A content strategy pharma conundrum. (image via Flickr)

The breakdown: How do you write a paid search ad for a pharma client that delicately balances FDA requirements, online space restrictions, drug benefits and adverse effects? Not an easy pill to swallow, but Jared Kelleher shows us one unique approach below.

I’ve been watching MadMen, and it seems to me that advertising was simpler then, than it is today; and that they used to drink a lot at work, though maybe there’s no correlation.

Then, you just whipped up wild ads like this over a couple martinis at lunch. Today, there are rules and regulations, general counsels, and protective bodies like the Consumer Protection Agency and the Food & Drug Administration, and we’re charged with knowing all the ins, outs and what have yous of the industry’s laws, bills, bylaws and amendments.  I feel cheated, though not nearly as much as the pharmaceutical companies must feel.

Under an FDA rule called fair balance, if we’re promoting a drug’s benefits, we need to fairly balance those benefits with content about its risks. Pharma advertising evolved to adhere to the new ground rules; while watching the pretty people in the TV spots, we hear dozens of deleterious side effects as background voice-overs.  In print, half or more of a drug ad contains the important safety information and adverse effects copy about sweaty hands, dry mouths, erections lasting longer than four hours, or in the case of black box warning drugs, thoughts or attempts of suicide.

Last spring, many pharmaceutical companies received letters from the FDA noting that their paid search ads were touting drug benefits, without equally messaging the drug’s risks. In paid search, fair balance rules are harder to play by. Try equally extolling the marvelous benefits and mysteriously unusual adverse effects of a drug in an ad the size of a matchbook.

Many drug companies responded by rewriting their paid search ads with benign, benefit-free, unbranded copy, or they pulled their paid search ads altogether.  I’m no expert in pharma, but let’s consider a crazy idea: what if, instead of pulling our ads or rewriting them so feebly that neither the FDA nor our own customers know who’s running the ads, our paid search ads were explicitly about side effect and risks – no benefits.

Imagine, for example, Henny Penny Labs, a fictitious maker of the world’s leading worry and anxiety medications, most notably, WillyNilliex® – the #1 drug for nervous, jittery, cat-like behavior. Let’s say we’re charged with a keyword buy. Research shows we need a buy on symptoms such as: jitters, jittery, jumpy, goofy, tight, uptight, mad, mad as hell, angst, agita, and interestingly, verklempt.

Instead of getting upside down about what we can’t say about the tremendous benefits of WillyNilliex, we’ll run paid search solely on the drug’s rare-but-bizarre adverse effects, which incidentally, are likely the precise content many of our customers are looking for. Patients know what WillyNilliex is supposed to do. They want to know what it might inadvertently do – like possibly cause thoughts of suicide – good to know. Since there isn’t room in a paid search ad to balance benefits content with risks content, we’ll focus our test ad almost wholly on risks and side effects while mindfully communicating the drug’s indication:

WillyNilliex® Beats the Jitters
Side effects include hot dog fingers
evil eye, clown fear and more….

http://www.willynilliex.com/risksandsideeffects

This sample is a bit out there, but it demonstrates how this transparent approach would benefit the user by being honest and forward with the side effects. Maybe it’s not quite a drug marketer’s dream, but the ad provides brand impression, piques interest and gives users access to content they supposedly want to see, all while seemingly coloring within the FDA’s lines.

OK, who wants a martini?

Brothers from another mother, SEO and CS. (image via Matt Moore)

Launching a web campaign for a cutting edge product supported with new promotions, video, customer testimonials and content? Looking to increase new visitors, create buzz and inspire new sales?

You’d be making a big mistake if you don’t enlist both the expertise of a Content Strategist and an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) specialist.

Content Strategists and SEO specialists aren’t necessarily cousins, but more like Siamese twins surgically separated at birth. At its best SEO is handled by a SEO expert, CS by a CS expert, but there is a common familial bond. We’re both concerned with language and up-to-the-minute data on how people are talking about a subject.

It’s more than just making sure you have your SEO tags in place. Here are some of the benefits that come out of a close collaboration between CS and SEO.

• A clear picture of what is happening in the search space for that industry. Know the content and search trends. Know what topics and specific content themes people are looking for and tailor the content accordingly.
• Insight into how the content categories should be structured to optimize its’ position within the search engines.
• A view of how to balance SEO insights with other brand and message goals.
• Insight into upcoming trends so that the editorial schedule can be aligned with search topics on the rise.

Marrying the SEO insights with existing content planning, positions us to tell a more relevant story, and helps us structure more effective content campaigns and drive the right audience to the content they are seeking.

It’s not electric, but it’ll do. (image via the brilliant Christoph Niemann)

“But we don’t call it that,” he said.

“You don’t call it an electric toothbrush?”

“No,” he said. “It’s a power toothbrush and we can’t say electric toothbrush on the site.”

I felt old; we grew up calling them electric toothbrushes.

What to do. According to the keyword research of the day, it turned out that just as many folks searched for powered toothbrushes using the word electric, as did not.

Plus, anyone willing to shell out nearly $200 bucks for a toothbrush had to be a little older; from the days when they were called electric toothbrushes.

So while we couldn’t mention “electric toothbrush” in the copy, nobody had provided such explicit direction for not using the word in the secret little metadata behind every well optimized site.

We added electric toothbrush to the mix in every acceptable and relevant page title, content description and keyword. And slowly, we began to quietly creep to the top of the electric toothbrush search results page.

I took a peek to see where they’re at these days with their electric efforts.

I Googled “electric toothbrush” and they were nowhere to be found. I went to their site and saw that while they do use the word once, in customer-facing copy, they no longer use the word in their keywords or content descriptions.

Then something caught my eye—their competitor’s site—right there in the two spot.

I took a look at their keywords and content descriptions, and there, amidst dozens of the expected keywords, was that one little word I remember noodling with for hours—electric.

While it no longer seems to be part of my former client’s search repertoire, it’s good to see somebody’s still getting some mileage out of electric toothbrushes.