On May 20, Edelman Montreal co-hosted a Social Media Summit with a leading Canadian law firm and Edelman client, McCarthy Tétrault, titled “Bridging the Gap between Marketing and Legal”. VPs of both marketing communications and legal departments let loose on their concerns and the challenges they face in going digital. The roaster of speakers included Edelman’s own Steve Rubel, David Armano, Sylvain Perron and Becca Young and on the legal side, Vanessa Grant and Véronique Wattiez-Larose, expert attorneys from McCarthy Tétrault.

The speakers all worked together to present the full spectrum of social media trends on the rise, case studies of both strong and weak social media programs, an overview of social media tools and tips for how to overcome implementation challenges from both a marketing and legal perspective.

Trends to pay attention to:

Edelman:

To stand out in the stream you need to embrace multiplicity and diversity of messages and stories…you need to hand craft your content and strategy for every single community that you are in – Steve Rubel

One of the trends I am starting to see is the idea of business itself becoming social … this is bigger than public relations, communications…it’s actually a business challenge – David Armano

Key takeaways:

McCarthy Tétrault:

Electronic commerce law doesn’t exist…its employment law, its contract law, its legislation … it’s all the facets of the law which are just addressed differently. – Véronique Wattiez-Larose

Key takeaways:

What to do in the case of Shamu…

Legal needs to be at the table early because they are not ever going to approve the content, or very rarely, what they are going to approve is the set of guidelines and principles and you all imagine the thinking required there is much deeper, more comprehensive – it’s really legal strategy. – Becca Young

The Social Media Summit will be brought to Toronto in the fall. Stay tuned for more great insights.

Maria Huss Edelman Digital, Montreal Follow on twitter @MariaHuss

Stephanie Weinstein Edelman Digital, Montreal Follow on twitter @Edelgirl

While the ambiguous regulatory environment has generally stymied online communications for the healthcare industry, unbranded disease education websites have provided an opportunity to maximize reach, engagement and innovation of online initiatives without contravening existing FDA regulations.

As evidenced by recent warning letters issued to pharmaceutical companies about unbranded websites, in the eyes of DDMAC, the distinction between branded and unbranded is increasingly blurred. Unbranded activities and any unbranded site that has “perceptual similarity” to a branded site, even in subtle presentation elements, may now be subject to the same regulations for transparency and safety information.

This week’s Check-Up provides you with a guide to the key issues surfaced in warning letters from the FDA, based on the recent Pharmalot Webcast by Arnold Friede, “Unbranded Websites: Understanding the Jurisdiction and Working Within the Guidelines of DDMAC.”

These recent warnings serve as an important caution and precedent for the healthcare industry at large as it attempts to tread carefully in regulatory limbo. To help navigate that, here are five things to think about when building unbranded sites.

The Context

The FDA distinguished between disease awareness communications and promotional speech in its draft guidelines provided in the FDA/DDMAC’s June 2004 Draft “Guidance for Industry, “Help-Seeking” and Other Disease Awareness Communications By or on Behalf of Drug and Device Firms.” In these guidelines, however, the FDA’s definition of disease awareness communications includes communications that “discuss a particular disease or health condition, but do not mention any specific drug or device or make any representation or suggestion concerning a particular drug or device.”

“Perceptual Similarity”

According to the draft guidelines, perceptual similarity pertains to the likeness between unbranded page and branded page in regards to themes, story lines and presentation elements (including colors, logos, tag lines, graphics, distinctive visual elements, common narrator or background music and motifs). Close physical or temporal proximity can also have a “repetitive effect,” causing the two pieces to be “remembered as one entity.” To avoid perceptual similarity, sites should be distinct in terms of thematic, graphic, visual and other presentation elements.

“Bookending”

Bookending occurs when “reminder” advertising or product claim promotions are featured on the disease awareness information site. Close proximity of this advertising to the disease education information could also constitute perceptual similarity and may cue the audience to link the disease education site and the drug.

