Hey, it’s Marc.
Once again, about a thousand leaders from around the medical marketing industry are set to gather here in NYC this week to celebrate gold and silver, platinum and titanium winners at the annual MM+M Awards.
Over the past two decades, this spectacular Awards gala has become a fixture and a must-attend event for many people on the event circuit.
At its core, the MM+M Awards recognizes creativity and effectiveness in pharmaceutical marketing and advertising, as well as the top people and agencies behind the work.
Categories include such stalwarts as best media brand, best multichannel campaign, use of film or video, and the agency awards; along with recent additions like best use of AI, health-tech innovation and influencer marketing.
Among other changes for this year, the number of categories has been pared back to 45 (from somewhere north of 50), which should help the ceremony run faster.
That said, the program has not compromised on its mission to recognize what good looks like in healthcare marketing, and to adapt and evolve along with the industry.
At least, that’s my view.
This week on the podcast, as part of our MM&M Awards preview, we’ll hear from special guest Eduardo Molina, who’ll share his takeaways from serving as 2024 chair of judges.
And to hear what’s on tap for this week’s Trend segment, which is returning after a brief hiatus, I’d like to welcome back Jack O’Brien to the studio. Hey, Jack!
Hey Eduardo, and welcome to the M&M podcast. Thank you Mark. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. It’s an honor and looking forward to the conversation. It’s an honor and privilege for me as well. Thank you so much. So you’ve worked at a number of companies Eli Lilly Novartis at the and more recently Merck Bluebird bio and now Ibsen where you just started a new role as vice president of business operations strategy and chief of staff to the North American president.
And let’s just kick things off. Shall we with your Reflections on your experience as a jury chair this year what you think? Yeah. It was a great experience Mark. I was as I said before first of all, it was an honor to be part of Judge final and it was great just to get exposed to a lot of very creative and Innovative work across the across different Industries if you will, so it was
Case I was part of the titanium award. So it was a great experience to be part of the panel and get exposed to to really great work and I was very excited throughout the process even if virtually to be part of the panel.
Great. Yes, and it’s always a little bit of a push and pull in terms of what do we involve the jury chair in you know, we don’t want to you know, sort of sequester you and anyone judging group, but we do want you to be involved. And so, you know, we had you as you mentioned to be part of the titanium category judging which of course is the best in show where you take the top 10 best scoring entries from the whole program and we sit down and we can and we discuss which one is the winner of Best in Show and so we’ll talk a little bit more about that. But first, can you share some of your observations on this year’s best work sort of from a high level perspective. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely Mark, so
One some of it some of the things that I observe as I say said before there’s a lot of creativity. I would say a lot of innovation that way in the execution of the campaigns as well.
Obviously we were looking at not only the clarity of the message or call of action, but also the impact.
But one of the one of the definite things that I saw on you know on the work is you know, a lot of a lot of the campaigns were highlighting.
the incorporation of
Technology into solutions for for different stakeholders or for creating awareness. So I think that’s that was something very interesting in these years nominees.
from what I saw in the
in the different campaigns, right? So Health Tech Innovation, a lot of Technology being integrated Incorporated sometimes, you know the technology for for its own sake and we saw over the past many years actually that influx, you know of more Health Tech Innovation and you know, we’ve introduced the category to recognize that but you’re seeing it’s kind of, you know, creeping into a lot of different categories in terms of artificial intelligence and so on and so forth was where it was there any one technology or one kind of a couple of efforts that you thought stood out in that regard? Yeah. I think I think there’s a couple of things always the as you point that out I think as technology evolves.
It’s been incorporated into daily life for everybody at the end of the day as well as on the company side. So I think that’s kind of like merging if you will and then and then the other interesting thing that I can point out is.
sort of like democratization of solutions and and information so there’s a lot of
You know, even as we as we look at the tech space and you know, the way programmers operate and code Etc even on the on this page, I think there’s a lot of interesting Trends in terms of democratizing Information Solutions.
And those were also being highlighted as part of this campaigns, which I thought was was interesting and and I would imagine would be a trend moving forward as well again as technology continues to evolve and become more integrated into lives solutions for companies as well as what they what the agencies are doing for the companies. Yeah, and you know, we saw everything from the use of technology to increase empathy, you know, amongst Healthcare Providers, which was a tenant of Behavioral Health Behavioral Science in one campaign. We saw use of Health Tech to detect diabetes. Another one used really novel technology to use a radio spot to check in real time. Whether people need to go to their doctor to get checked out for a rare form of cancer. So as you said a lot of interesting Integrations there, you know in addition to
Sort of that influx influx of Health Tech which has kind of challenged us, you know from a from a ward program perspective in terms of separating out. You know that classic Health Care marketing campaigns which are highly regulated industry or highly regulated effort from the health Tech, which is Judge on you know, in some cases a different set of Standards what other kinds of Trends and Healthcare creativity stand out to you in this year’s work.
yeah, I think you know as the tool or areas perhaps that I would point out our
Continued awareness of how you know, Lifestyles awareness of disease Etc will continue to grow as I think science continues to evolve but something that was interesting. I think one of the campaigns as an example is, you know, going back going violence, which is always a very controversial topic which has different points of views and and I think the the interesting thing about, you know, one of the campaigns we saw around these topics specifically was taking a
not a stance on a yes or no or Pro or against but a different perspective if you will on perhaps more control or regulation if their reality is that you know, people will have guns so a little bit more of a different take
On the topic. So again, I think I think even in the context of generating awareness for some of the issues that we all have from a healthcare perspective lifestyle taking a different stance if you will on the on the problem or subject that hand is another interesting Trend perhaps. Yeah taking another stance. Absolutely, you know, we’ve seen industry increase in to you know, social causes and the public policy Health front of late and
We’ve seen a number of gun violence campaigns over the years and this one. I agree with you stood out to me as well in terms of a different take, you know from a creative perspective.
