Legal issues with Social Media: It's the message, not the medium

I listened to a “Social Media and Advocacy Roundtable” discussion hosted by Nielsen Online called: “Communities, Brand Advocates and User-Contribution Systems – Featuring Dell's Richard Binhammer and Intuit's Scott Wilder.”

A couple of my favorite comments, paraphrased, from the call were:

·         “The [social media effort at Intuit] is out-servicing the customer service department.” – summary statement by the Nielsen Online moderator

·         “This is part of everyone’s business if you want to have a direct relationship with your customers.” –Richard Binhammer at Dell

During the call, though, the Nielsen Online folks kept posing questions that made it seem like social media was an insurmountable challenge for the pharmaceutical industry.

A colleague of mine at Fleishman-Hillard, Mark Senak, recently posted a podcast on his Eye on the FDA blog of a conversation with the FDA’s DDMAC about this very topic. The main point that I took away from that conversation was this:

It’s the message, not the medium.

Marketers/communicators need to make sound/balanced decisions about what goes into their messaging. The medium that carries that message is of less concern than the honesty, integrity, value that the message itself delivers.