Another report on the reputation of pharma, and this one puts us middle of the pack based on a substantial global study.

So, first, wow. That's a good base. 

Caliber uses something they call the "trust and like score" and their methodology shows that millennials are our friends.

In the industry we say this all the time but it's hard to prove. The people who are on your therapy like you more than the industry critics who think billions of dollars of research should be given away for free (while true, that's too much opinion for the Wire -Ed.).

The final insight we'll share from the report is that the emerging markets of China and Brazil are far ahead of other regions in positivity toward pharma. Global marketers will benefit from having this data available when crafting multi-region campaigns. 

This is a good report based on substantial data and is worth a look for global pharma marketers. It also contains lists of the top and bottom brands worldwide. We won't spoil the surprise, you'll just have to grab a copy to find out. 

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GoodRx has agreed to pay a $1.5 million fine for sharing patient health information, in some cases probably inadvertently.  Marketers need to pay attention to this as part of the complaint surrounded the use of third-party pixels with common advertising platforms. 

You can find the 27-page legal complaint submitted to the court on the FTC website. We took a look and found 17 references to online "pixels" commonly used for tracking and advertising purposes.

The FTC contends that these pixels are shared with the platforms and violate multiple privacy statements on the GoodRx site (which have subsequently been changed).

Here are some of the titles in the complaint relevant to digital pharma marketers (the letters and numbers are part of the document organization):

No apologies to The Players though now this song is absolutely stuck in my head (don't talk to the reader -Ed.).

GoodRx has been talking to the FTC for a while and in its most recent SEC filing had this to say about the case:

In this case the vigorous defence was likely seeing that $1.5 million was cheaper than a drawn out court battle.

That's all we can fit into a Wire story. For marketers it is important to keep this topic top of mind and stay attuned to the industry for developments. For now it seems like individual sites should be ok as we are not aggregating HIPAA data. That said, I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice (astute, but don't talk to the reader -Ed.).

To see other Wire stories on this topic, check out:

Marigold surveyed over 10,000 global citizens about their online actions and how they deal with brands. The first finding from the report is a win for email over all other channel.

We're going to equate "purchase from" which is the actual question to mean "more engaged." Here we see that citizens (or consumers, if you must) were email first and then social second (with ads above organic, even when self-reported).

Here, the report shows that citizens are much more interested in financial benefits over "community" or "content." Don't forget that when designing your CoPay programs, they can be major drivers of community.

When asked what data they would provide to get "better service" citizens showed that they are more willing to share personal information over data that involves other people. We're really pointing to "family make-up" for this finding but we see the same thing when asking parents about themselves vs. their children.

This is a fully-realized report on a large data set so definitely grab a copy if the above pique your interest. 

Social media is a global phenomenon and it's good to take off the USA blinders and look at the full picture. This chart shows what percentage of the top five platforms are in each region. 

It's not difficult to see that Asia and Latin America are huge portions of these platforms. Marketers engaged in those regions need to consider social even more than their US counterparts.

The CMO Council with NCSolutions surveyed 160 marketing leaders in North America to see what they are looking for in their media. The industries were CPG and retail so they might be a bit more impatient than B2B or other industries. 

When asked what they want from their marketing, respondents said new customers first and then loyalty to the brand. 

Not surprisingly, if you're looking for customer acquisition you're measuring sales first. Reach and brand lift are there coming in third and fourth though.

Twitter is turning off it's free API access and in place providing for a $100 per month* basic tier. This will keep bots from using the API to spread low quality content on the platform but it will also disrupt most free services that won't be able to pay the fee.

Unsurprisingly, this news was met with negative sentiment on Twitter, much of it from Japan. We analyzed the results on Meltwater, a listening tool we use that has the top tier API access and will not be affected by the change.

Japan is, by far, the most vocal country about this and it seems to do with a game called Genshin Impact.

Not surprisingly, people are largely not happy about this change. People who like certain bots will miss their free content and will likely not notice a difference in bad actors because they can just scrape and automatically use the standard interface.

We don't fully trust automated sentiment analysis but on something as distinct as this it is at least directional. It is based on significant talk as well. This data from last Friday:

In a parallel story with the eMarketer view on global social users, Insider Intelligence (they are the same company) put out some more charts. One that caught our eye was TikTok approaching 50% penetration in some markets. Yes, it skews younger but as it grows it is pulling in more of the older generations that make up the bulk of health marketers' audiences.

A Nielsen TV and Streaming snapshot shows YouTube growing its lead over Netflix in the streaming segment.

Streaming itself maintains its dominance as well being the single largest share of watch time on connected TVs and other devices.

Marketers know that the customer experience with their brand matters. Sometimes in health marketing this can get lost and we feel like we are only spectators on the patient journey. 

The DHC Group has a new report out titled "Customer Experience and the Patient Journey" and it's an excellent read. The report has no less than 18 contributors from the DHC, pharma, and patient service vendors. 

In the report they highlight that trust in pharma, even for patients, is low.

The importance of culture and language is also raised. Spanish speakers, for example, greatly appreciate materials in their native tongue. 

This 21-page report is a good read and covers a lot of ground. Recommended for anyone interested in the patient experience in pharma.

One word for digital health investment in 2023: slowing. The numbers remain fairly high for Telehealth and Health IT however as these two areas still have significant market traction. 

A report from GoodRx, this story is much easier on the brand, shows how important CoPay programs are for therapeutics.

Not only do patients bail on their therapies, but when they know about CoPay programs, and many do not, they use them. The number who go off script varies:

The report also shows the demographics of CoPay users. It's hard to make definitive statements without knowing the conditions being treated, but at first blush it looks like CoPay programs have some DE&I work to do.