Implicit Link between Brand and Disease Site

Depending on overall meaning and context, companies that launch a product site for a first-in-class drug should be cautious as the FDA might deem this promotional (due to the obvious association).

Brand Presence on Unbranded Site

Including the brand name or logo on the disease awareness piece may be enough for FDA to deem it promotional, depending on overall meaning and context. These warnings about branding do not mean transparency should be compromised. The other breaches described above most likely carried more weight in the warning notice, rather than the branding alone. As always, honesty is the best policy, and disclosure is imperative.

What Does It Mean?

While the current parameters seems to rest on subtle inferences and elusive linkages, pharmaceutical companies should not be deterred from pursuing disease awareness education initiatives, which often provide crucial information and support for patients. Arnold Friede advised that we must be “altruistic” when approaching unbranded online initiatives – but we should also take practical measures. We can be proactive, establish our own internal protocol and train employees to practice self-regulation.

Image credit: Mr.T in DC

Camilla Ibrahim

Edelman Digital, New York

Follow on Twitter @Camilla_Ibrahim

In a world where consumers expect instant answers, here are six companies dedicated to helping in 140 characters or less.

Comcast

Many have argued that Comcast was the company who pioneered real time responses to customer service issues. The transition of Comcast’s original Twitter agent, Frank Eliason, was part of the inspiration for this post. Frank quickly became a web celebrity of sorts, standing for a new service directive in a very sensitive corner of the industry. Well done, Frank, and good luck to your successor, Bill at ComcastCares.

Xbox

Microsoft’s Xbox brand, an Edelman client, was so confident in their service record that they went after a Guinness World Record- and won it! XboxSupport’s Elite Tweet Fleet are the first to hold the title of “Most Responsive Brand on Twitter.”

Zappos

Zappos_Service is a name known well among the Internet’s footwear fiends. The Twitter response team is generous with various perks like free shipping while the profile also acts as a collection zone for the comments of happy clients. Customers with service issues are quickly prompted to Direct Message the brand for faster, private order attention.

BT

BT, the UK communications group, updates the names of the agents manning BTCare on a daily basis. The team members on deck connect customers with service information while also directing them to relevant instruction materials for set-up.

Boingo

Boingo is a wireless provider (you may recognize the name from your last layover) that uses their Twitter profile both to address customer concerns as well as to broaden conversation around the brand. Boingo recognizes a Hotspot of the Day as well as links to daily “news of the weird.”

BlackBerry

BlackBerryHelp, also an Edelman client, puts a few faces to customer support. Brian, Scott. Thomas, Pavel, and Mike are a few RIM employees who actively engage customers looking for all types of BlackBerry related help opportunities. In addition, the team shares useful user tips and tags them with #bbtips so you can keep track and browse at your leisure.

Which companies have provided you with excellent customer service on Twitter?

Jessi Langsen

Edelman Digital, Chicago

http://tokissthecook.blogspot.com/

Follow on Twitter @tokissthecook

Ethan Zuckerman: Listening to Global Voices

Sure, the web connects the globe, but most of us end up hearing mainly from people just like ourselves. Blogger and technologist Ethan Zuckerman wants to help share the stories of the whole wide world. He talks about clever strategies to open up your digital world.

The Hybrid Theory Manifesto: The Future of Marketing, Advertising, and Communications

In this three part series, Brian Solis attempts to come up with a unifying theory of how social media will work in marketing organizations. Remember the 4 P’s of marketing, the 5th P is “People”.

Site Connects Athletes with Brands Seeking Endorsements

It’s long been recognized that celebrity endorsements can help sell products, but typically it’s only the biggest brands and the brightest stars that are lucky enough to strike such deals. Aiming to bring celebrity endorsements into the realm of possibility for all the other brands and professional athletes out there, Brand Affinity Technologies has created a platform focused on creating the right match.

