The Public Relations Renaissance

CEO Donna LaVoie was recently featured in European Biopharmaceutical News, highlighting the Public Relations Renaissance and why integrated media platforms have a key role to play.

“Whether your company is a large pharmaceutical, speciality pharmaceutical or biotechnology company, the effective integration of public and investor relations is critical in today’s ever-changing environment.

The advent of the internet and the digital world has altered the field forever and as such communications functions have altered immensely. Today, with the prevalence of Web 2.0 (web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing) and Web 3.0 (the personalisation of web applications) as integral pieces of the communications discipline; the need to work across key functional areas within communications and other key work streams such as regulatory, legal and medical affairs has been highlighted.

Traditional PR tactics have rules and expectations that are usually followed to the letter. For news announcements, PR firms generally recommend selecting a date around launches, milestones and/or conferences, issue the news at 08:30 on a particular day and then monitor print publications for resulting stories. If the article was negative, the PR firm would call that reporter and request a correction (if possible). In today’s Web 2.0 reality, these rules of engagement no longer apply, and press releases are no longer handled as a ‘one size fits all’ solution.”

Read up on the rest of Donna’s insights here.

The Power of Corporate Branding

A distinct and powerful corporate persona is a powerful tool that can distinguish a company from its competitors. Successful corporate branding helps create a bond between the company and its audiences, often far more extensively than through product branding. Modern examples have shown the extreme power of successful corporate branding. Here’s an example: Apple. As the fury of the iPad can attest, this company has been enormously successful in developing a brand personality associated with exciting, cutting-edge technology that transcends a specific product or product line.  Here lies a key benefit of corporate branding: immediate base value for all products under the corporate umbrella.

Pharma companies face a unique challenge in this situation. Due to the complex regulations in their sector, they tend to favor keeping their products as separate branded entities. However, as brand loyalty becomes more relevant under increased competition, we are seeing more and more pharmas starting to get their feet wet in the corporate branding renaissance.

The Right Way

A great example is Johnson & Johnson.  For a company with an extremely diversified portfolio of well-known brands, it can be challenging to develop a cohesive identity for the corporation as a whole.  J&J has created a focused, holistic campaign to utilize PR and social media to develop a unified brand that supports the entire corporate identity, rather than just specific brands. Tactics such as the blog “JNJBTW” provide a personal voice for the company and frame it as an involved, responsive and cohesive entity, rather than an amalgamation of brands and products. Johnson & Johnson even has a secondary blog, “Kilmer House”, detailing the history of the company and its constituents. These informal and relatable blogs are extremely advantageous and relevant to a unified corporate brand strategy.

The Risks

We cannot, however, ignore some of the inherent risks within corporate branding. Unlike product branding which can serve as a standalone business for every individual product, corporate branding takes a longer time to become fully implemented and is affected by all aspects of the company. One piece of negative news concerning the company or a product may have a negative impact on the overall corporate brand overnight, as we have seen recently with Genzyme’s viral contamination problem. Because of these risks, a safe mantra of corporate branding is to do it gradually, continuously, and carefully.

The Remedy

J&J’s success should be a provocative example for its peers.  Their unified corporate front demonstrates a strong business foundation and creates customer loyalty, while reinforcing individual product brands. While the pharmaceutical industry may still be waiting for its own Apple, the path forward is clear. Creating a respected, reliable corporate brand is necessary to earn the loyalty of the medical community and the public.

Cindy Miller
Vice President, Product and Marketing Communcations

Activist Investing: A Potential Threat to Your Business

Recent, highly publicized corporate takeovers have brought to light a growing phenomenon: activist investors. Notables such as Carl Icahn have become notorious for taking companies that they see as undervalued and framing them as needing a serious management shakeup.  Often, the driving factors are related to crucial moments in the lifecycle of a company, either when they are dealing with a negative issue, or conversely, when the development of an asset has reached a stage that could make the company an attractive takeover target, thereby resulting in quick gains for investors, but potentially forfeiting future innovation.

As shares and ownership increase in the company, activist investors seek to draw attention to corrupt or inefficient practices, leading to a proxy battle. Distrust in management leads to mistrust within the board and voting members, and provides the sway needed for these activist investors to effectively take over the company. They replace upper management and board members, sometimes slowly and other times all at once.

Just this week, Icahn reached a proxy battle resolution with my former employer, Cambridge-based biotechnology company, Genzyme. Following a number of unfortunate events, including contamination that forced the company to shut down plant production for months, Icahn blamed management and specifically, CEO Henri Termeer for these failures, and since has been campaigning to turn voters against current management.  As of June 9^th, two of Icahn’s board nominees were guaranteed to be elected as directors. While this may sound alarming that outsiders could infiltrate a company so quickly (most shares were bought after the June 2009 shutdown), Icahn has had numerous successes including Biogen Idec and AstraZeneca in the pharmaceutical field.

