Bad Science, Gillian McKeith and a PR disaster – another lesson in how not to use social media

As a growing list of public figures are learning through harsh experience, the days of foolproof reputation management are over. It’s become clear that with an unmonitored voice through the medium of Twitter, the smallest misjudgment by a well-known name is done in dangerously full view of the public, with often far reaching consequences.

The latest to fall foul of the tweeter’s first rule  - think before you type - is self-styled holistic health guru Gillian McKeith. For those unfamiliar with her work, McKeith is a prime time TV celebrity and successful author who has made a name for herself advising the overweight, under-exercised and nutritionally challenged. Her herbal supplements, cereal bars and powders are sold in health food shops throughout the country, and it is the questionable claims made about these products that first brought her to the attention of Ben Goldacre: a London-based science journalist on a mission to expose bad science in whatever forms it might take. Goldacre has had McKeith firmly in his sights for a while and his book, the aptly named Bad Science, devotes a chapter to a detailed challenge to her scientific credibility.

So persistent has been his campaign to expose McKeith, that in 2007 a reader of Goldacre’s blog (www.badscience.net) complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about McKeith’s use of the title ‘Doctor’, as her PhD was obtained via a correspondence course from the non-accredited and now obsolete American Holistic College of Nutrition in Birmingham, Alabama. Having been strongly positioned by Channel Four as ‘Dr Gillian McKeith, Clinical Nutritionist’ her star somewhat fell when it became clear that her certified membership of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants was essentially meaningless, as demonstrated by her old adversary Goldacre buying the same membership online for his dead cat for $60.

Last week’s adventures began innocently, with a woman called Rachel Moody tweeting that she was about to start reading the McKeith chapter from Bad Science. Her remark triggered a series of angry reply tweets from McKeith, accusing Goldacre of being a liar and Moody of being anti-American, in reference to criticism of McKeith’s PhD qualification.

 
Being new to Twitter and perhaps realizing the seriousness of her accusations McKeith then deleted the tweets, unaware that nothing can ever truly be erased from the internet – not least because there are those among us with the foresight to take screen shots of such salacious events as they unfold  (the one above comes via http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/gillian_mckeith_does_not_have.php.)

There then followed another series of tweets written in the third person, as if to suggest that someone other than McKeith was at the controls. Those tweets were then also deleted. Finally, and most bizarrely, the last tweet, which remains to this day: “Do you actually believe this is real twitter site for the GM (sic)?” Sadly the answer is a definite yes, as the Twitter feed was linked to her official website and Facebook accounts. Those links have since also been removed, seemingly in an effort to leave no trace of this unpleasant and potentially damaging episode.

Goldacre’s potential libel case against McKeith is a very real possibility, but in the meantime he has offered to discuss directly any concerns about his accusations via an unedited podcast. No response so far. And the flurry of activity on @gillianmckeith seems also to have ground to a halt, the final word from 14th July being ‘the moral of the story: Love your neighbour and your enemies too’.

One other moral that Gillian should bear in mind – use Twitter with care.

To find out how GraceDigi can help your brand to use social media to its advantage, email makesomenoise@graceagency.co.uk

Nice idea, badly done

I was flicking through a recent healthcare journal and came across a few ads that I hadn’t seen before… and it got me wondering ‘what happens to ideas between thinking them up and producing them?’   As it seems that through the execution process, they get executed!

Now we know a poor idea well crafted is still a poor idea, but a gem of an idea badly done is just a waste! Do people no longer value art direction and the crafting of an ad, or is it simply that people don’t know how to do it!

I wonder if this is yet another example of how the ‘Mac’ has become the master for average design: everything in no time and no time to do it. Or could it be that clients have been trained to become so literal that they can only see an idea if you use a stock shot image and that we don’t bother to try harder? When was the last time you took a client through a scamp? Would they even know what one was?

Go on try it…think of a good idea, draw it, sell it, develop it and make it come to life!  After all, isn’t that what us ‘Mad men’ do?

Exciting times at Grace HQ

Two weeks since we filmed the cinematic triumph that is our new promotional video, and the final edit is nearly ready.

The short film was written and directed by Grace Digi, the new digital arm of Grace Agency, and showcases the talents of our combined team through animation, ingenious twists and just a little CGI.

On Thursday this week (24th June) our "Queen of the Creatives" Tracey Henry will be heading to Brighton to review the end result and, if we were her, swing by the pier for fish & chips.  The video will be uploaded for your enjoyment soon afterwards, so as we wait patiently for the production whizzes to bring Chris (@clutterances) and Poppy's (@poppyhennig) vision to life, here are a few more tasters of things to come.

