CyberRx: Emerging Social Media Marketing Strategy for Pharmaceuticals

The purpose of this paper is to assess the state of the art in social media and pharmaceutical marketing through empirical analysis of online consumer conversations. Proliferation of social media has significantly changed traditional one-way, marketing controlled communications. Balance of power has shifted to consumers, who use social networking sites, blogs and forums to obtain extensive brand and product information, often from each other. This prompts companies towards more intimate, transparent and constant two-way consumer engagement. Pharmaceutical marketing and direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) are not immune to this pervasive, disruptive cultural/technological phenomenon, which poses particular challenges given regulatory, legal and ethical constraints on their marketing.