One could argue that Icahn actually does not have the company’s best interest in mind. Recently, Genzyme was forced to buy back $2 billion of its shares, a quick play to gain much-needed leverage in the proxy battle. This leverage was bought, however, at the cost of investing the capital into the repair of its issues and the advancement of its pharmaceutical platforms. When activist investing becomes about quick gains instead of the company’s future, shareholders ultimately lose.

While buildup of ownership in most cases is slow, keeping an eye out for companies and names that have recently been involved in proxy battles is always a safe practice. Sudden, heavy investing should be regarded as an alert. Successful management and board members will maintain some level of transparency to appease any possible suspicious shareholders. Most successful takeovers succeed due to mistrust that management could head the company in the most profitable direction, fueled by propaganda from the party wishing to take over.  In an age of activist investing, companies need to closely monitor shareholder activity and be prepared to take action if necessary.

Donna LaVoie, President & CEO

Social Media Strategies: Get off the bench and into the game; why do pharma and biotechs still wait on the sidelines?

Coming from the PR tech world where social/new media was widely embraced, it was a shock to the system a few years ago when I entered into the pharmaceutical/biotech PR industry and learned that almost all companies were taking  a “wait and see” approach. This reluctance was not new to me. I had very similar conversations with my technology clients back in 2004 and 2005, but I never thought that I would be rehashing the same arguments 4-5 years later with my current and potential clients.

The questions are always the same:

• How do you measure social/new media?
• I don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to a blog/podcast/monitoring the blogosphere, tweeting, etc.
• I am too nervous to violate any SEC/DDMAC/FDA rules.
• I don’t want to lose control of the corporate/product message.

Does this sound familiar? Fear is definitely understandable and no one wants to waste their time on an endeavor that will yield little to no ROI.

So what can companies do? Fair question.  Until the FDA makes a ruling on branded vs. unbranded content on the Web, then what is safe territory? While we wait for a ruling on branded content such as should Google ads have a pop up box listing all disclosures and side-effects via a 80- 140 character tweet-like warning, think about ways that you can push out approved news and information. Below are 5 simple steps that you can take to engage with social media platforms.

5 Easy Tactics for Social Media Initiation:

• Your content is already approved (a press release for example), so why do you  just put it on the Wire and company Website?
  • Add the title and tiny url to your company’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn status
• Sign up for multiple social media accounts
  • Put your company on as many networking platforms as possible; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Groups
  • It’s easy and fast, I promise
• Now that you have these accounts…
  • Make sure you add these links/icons to your Website, e-mail Signatures, Bios, etc.
• Post often, but don’t spend a lot of time on content
  • It’s all about page rankings, so get your content out there; adding a press release URL or link to an article with a simple message of “This just came out-very interesting read,” is sometimes all you need.
  • If someone reads your company news or media article from your company’s Website, LinkedIn status or a Tweet, which results in an inbound BD opportunity, does it matter where they found that information?

And that is all you need to do to get started. So get off the bench and into the game; nothing was ever won from the sidelines.

Lisa Rivero
Director of Media Relations/Social Media
email Lisa

BIO 2010 Survey: The Results are In!

Earlier this month, LaVoie Group conducted a survey of 25 biotech and pharma professionals on their plans for attending this week’s BIO International Conference in Chicago.  We know why we are going to BIO – as a leading integrated communications firm, LaVoie Group is attending the conference to support our clients who are presenting and conducting BD one-on-ones and media interviews, as well as hold meetings of our own with potential new business prospects. BIO is also a great networking opportunity to interact with those we’ve previously worked with in various capacities, and of course, to learn about what’s top-of-mind for industry professionals in order to better serve our clients. 

But we wanted to know why others were going to BIO, what their goals and objectives were, and how they planned to take advantage of the myriad of offerings of the biotech industry’s largest annual conference. 

The results of our survey were very informative and we were able to distill some compelling trends.  Survey respondents ranged from CEOs and BD execs to PR/IR folks and financial types.  Regardless of  job function, almost everyone was planning to hold one-on-one meetings, attend keynote speeches (will they be waiting in line to see Clinton and Bush?), and attend cocktail/evening functions.  Those three activities alone could make for a busy week, but also on the docket for most people attending BIO is visiting the exhibit hall, checking out company presentations, and attending panel sessions.  Conducting media interviews seemed to be a lower priority than we’d anticipated (of course, we are a bit biased!) with just under 15% of our respondents planning on it. 

The high priority placed on one-on-one meetings was a permeating theme throughout the survey.  Partnering was a major takeaway for many respondents, with several participants indicating that BD meetings were a highlight from years past, along with similar activities such as networking and raising visibility for the company among peers. 

Perhaps it was due to the nature of sample set, but many folks indicated in the survey that they’d benefit from a concurrent VC conference or panel.  What about you?  Would you like BIO to add that element to the conference, or do you think there are plenty of investor conferences out there already?  

Let us know in the comments, and we’ll see you in Chicago!