Chris wasn't convinced by his barber's new colour scheme.

Annoyed man attacks award winners with blunt object.

IT gremlins disturbed the start of the 6 o'clock news.

Give an inch and they take a mile…is NICE getting too big for its boots?

What is it about QUANGOs? The minute you start to give them some respect, they seem to think that they should be running the country, not just advising on matters for which they were set up to consider. 

NICE is not everyone’s cup of tea and I confess to feelings of great trepidation when it was first mooted back in the late ‘90s. Although it still causes immense frustration when some of its decisions seem simply arbitrary and prejudiced, especially when it comes to new cancer therapies, it must be said that it has brought some rigour to the prescribing process. The fact that many governments around the world are seeking to copy it is perhaps a testament to its prowess, but the cynic in me can’t help thinking that’s simply because said governments see it as a ‘legitimate’ way of restraining their drugs budgets.

But some of the latest pronouncements from NICE really take the biscuit (semi-intentional pun there). I couldn’t believe it this morning when I heard on the radio that NICE had proclaimed that sex education should start early in primary schools. I have no strong opinion either way on this topic, but I’m astonished that NICE have an opinion at all! This surely is nowhere near their remit? NICE does not stand for National Institute for Children’s Education, but for Health and Clinical Excellence. I admit that you could argue that having sex, especially unprotected sex, can have disastrous consequences for the health of teenagers, but surely there are more appropriate bodies to be involved in this, not least the Government itself. 

It doesn’t stop there. This month alone, in two separate announcements NICE is advising anyone who cares to listen that there should be a minimum price for alcohol and that the drink-drive limit should be reduced. Again, no matter what your view on these matters, should we really pay so much attention to unelected, albeit taxpayer-funded ‘experts’?

I’m more than happy for them to pronounce on the most appropriate use for inhaled steroids, for example, but please don’t start telling us how to live our lives.

PM Society Annual Lecture – Margot James MP

Margot James cuts an impressive figure. I’ve had the privilege and pleasure to have worked with her and known her for a number of years and when I first heard of her ambitions to become an MP, I had no doubt that she would make it.

She pitched her talk on Thursday night at just the right level: emphasizing the overall thrust of the new Government’s healthcare policies, especially greater patient empowerment and reduced layers of bureaucracy, without getting bogged down in detail.

Despite the stifling heat of the room, it was an enjoyable evening and very worthwhile attending. So why was the pharmaceutical industry so poorly represented? We now have someone able to champion our industry’s cause sitting at the top table - at the very heart of government - yet only nine pharmaceutical companies decided to attend. Honourable mentions go to Lundbeck, Amgen, Napp, GSK, Takeda, Sanofi Pasteur MSD, AstraZeneca, Wyeth and especially Sanofi Aventis who were well represented.

As usual, the service sector was well represented, but clients really shouldn’t leave it up to their agencies to keep their finger on the pulse of the healthcare climate.

I do think the pharmaceutical industry needs to show more leadership.

Written by Neil Dickinson (@neil_dickinson)

Grace and the City

Don’t get us wrong, we like to scrub up well for our clients (on a good day Neil has even been known to have a shave for a meeting) but Wednesday involved three wardrobe changes, hair and make up plus a manicure as we welcomed a film crew to Grace HQ to help us with our new promotional film.

We thought it was high time we spread the word about Grace Digi, our exciting new digital offering for the pharmaceutical industry, so our crack team of creatives set to work on developing a storyboard that showcases who we are and what we do, in a most unusual way.

With filming complete and wrap party champagne flutes all washed up, the footage has now gone into post-production and should be ready in a few weeks. In the meantime here are a few clues as to what to expect.

“Don't sneeze... don't sneeze”

"A novel way of getting to work!"

"The Marlow's Got Talent auditions were in full swing"

Social media – a life-saver

We all know people who continually denigrate social media in all its forms, but perhaps the channel that comes in for the greatest criticism is Twitter. People generally fall into two very distinct camps: those who Tweet and those who voice strong opinions along the lines of “But I just don’t get the point – who wants to know what so and so is doing right now?”

There’s also a pretty big middle ground of floaters, many of whom have dabbled but then lost interest. I too was one of those until at the third ‘dabble’ it finally clicked and now I’m hooked.

But perhaps now there is a story that can answer the gainsayers when they shout “What’s the point?”