How Social Media Drives New Business

According to a recent University of Maryland study, social media adoption by small businesses has doubled from 12% to 24% in the last year and some have managed not just to connect with customers but to generate leads and sales.

Jason Dojc

Edelman Digital, Toronto

Follow on Twitter @jdojc

Originally posted on The Naked Pheasant.

Zynga, the fast-growing maker of Facebook games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, has been called by the New York Times “the hottest start-up to emerge from Silicon Valley since Twitter and, before that, Facebook.” This week, its CEO, Mark Pincus, is profiled in the story, the second in two weeks, highlighting the company’s recent success (though not without its fair share of controversy). Among other things, the article profiles Pincus as a fearless entrepreneur and visionary aiming to build an online entertainment empire as important to the internet “as Google is to search.”

While Zynga will cite profits and player numbers as success criteria, it is another recent trend Zynga is pioneering that has caught my attention; advertising through social gaming. Zynga came under fire recently for allowing advertisements into its games. Some ads, for example, signed up players for subscriptions to costly text-messaging services. This caused a PR headache for the company with TechCrunch, the technology blog, calling the practice “ScamVille,” after some users filed a class-action lawsuit.

But with 211 million players every month, according to AppData.com, Zynga is perhaps well on its way to making social gaming as important to the internet as anything else thanks to a new partnership with an American food manufacturer, (also covered in the New York Times recently). Cascadian Farm, an organic farm in the U.S. and subsidiary of General Mills, is using one of Zynga’s more popular games, FarmVille, to reach a growing customer segment through advertising. Instead of your standard click-through ads a la GoogleAd Words however, the Cascadian Farms content will be integrated into the gaming experience.

In FarmVille, you participate, create, build and manage your own farm. You gain experience points by visiting your friends’ farms and lending a virtual hand. From next week, players in the U.S. will be able to purchase (using farm bucks) and plant, an organic blueberry crop from Cascadian Farm. In doing so, FarmVille users will learn about organic farming and green living through standard game play, and at the same time, earn additional points to grow fruits and vegetables or raise animals on their virtual farms. Cascadian Farm executives said in a New York Times article that they hope that the company can expand its food niche and make itself better known by increasing awareness among FarmVille’s audience – that’s 221 million players a month. Users will also be able to access a $1 off coupon.

It will be curious to see just how successful Cascadian Farm is on FarmVille. Will the strategy work to attract and educate potential customers through participation and content or will it backfire? While integration in game play gives the user unique exposure to content in an experiential manner, will users see through the stunt and reject it as advertising or is this campaign just clever enough to work?

Jacqueline Cooper

Edelman Technology, London

Follow on Twitter @jacqui_cooper

Originally posted on Logic + Emotion.

While the current trend in all things social is demonstrating ROI (did Old Spice Increase sales etc?) There remains a lack of emphasis on actually executing well in social spaces with the assumption that this is simply where customers, consumers, employees etc. will go to seek information and interact. That’s why I think Altimeter’s recent report listing out 8 success criteria specific to marketing initiatives on Facebook is a breath of fresh air. I was fortunate to help inform the report as an ambassador for Edelman Digital, and was happy to see best practices featured from brands we work with such as AXE (client). That aside, the report is worth reviewing and digesting as it goes through the 8 criteria in depth backing it up with examples:

With the above criteria in place, Altimeter has drafted a simple framework for brands and organizations to keep in mind as they build out their digital embassies in the Facebook ecosystem. Using this criteria, Altimeter then selected a few brands to evaluate calling out specific best practices and areas for opportunity. Here’s how the brands fared when compared with each other:

At minimum the report offers a few choice insights and examples of brands to look at and learn from while you are developing your strategies and tactics for this space. Specifics such as being inconsistent or not addressing angry comments serve as early indicators to learn from as companies develop their rules of engagement for Facebook and other digital embassies. While other studies focus on devising formulas that assign dollar values to Facebook connections, reports such as this offer a few high level guidelines for how to best navigate through social systems such as Facebook. Have a read and chime in. What are your best practices?

