AdAge: FDA to Hold Public Hearings on Big Pharma’s Social-Media Use
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will hold a two-day public hearing in November on how pharmaceutical companies use the web and social-media tools to market their products, the first step in a long overdue process that will finally establish guidelines for how drug makers proceed in a Web 2.0 world.
And…
“It’s about time,” said an executive for one top-five pharmaceutical company who asked not to be identified. “Any guidance at all is better than having no guidance, which is what we have right now.”
Regulatory guidelines are now sorely lacking for direct-to-consumer spending by pharmaceutical companies using internet media.
And…
Ad agencies that specialize in health-care marketing say the hearings, and the likely implementation of set guidelines, are welcome news for pharma companies that, inherently, are already conservative by nature and have avoided doing much in the social media realm for fear of an FDA warning letter.
That pretty well sums up the conservative nature of the industry. The comments are informative, too.
Tags: advertising, direct to consumer, fda, marketing, regulation, social media