The recent transport chaos caused by the volcanic ash cloud left a courier carrying vital bone marrow stranded in Brussels. The following tweet was retweeted over a thousand times and did the trick:

AnthonyNolan URGENT! Our courier stuck in Brussels carrying marrow. Needs 2 get on Eurostar/tunnel from 8pm UK time 2nyt. Can u help? Call 07710 599 161”

The result was reported extensively in the press(See Article). So instead of too many tweets making a t**t, according to an inane comment from our new PM, you could say that so many tweets save a life, which I think is far more worthy (and accurate) message.

New website leaves anonymity Unvarnished

The online marketplace is the ideal platform for an individual to make their opinions heard.  There are quite literally millions of websites that will allow one to comment or debate or review any genre of subject matter from music and film to politics and healthcare.  There has been a lot of assessment as to why the Internet, particularly the successful growth of social media, has been such a powerful tool for discussion. One particular weapon in the social media arsenal that everyone seems to agree on is the importance of anonymity.  However, the latest platform to pass through private beta testing may have taken the significance of being anonymous one step too far.

The site, named Unvarnished has been created for one purpose, to rate professionals in the workplace – for better or for worse.  The founders have an impressive CV of social networking sites, notably LinkedIn and eBay, and yet Unvarnished may be the most controversial to date.  One co-founder, Peter Kazanjy is quoted as saying that they are “trying to take how professional opinion works in the offline world and port that online”.  Essentially, this is how it works:  One can log into Unvarnished through Facebook and either create a profile about your coworker, or if one already exists, add comments, ratings and a description of your issue.  The individual ‘reviewing’ will have their name kept completely secret, ultimately meaning that no matter what you say about a colleague, they will never know it is you.

The website will allow an individual to rate your doctor, your IT guy or your boss without ever revealing your identity.  When asked about the risks of anonymity to this extent, Kazanjy answered that without it; people couldn’t be “candid or nuanced in their reviews”.  However, it certainly opens up the situation to potential abuse and misuse.  The situation could quite easily arise where an individual feels put out, overworked or mistreated by their boss, and now they can take it out anonymously on his or her Unvarnished page with little to no chance that they’ll ever be caught.  However, there is potentially a very real and very destructive chance it could ruin your boss’s professional reputation.

Kazanjy says Unvarnished has controls in the system to prevent “trashing” and all users must “authenticate” their profile through Facebook, meaning the company will have actual names and personal details in case of potential ‘spammers’.  To use the system, individuals must be 21 and over, and there is a ‘report’ button to allow abusive comments to be reported and removed if needed.  There is a sort of ‘rewards system’ on offer as well, where the individual user can gain ‘authority’ based on the perceived helpfulness of their comments.  Although an individual user cannot remove a comment on their profile themselves there is a ‘respond’ button that allows you to give your side of the story.

There is however a great deal of apprehension towards this new system.  Whether this hesitancy is because many of us fear the website will be misused is debatable.  It seems more likely that individuals are apprehensive of Unvarnished because they don’t want to be criticized for what they do.  However, Kazanjy himself certainly makes a good point when he says “If someone has an axe to grind, they can already make a smear campaign behind your back, it already happens in the online world every day”.

Social networking is still growing and seems not to be slowing down.  People keep tumbling, flickering and tweeting more and more and it seems Unvarnished may be the next significant addition to the marketplace.  Where anonymity may be key to its success, there is certainly an argument against Unvarnished’s potential overuse of it.  Reviewing your colleagues is certainly an exciting prospect and at the moment we’ll have to wait and see whether it really takes off.  One thing is for sure however, nobody likes a bad review, so you better get back to work!

Sugar Rush, or just Plain Stupid?

It seems Nestle have fallen victim to the ‘anti-social media’ bug recently and now faces a public relations disaster because of their appalling handling of their Facebook fan page.   These pages are now deemed a necessity for almost any company, and more often than not are a great way to keep in contact with their ‘fans’.  However, Nestle have shown how not to do it!

Environmentalist group Greenpeace have long been putting pressure on Nestle to stop them using palm oil in their products.  Through social media, they have released documents, pictures and a particularly provocative viral on Youtube.  Be warned, the video is quite nauseating: http://bit.ly/aSZbIu

At the time of its release, Nestle lobbied to have the video removed, citing a copyright complaint.  All this resulted in was plenty of free, powerful press for Greenpeace.  The world of social media is notoriously anti-establishment in its nature, a company like Nestle should therefore have learned from their mistakes.  But they didn’t, they made it even worse for themselves.