David Armano

Edelman Digital, Chicago

http://davidarmano.com

Follow on Twitter @armano

The web is currently undergoing a normalization toward social. Base components of the social web such as friending, liking, voting, peer recognition, etc are permeating online presence down to static business sites.  As a result, the 2010 installment of SocialDevCamp Chicago is attracting professionals from a wider variety of industries.  Registrants include web and marketing personnel from healthcare, design, human resources, non-profits, and of course software companies.  Such an eclectic audience might be viewed as a hindrance by some, particularly those believing specialization and exclusivity maximize knowledge gain.  The SocialDevCamp team, however, is excited for the event’s diversity to increase the collective “known unknowns” of the audience.

The term known unknowns is borrowed from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and refers to knowledge “you know that you don’t know.” This is a counterpoint to “unknown unknowns” or knowledge “you don’t know that you don’t know.”  We are not implying that SocialDevCamp has any connection to politics or global affairs but WE ARE suggesting that uniting a diverse group of people via the common interest of the social web can boost curiosity, knowledge, and creativity. For example, a talented PR professional at SocialDevCamp might have executed countless successful social campaigns for large brands without exploring the functionality of software.  Listening to a session on developing apps will probably not transform anyone into a programming genius, but the new knowledge does expand the realm of possibilities for client pitches and also improves future discussions with developers.  Similarly, an experienced developer interested in the social web could gain valuable insights on building a new product by talking to experienced PR professionals.

We hope you will join us on August 14-15 at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s amazing campus center (really – a train runs through the building).  Make sure to investigate the speaker list to determine where you will create new “known unknowns.” A good start will be listening to keynotes from Chris Messina of Google and Ben Huh of the Cheezburger Network.  And in the process, you’ll likely pick up new friendships and hobbies. Check out what the event looked like last year through our recap video:

Andy Angelos is an entrepreneur and musician living in Chicago, Illinois. He is currently working on working on SocialDevCamp Chicago, ScaleWell, and an online communications firm entitled Get Talked About. He is a practitioner of thinking before talking, especially on Twitter.

It seemed helpful the first time the Check-Up doubled as a book club, so to continue the link sharing, here are another five resources to check out when you are looking for news in the digital health space.

Newsmap

There is never enough time in the day to keep up with trends and news. However, sometimes tracking down the big story is worth your time, and luckily there’s a really cool tool called Newsmap to help by visualizing news stories like a word cloud. You can even drill down the topics into certain verticals, like health, to get a category specific view of the news of the day.

5 Ways Social Media Helps Promote Good Health (Mashable)

Mashable is a go-to news source for just about everyone online because they often break many stories related to social media, technology and online culture. In addition to those short pieces, Mashable retains a bunch of contributors who offer longer guides to different corners of the Internet. For a can’t miss one on how digital media can help improve your health, Alexander Howard’s piece from early July is a great resource.

Former FDA Official to Pharma Marketers: Don’t Expect Much Regulatory Guidance on Social Media (eMarketer)

Health communicators in the U.S. have been tracking the future of FDA regulations for the digital space very intently since last November’s hearings. In an interview with eMarketer, Peter Pitts, a former FDA official familiar with the existing DTC guidelines, gives some disheartening news: any guidance from the administration is likely to only address “long-hanging-fruit issues,” and not move forward into some of the bigger questions.

‘Twitter Doctors’ Lists Medical Kings of Social Media (Social Times)

There are many ways to gauge influence on Twitter (like the awesome Edelman creation, TweetLevel), but you can never go wrong by checking many different sources. Twitter Doctors breaks down just those medical professionals who use the microblogging service, and is easy to sort based on followers, retweets or influence. Read more at Social Times for some more information on who the highest rated medical Twitterers are.

