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.