Greenpeace had encouraged their supporters to change their profile pictures to anti-nestle slogans, often incorporating their food logos and then post their comments on the fan page.  This simple, ‘digital flash mob’ style protest about the destruction of the rainforest and deaths of orangutans should have been a bread and butter corporate PR hush up, but whoever handled the situation got it very wrong.  

Upon reading posts such as the following:

Nestle responded with this statement on their fan page wall:

Cue a social media uproar! They foolishly made the mistake of telling people what not to do.  Whoever was in charge of this obviously did not think thoroughly about what they were saying.  If there is one thing social media users like, it is free speech, challenging it was like provoking an angry lion.  Yet they didn't stop there.  It seems as though the person in charge of their social media thought it was a good idea to wind people up even further.  The following screen grab is perhaps the best example of their ridiculous handling of the situation.

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear oh dear.  Big mistake.  The fallout has seen Nestle been forced to make a public apology, stating: "This (deleting logos) was one in a series of mistakes for which I would like to apologise.  And for being rude.  We've stopped deleting posts, and I have stopped being rude."

We - Grace DR - are not here to pass judgment on the rights and wrongs of the Nestle products, but we did find ourselves incredulous at the naivety they've shown in handling the situation.  The incident is an excellent demonstration of how powerful social media can be as a negative.  It is apparent that companies must understand that with such an open forum and such a public medium they will get negative content, not just positive.  The trick to using social media effectively is accepting that fact and handling it in the correct fashion, something Nestle have clearly failed to understand.
 

A potential PR opportunity for the Pharmaceutical industry that will probably go begging

An interesting nugget of pharmaceutical research news was released last week - http://bit.ly/d7G9PD - that could have very profound implications for the pharma industry. In short, in MS patients it may be possible to identify the likely efficacy of beta-interferon therapy in advance: some patients will respond to it, but for others it may actually worsen their condition.

This is a multi-billion dollar global market and the beta-interferon players must be very nervous if this research is validated. I don’t know the % of likely non-responders, but imagine if it was say, a third. That’s potentially nearly a billion dollars wiped off Avonex sales for a start. Of course for Biogen, it may not be such bad news as they have another non-interferon product in their MS portfolio, but Teva may be jumping for joy at the news as many IFN-non-responding patients would possibly be switched to Copaxone.

But imagine if this finding could be expanded to other therapy areas? Oncology is the obvious example, but what about more common diseases such as hypertension or diabetes? It could be argued that pharma companies enjoy the uncertainty that inevitably surrounds the absolute efficacy of their drugs: after all, if a doctor has to prescribe in the hope that a drug works, rather than in certainty, then there’s bound to be more prescribed than necessary.

So I hope pharmaceutical companies, especially the beta-interferon players themselves, embrace this research wholeheartedly for the good of all MS patients. It would be a massive PR boost for our beleaguered industry if companies freely and actively helped to refine the technology and put it to use as soon as possible. It might wipe the odd billion dollars off their bottom lines, but so what? These drugs are pretty old medicines now and likely to be superseded in the medium term, but of course, if I were a shareholder I might not be so cavalier.

So do I think they will do it? I have serious doubts, but I would love to be proved wrong.

Written by Neil Dickinson (@neil_dickinson) 

Ad campaign for prescription drug ‘Improves its efficacy’

Reports from Doctors around the UK are revealing an unusual link between the promotional campaign for a drug frequently prescribed in the field of respiratory medicine and its actual efficacy.

Scientists at the company’s research headquarters are baffled by the discovery, but acknowledge that the ad campaign, created by Marlow-based Grace Agency, does seem to decrease the necessity for rescue medication in those patients whose GP had prescribed the product shortly after seeing the ad in the medical press.

“The ad is very creative and impactful, but even so, it’s difficult to see the connection between it and the pharmacological efficacy of [Product X]”, commented the company’s Director of Research.  But the story does seem to hold water.  Dr Joe Kerr, a GP from the village of Much Hadham in Hertfordshire is typical of those who have witnessed the effect at first hand.

“I’ve prescribed [Product X] many times in the past and it seems to do a pretty good job, but last month, after seeing the company representative with her new sales aid, a strange thing started to happen. Every time I’ve prescribed it since, patients have actually called me a day or two later to say how much better they feel. That’s never happened before.”

A spokesman for Grace Agency, the company behind the campaign, was not surprised by the story. “We knew from the research that the campaign was going to be a winner. We had doctors in the research saying that they not only understood the concept, but that they ‘got’ the headline straightaway and even liked the colours we had used.”



