Boosting corporate image and market competitiveness: ranking pharma companies on social media
AI-translated from the Chinese original · editorially reviewed
Reprinted with permission: Pharmascan
Corporate image spans products, marketing, and service, and a strong image raises market competitiveness and brand awareness. Since the pandemic, multinational pharma companies have focused on corporate impact, emphasizing contributions to public health, the environment, society, and governance. Social media performance also shapes image — the pharma companies that score well in competitiveness rankings push the rest of the field to deliver more meaningful content and experiences.
Corporate image is the overall impression consumers form of a company through its product features, marketing strategy, staff service, and reputation, and it also encompasses corporate social responsibility, culture, values, and image communication. A strong corporate image builds consumer trust and goodwill, and strengthens a company's market competitiveness and brand recognition.
Yet the multinational pharma companies that once cared intensely about corporate image have, since the pandemic, gradually shifted their focus to another dimension — impact.
Pharma companies' efforts during COVID-19: showing impact and helping patients and society
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many pharma companies advanced drug development and production, and even donated medicines and resources to help fight the pandemic worldwide. Patients came to believe that beyond effective products, pharma companies could also be a force for good in public health, environmental, social, and governance (Environmental, Social, Governance — ESG) matters.
"How does our company create impact? Where can we put in effort and provide help to patients? That is what many multinational pharma companies are focused on right now," said Shannon Walsh, EVP of Public Relations at Ogilvy Health.
Image campaigns such as Pfizer's "Science Will Win" and Johnson & Johnson's "Jassen Never Stops" projected hope — and last year these companies delivered on their promises to help curb the spread of COVID-19.
Bristol Myers Squibb also recently partnered with Ogilvy Health and the American Music Therapy Association to promote music therapy for patients with multiple sclerosis, easing physical and mental symptoms such as memory decline, deteriorating mental state, and loss of concentration caused by disease progression.
Ranking pharma social media competitiveness: social brand image, content strategy, and experience design
Since 2020, Ogilvy Health has for the first time surveyed how proficiently pharma companies use social platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn — scoring six dimensions: social brand image, social content strategy, social experience and design, paid social, social influence, and social platform engagement, each worth 5 points for a total of 30.
Bristol Myers Squibb took first place overall with 20.6 points, scoring highest in social content strategy and social influence; Boehringer Ingelheim came second with 20.3 points, scoring highest in social brand image; and Roche placed third with 19.5 points.
Many pharma companies have built strong social media visibility since the dawn of the internet era. This analysis also encourages pharma companies to learn how to reach their target audiences more effectively, deliver more meaningful content and experiences, and grow the influence of the company and its products across disease areas, social platforms, and the real world. The category scores follow below
Social brand image:
Make sure your visual identity and voice stay consistent across platforms, and weave brand elements — colors, voice, logos — into the content you share and the needs of your audience. Once a consistent visual identity and voice are established, sharing valuable information on a given platform makes it much easier to engage with others in the community.
Top three: Boehringer Ingelheim (3.8), MSD (3.4), Roche (3.3)
Social content strategy:
Listen to and gather the needs of patients and healthcare professionals, and amplify shared content around the topics they care about — even partnering with patient groups to raise disease visibility. Bear in mind, though, that busy, multitasking modern audiences may not sit through long articles, so packaging your message as a story that grabs attention makes content far more likely to go viral.
Top three: Bristol Myers Squibb (4.3), GSK (3), Pfizer (3)
Social experience and design:
If you were the user browsing social platforms on your phone, what kind of posts would you want to see? Ogilvy Health recommends concise, memorable content with bold visual color and clear content blocks to catch users' eyes, and suggests presenting vivid, authentic content in different formats suited to the character of each platform.
Top three: Boehringer Ingelheim (3.5), Bristol Myers Squibb (3.3), Gilead (3.0)
Paid social:
The share of engagement with healthcare professionals and patients through digital tools is rising every year. Companies should allocate at least 20% of budget and media spend to digital investment, while avoiding pushing identical content across different platforms — content is best tailored to each audience.
Top three: Pfizer (4.3), Roche (4.2), GSK (3.6)
Social influence:
Social influence is built step by step through a series of processes: sound strategy, compliant methods, long-term relationships and brainstorming with internal colleagues and external key opinion leaders or influencers, and finally real-world execution and evaluation in the market.
Top three: Bristol Myers Squibb (4.2), AstraZeneca (4.0), Boehringer Ingelheim (3.8)
Social platform engagement:
Engage often with new followers, share medical information worth passing along, and try to reply within 24 hours — or use a chatbot for initial responses so no message goes ignored. Better yet, partner with internal or external collaborators on online forums, radio programs, or topic-specific polls to rally more voices and convey the importance of specific issues.
Top three: Roche (4.0), AstraZeneca (3.5), Bristol Myers Squibb (3.0)
Thanks to the convenience of the internet age, social media has become one of the ways patients, healthcare professionals, and pharma companies communicate and understand one another. By showing up well on social media — investing resources in the pandemic response, raising awareness of specific diseases, partnering with patient groups to increase disease visibility, and even collaborating with charities and radio stations to share disease knowledge and patient education — pharma companies have shaped a positive corporate image and achieved far-reaching influence.
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