Sanofi-Aventis’ social media mess: What are the lessons?

March 16, 2010 – 11:34 am by Chris

Well, we could have all expected this to happen and it’s every pharma legal department’s nightmare about social media: a patient gets angry, is ignored by official company channels, and takes to social media to air his or her complaints about adverse events.

For Sanofi-Aventis, the nightmare is named “Shirley Ledlie,” a cancer patient who claims to have experienced permanent hair loss from the company’s cancer drug Taxotere. Ms. Ledlie is part of a group of women calling themselves “the Taxotears” and they have their own blog on the subject of chemotherapy-induced permanent alopecia, A Head of Our Time. Not only had Ms. Ledlie been posting complaints at Sanofi-Aventis’ official Facebook page, Voices, but she had also been posting the complaints at a fake Sanofi-Aventis page with 10 times as many fans as the real page, under her own name and several pseudonyms. The Voices group is what company executives describe as “a grassroots and civic involvement network intended to provide current and former Sanofi-Aventis employees and their families and friends with information about the company and the health care industry.”

Jim Edwards of BNET broke the original story, and identified Ms. Ledlie, a U.K. expatriate now living in France. John Mack of the Pharma Marketing Blog, probing more deeply, determined the bigger fan-base page was a fake

Eileen O’Brien of Siren Interactive and Chris Iafolla of Shift Communications have each analyzed the situation.

Ms. O’Brien focuses on the impact of the fake Facebook page, which apparently has been up since December 2008. “In the short term, it’s surprising that an authorized PR rep hasn’t commented on the fact that the page is fake (although one of the patients has recently noted this),” Ms. O’Brien says. “Unfortunately, in the meantime, damage is being done to SA’s reputation.”

Mr. Iafolla asks what Sanofi-Aventis could have done to keep the situation under control. One of his suggestions is limiting the hours when comments are allowed on the group’s “wall,” locking it down when there is no one available to monitor the comments. “At least this allows a company to prevent inappropriate comments during off hours,” he says. “If they occur during office hours, they can be handled accordingly and directed to the right channels. Of course, this does not prevent the situation, but would help to mitigate the risk.”

The main questions remain: What will Sanofi-Aventis do, and why were they asleep at the switch?

The first thing the company did was take down all of Ms. Ledlie’s comments from the Voices page. According to Madeline Malia from Sanofi-Aventis’ corporate communications department, the company plans to open the page up again.

“Sanofi-Aventis is committed to participating in the social media space and believes it is an important resource for engaging the public and providing important information,” she says. “Sanofi-Aventis has been working to consolidate our online presence to more efficiently manage our resources. In the case of the Voices page, there were two existing Facebook pages (a standard page and a Fan page). The page was temporarily unavailable as we evaluated the best way to streamline our Facebook presence to a single site. Ultimately, the decision was made to upgrade the Sanofi-Aventis Voices Fan page. All of the Fans from this page have been invited to join us on this main Voices page.”

Ms. Malia says as far as the company was able to determine, Ms. Ledlie had started posting first to the fake Sanofi-Aventis page before she found the Voices page. The page was managed by members of the internal Sanofi-Aventis Voices team, she says. (I get the feeling this will change, and quickly.)

One of the massive oversights on the official Voices page was that there was no real terms of use guidelines to be found on the there. Ms. Malia says this has changed.

“Because social media is evolving at a rapid rate, the company continues to refine our extensive guidelines regarding how to address dialogue about our company on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter,” she says. “This includes providing guidelines for terms of use on Sanofi-Aventis social media sites, how Sanofi-Aventis social media sites will be managed and monitored, and specific protocols for responding to comments. Specific to Voices, the Facebook page now includes these terms of use.”

I reached out to Ms. Ledlie to see if Sanofi-Aventis has contacted her after this incident. She says she hasn’t heard from anyone at the company. “You see this is what I have been dealing with the last three years.,” she says. “It’s either been no reply at all or the two [letters] I have received the very first time I wrote to them a couple of years ago; and then a few months ago I wrote to the CEO, I recieved a short letter from someone else telling me nothing.”

According to Ms. Malia, “I understand the company has responded to the comments received through the appropriate communications channels,” but does not have any details about those responses.

That loud noise you just heard? That was my head, hitting the desk. Dear Sanofi-Aventis: The use of staid responses through “appropriate communications channels” is what got you into this mess in the first place. Showing some humanity would be very much to your benefit right now.

Switching subjects, the fake Facebook page brings to mind why I believe PhRMA’s idea for a “universal symbol” to show FDA approval of information contained in short-character mediums such as links or Tweets is just plain dumb. It’s too easy to scrape a logo off a Website and do with it what you like. Anonymous or your garden-variety pharmaceutical spammer could handily insert that logo into just about any link you can imagine. Sanofi-Aventis’ own brand was hijacked. The fake Facebook page prominently displays the Sanofi-Aventis logo and even has some of the company’s own copy in its Wall description.

According to Ms. Malia, Sanofi-Aventis is trying to figure out what to do about these fake Facebook pages. “There are several ‘unofficial’ Facebook pages bearing the Sanofi-Aventis name or the logo,” she says. “The company is working get in contact with the owners of this particular Facebook page as well as with our legal team to determine the how to move forward and to assess the possibility of partnering to manage the page.”

(By the way, Ms. Ledlie says the fake Sanofi-Aventis page has done her “a massive favor” by giving her a venue to continue posting her comments. She also has her own Facebook page on the Taxotere hair loss topic here.)

Dennis Urbaniak, VP, innovation and new customer channels, Sanofi-Aventis, will be addressing some of the ways the company has chosen to handle this incident at a panel on social media and patient adherence at Frost & Sullivan’s 5th Annual Patient Adherence Congress in Philadelphia this Thursday, March 18. Mr. Urbaniak is a member of Med Ad News‘ editorial board. “From my point of view, we will not make excuses, etc., but instead use this as a significant learning opportunity for the company to change our overall approach in the area,” he says. “Obviously [that's] not ideal but sometimes you need an event like this to clarify people’s focus.”