How content marketing helps pharma brands deal with ‘Google doctors'

Be it a minor health problem or some serious illness, if not first, along with a visit to the doctor, you turn to Google to search and read about it. It does not stop there. Once a doctor prescribes medicines, you check the composition, benefits and side-effects of the drug on Google and sometimes end up arguing with the doctor. Doesn’t your doctor then say, ‘don’t be a Google doctor’?

Matt Eastwood

While searching about health issues, people land on websites like WebMD or generic portals with all sorts of theories. In a candid chat with BuzzInContent.com on the sidelines of Goafest, McCann Health Global Chief Creative Officer Matt Eastwood recalled a funny post of a photograph of a sign in a doctor’s office saying, ‘please don’t confuse your Google search with my medical degree’.

“I think that’s part of the problem,” he said.

It is challenging because anyone can publish anything and it doesn’t mean everything is necessarily true. That’s why just reminding people that medical advice from a proper doctor is still the most important. You can certainly research a point of view on a drug you are taking but you have to balance with the information well.

How is this trend for pharmaceutical brands an opportunity or a challenge? According to Eastwood, the challenge is that often the information is not accurate and not from an authorised source.

“We do a lot of work with our clients to try and make sure that there is accurate information out there. Even as brands are doing it on their websites, the challenge is how you get that to a place where people are readily accessing it and want to find that information,” Eastwood said.

Talking about how brands can tackle this issue, Eastwood said, “What we are trying to do is to just make sure that accurate information is out there. One of the things that work is creating patient portals on which we can talk to them and we have done that on behalf of certain brands. If you are on the drug or you are experiencing some problem, you can discuss with our people. So, connecting with people feels more authenticated coming from someone else who had experienced similar problems.”

Trust is something on which the pharma industry needs to work hard to maintain and grow it because people are a bit distrustful when brands just try to sell a drug. Pharma brands do a lot of unbranded content just to try and talk about a disease.

Talking about how content is helping pharma brands build trust among consumers, Eastwood said, “Content marketing is huge within the health space because you are talking to an audience that wants as much information as possible. If they are suffering from a disease or illness, they want to read everything about it. Looking at it from that perspective, content marketing is huge and more flexible in the health space because you can’t say a lot on television or any broad medium.”

“If a brand tries to associate with the content on WebMD, it will be interesting to see if that is a good or bad thing as people don’t necessarily believe in such content,” Eastwood pointed out.

Talking about how can brands maintain the authenticity of the content and build trust at the same time, Eastwood said, “Our agency Global Health focuses on big global health issues and it’s not necessarily funded by brands but NGOs and universities or organisations having a stake in authentic trustworthy information.”

In India, most of McCann Health’s business is advertising with 60-70% while content marketing is 30%.

“Content is such an important part of everything we do as is digital. Content, just because it is information-based, is really important. And health is actually about information,” concluded Eastwood.