It just goes to show the power of advertising - as long as you also take it with a pinch of salt.

The GDR Retweet Challenge Review

We recently launched our Retweet Challenge for Sport Relief.  As well as raising money for charity, our aim was to demonstrate the power of Twitter and its huge potential within the pharmaceutical world. Here’s how we did it.

We launched our first ‘tweet’ at 2pm on Tuesday 16th March with the words; “The Grace Digital Relations Retweet Challenge: Exercise your thumbs for Sport Relief here: http://is.gd/aSM6i please RT.”  This link took visitors to a simple landing page that pledged a penny a click donation, made by Grace DR to Sport Relief.

By the end of the first day, 358 people had visited the link.  Wanting to exploit the growing volume of traffic, we added a Twitter 'follow us' button to the landing page and by the end of the day, our following doubled.  We also gave a link to Sport Relief itself and showed a constant counter of the donation amount.

The next day we released variously worded tweets, reminding our followers of the purpose of the challenge and by the end of Wednesday, numbers had reached an impressive 732 unique visitors.  

As the week progressed and Sport Relief increasingly dominated TV and airwaves, things really took off on Twitter.  At 10.15am on Thursday, BBC Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills ‘retweeted’ our link to his 96,234 followers.  The ‘Mills Effect’ meant that by the end of the day we had added an incredible 29,894 visitors to our site. 

From that one tweet, we later managed to attract the attention of other high-profile tweeters including Emma Freud, Chris Evans, Lorraine Kelly, Simon Mayo, Kirstie Allsopp and Claudia Winkleman.  The following day – Friday – another 32,513 people clicked through to our site. 

At the time of writing this article (just 8 days since our first tweet) we have seen a combined total of 86,195 visitors click on our link.  That is £861.95 accumulated for Sport Relief, in just 7 days. Which we doubled for the sake of charity.  Below is the final donation page, which we're really proud of.

And we only launched our campaign on Twitter.

Just think what that sort of power could potentially do for your product.

Imagine what would be possible if you made more of what social media has to offer. 

Consider the facts:

If Facebook were a country it would have the world’s 4th largest population between the United States and Indonesia.

The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females.

The second largest search engine in the world is YouTube, expected to be number one in 6 months.

There are over 200,000,000 Blogs. 54% of them are updated daily. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands.

78% of consumers trust peer recommendations.  Only 14% trust advertisements.

The Retweet Challenge gives an insight into the power of social media.  Why not let us help you harness that power for one of your brands?

Written by Chris Wilson (@clutterances) 

Thank you to Erik Qualman (@equalman) for the statistics

Introducing....Grace Digital Relations!

The Grace Digital Relations blog is up and running, and this is it.  Not all of it, obviously, but the adventure begins here.  We are the digital arm of Grace Agency, a healthcare communications agency based in the UK.  We are fully aware that the nature of communicating is changing, and that the pharma world is considered by some to be a long way behind many other industries.  Our aim is to help bring it into the new era, the digital era.  To find out more about Grace Agency, please visit www.graceagency.co.uk                 

We have a strong combination of pharma and healthcare knowledge and innovative creative minds and have already generated many successful campaigns.  This blog is designed to update anyone who may be interested on our thoughts about the industry, and our take on current, relevant, affairs.  We will look to discuss anything that interests us with regards to the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, but also the wider world of digital marketing and what the online marketplace can do for business. 

The growth of social media has been nothing short of incredible and seems not to be slowing down.  In fact, numbers are steadily growing as more and more people are realizing it is not a ‘fad’ but a genuinely important means of networking and promotion.  There are many restrictions, many taboos and many unanswerable questions, but there is a world of opportunity out there that the healthcare industry is just waiting to conquer, just as we are.

Our blog will attempt to offer advice, help, insight, reviews and discussion on a variety of healthcare and digital related subjects.  We welcome all comments, whether they agree, or disagree with us.  However, we retain the right to remove any contribution that we consider to be distasteful or inappropriate. 

Opponents of the power of social media suggest there is little evidence to support the claims that one can reach a potentially huge audience.  We decided to put this to the test using Twitter, and we have proof that will silence the doubters.

If you are a tweeter - if you’re not, perhaps you should be? - follow us at @gracedigi and find out when the evidence is released.

If not, just come back here soon to find out what we're on about, exciting isn't it?

Written by Chris Wilson (@clutterances)