Ask Wolfram|Alpha about Medical Drug Treatments (WolframAlpha Blog)

Wolfram Alpha is not a traditional search engine, per se – It bills itself as a knowledge engine, and the data it gives back are not links to other sites, but detailed results that help to answer the query right there. On its own blog, the WA team recommends a new thing to look for on the network: medical and drug treatment data. Check out the results for what happens when you search for “drug treatments diabetes” to give it a whirl.

Seen any other good articles or resources? Be sure to keep the sharing going by leaving it for others.

Dave Levy

Edelman Digital, Washington D.C.

http://stateofthefourthestate.com/

Follow on Twitter @levydr

Last month, more than 100 academics from around the globe descended upon New York City at Edelman’s fourth annual New Media Academic Summit, hosted by New York University and Syracuse University. In case you weren’t able to make it, the panels and insights are posted on the website and definitely worth checking out.

Between the panels featuring industry leaders, I participated on a panel of new professionals. Our discussion focused on what the industry is like for new professionals and how much our education prepared us for this field. Here are some of the highlights:

New methods of research

More than just new spaces for brands to execute campaigns, the new digital landscape also offers more opportunities for research and analysis of trends, conversations and opportunities. This requires more than an Excel spreadsheet. Being able to compile this data and translating this into actionable business objectives requires a refreshed research education.

Walk the walk, talk the talk

Playing on Facebook and posting on Twitter doesn’t make you a social media expert. It’s important to understand how brands are walking the walk and talking the talk online. New professionals can get this experience by not only witnessing how brands engage their stakeholders online, but by participating in this process. Some of the ways this can be done include blogging on a topic you’re passionate about, interacting with brands on Twitter and immersing yourself in online communities.

Curiosity and creativity

More than ever, the new generation of public relations professionals need to be curious about the landscape and needs to bring a strong creative background when counseling a client. As new tools and platforms rise to popularity fairly often, a sense curiosity about this landscape will drive innovation. In terms of creativity, this skill can be taught – and learned – with time and effort. You might have heard that even though PR entries were up around 30 percent at Cannes Lions, there were few PR winners, and to top it off, an ad agency won the top PR prize. I’m not here to compare the levels of creativity between advertising and public relations, but it’s important for new professionals to develop a creative sense.

The old skills are important, too

My fellow panelists also spoke to the importance of the “old skills”: a strong, journalistic writing background; business acumen to apply public relations efforts with measurable effects on the business; and a deep academic background in social sciences, marketing and finance.

Nick Lucido

Edelman Digital, Chicago

http://www.pr-start.com/

Follow on Twitter @NickLucido

My name is Albert and I paint on the train. I carry my brushes, canvas, colors, and all the paintings I’ve recently done. All in the palm of my hand. When I get to my stop I pack up and head out. There’s no easel, no sketchbook, no brushes or hassle. Just my finger, my phone, and the satisfaction of turning a basic sketch into a full-blown painting in the time it takes me to get from Grand Central to my stop.

I still carry a sketchbook around but it’s more out of habit than anything else. Now, when I’m on the move and an idea strikes, my first impulse is to grab my phone. Not my pencil. It has even worked its way into a few saves-the-day scenarios and, as a result, has become a major part of my Edelman career gear.

A few months back I was on a tight deadline and needed to come up with a couple of concepts for a client presentation by the morning. I headed home without ideas and nothing came to mind on my commute home or the rest of the night. The next morning on my train ride in with the clock counting down, my brain wakes up. Out comes the phone and I start working. By the time I hit my stop I’ve got two concepts.

My Creative Director loved the sketches so I exported them to my gallery and emailed them out to the team. They got dropped into the presentation, were sent off to the client. About a month later and after getting things tightened up the resulting ad was run in SPIN with several ads on SPIN.com as well.

This process has become part of my every day now. The ability to work and play anywhere and everywhere with ideas can’t be matched. Sorry, sketchbook, but I think our days are numbered.

Albert Lewis

Edelman Digital, New York

Follow on Twitter @al_lewisjr