational divide and adding real value

Most companies dream of campaigns featuring influencers that already love their brands—there’s no bigger buzzword in influencer marketing than “authentic.” In the health context, however, I believe it should be the reverse. When it comes to public health campaigns, skeptical influencers are probably the group that should be targeted first. Preaching to the choir can certainly drive adherence, but the bigger issue is alienating large swaths of the population with tone deaf messaging. 

Instead, health marketing should actively seek out the unsure, the uncertain, and should challenge itself to meet their criticisms head on. For example, the White House recently invited rapper and vaccine-skeptic Nikki Minaj to talk with a doctor about her concerns. Public health authorities and pharma companies have a responsibility for people’s well-being agnostic of taste, style, or politics (yes, even politics). There’s no advantage to being sassy, voice-y, or edgy. They should act not like market participants, but like philosopher kings—eager to transparently discuss all the issues, as great scientists are known to do.

Beyond just transparency, health marketing should take a page from the book of experiential marketing, and add “real value” to the communities it seeks to reach. Think about shifting away from traditional, product-in-picture influencer marketing or viral tweet-ability, and embrace a more mature community-centric approach. Give them something they want or need, and don’t ask for credit.

Here’s an example: There are wonderful naturally occurring online communities growing around certain disease states. Patients interact and share anecdotes, memes, and resources. The worse the condition, often the livelier the communities. The very-online culture around breast cancer treatment, for example, includes memes, merch, and influencers all infused with a healthy dose of dark humor.

A more effective strategy for accessing these unique communities is to offer transparency and real value. Don’t just pay someone to hold your drug or device in a picture, instead build an opt-in SMS program that helps you track and trend common side effects over time. Create a series of recipe videos featuring a culinary influencer making special recipes just for patients of your disease state. Hire influencer survivors to organize an online event, and sign all the attendees up for an email series featuring survivor interviews. 

The greater sensitivity around issues of health and the body means marketing walks on eggshells. Successful players in the next few decades will meet that challenge head on—working harder to be gentler, embracing broader audiences for deeper impact. This means a split from consumer marketing. Where consumer campaigns will only get louder and edgier in search of clicks, health campaigns should go in the opposite direction: towards rationality and responsibility.

About the Author

Isaac Simpson is an Associate Creative Director at PRECISIONeffect. Based in the US and part of Precision Value & Health (PV&H), PRECISIONeffect is a healthcare advertising agency dedicated to working with companies seeking to change the standard of care.