So that was really an interesting one, you know speaking of the new, you know, I know you you just came off a role of bluebird bio where you were Vice President as well of marketing and you’re part of a team that continued to pave the way and the gene therapy World delivering transformational therapies for patients and families affected by sickle cell disease, thalassemia and cerebral cerebral Adeno look the dystrophy or calde as it’s known and of course hcp’s pairs of patients can continue to have a lot of questions about these new treatments. I’m just curious Eduardo. What kind of approach is the industry taking to Market this new generation to break through treatments? Yeah. Yeah. It’s a good question mark and I think you know these might sound as a cliche, but but
I think close partnership is the key the key thing here for
treatments that are as you as you know, and the audience might know very well are transformational a pretty big part of them shift to what they stand there of care Ace. So Gene therapies are always the always be pretty pretty Neil.
in any of these area and and I would say number one close partnership with patients and patient Community patient groups is key because
You know as we all know patients are taking you know, we’re all taking as patients as individuals Healthcare in many cases in our own hands and having a more informed conversations with with our providers. So that’s the first part that I think it’s critical or even more critical than
them previous times with with other pharmaceutical products
the close partnership with https will continue to be really important. I always be because they’re a big part of that of that decision making
But I think the other part is you can imagine because of the pricing of Gene therapies is that it continues to be really important to to partner with with payers whether that is commercial payers or state level payers. So to make sure that they really understand. What is the value proposition that in this case Gene therapies bring to to a table. So I think in the end there is a need to very strong communication with all of those stakeholders to make sure that they understand the full value of what a gene therapy is bringing into a table for patients and society as a whole.
Yeah, you bring up the higher point of view. I think it’s an excellent one, you know from the standpoint of these are very expensive treatments. I know, you know multi-million dollar range and they promised to be one and done treatment. So there is a lot of value lifetime for the patient but that still is can be quite a big impact from a financial perspective. And right now, you know, there’s relatively few patients that are kind of qualifying for these. So from what I’ve heard most of the big Managed Care players are able to sort of absorb those costs over their populations. It’s more of a function of making sure that providers and hospitals are really educated and that the hospitals have the right infrastructure in place as well as the right payments in place so that they have their costs covered as well. As you know on the patient side that they’re able to have all of their you know,
Whatever, you know side effects may be involved can be managed and there’s a lot of patient education involved. So a lot of a lot of Education needed I’m Mark I would I would add something you brought up as well which is you know, the institutions so not only they obviously the hcps by the hospitals as institutions are a big part of that equation for many different points of views, right like not only the financial element but the infrastructure a lot of the professional societies and Hospital groups are also doing a lot of work to to prepare
other institutions that want to deliver
sell and gene therapy to to their patients who have that option available. So preparing that infrastructure regardless of the price point of any therapy or any Logistics involved with one specific therapy in general. There’s a lot of work by those professionals Societies in and leaders in the industry to to educate a lot of those institutions on what is that
Infrastructure, what is that? They need to be successful in delivering this very important therapies for patients in the future. Absolutely. Yes. Well said,
Absolutely. I think we’re going to see more selling Gene Therapies in the awards program over the over the coming years. So looking forward to that getting back to you know, how is the agency client Dynamic evolved over time to adapt you think to some of these new trends we’re seeing, you know, both in terms of different Trends and creativity technology or some of these new transformational treatments that marketers have been called upon to work on. Yeah.
Yeah, so a good question I think similar to
the discussion we were just having a few minutes early or is that was the agency also bringing a lot of solutions that are linked to technology to the table so you can see that Trend and I think we can all agree that
you know, there’s there’s sort of a buzzword that has evolved over time, which is Omni Channel.
But that will continue to evolve it really, you know, how all of these different channels are being integrated into into sort of like a continuous flow of information that allows to deliver messages to the right person the right time Etc. So I think that continues to evolve
I would say also that because of these maybe maybe a lot of the agencies have become more specialized in certain things, right? Although some agencies have grown.
Or are part of a big Network.
In some instances that it has become fragmented because of that need to specialize and then there is that that technology part and there’s a the access the value and access right the payer side, which is another part of the equation. But so I think in general
That those Trends also have to some extent created some fragmentation. At least from what we see from the industry to you know, working with the different agencies interesting. Okay. So if we have work to do in that relationship, I’m guessing it’s probably in bridging those that divide or those potential gaps and coverage so to speak. Yeah, I would I would argue so I have worked always in large companies large Pharma and small biotechs and I would say that
You know, even the large companies that have the capacity to manage several agencies, which they continue to do and they have their resources in some cases. I think there’s a truant consolidating in many, you know for many different reasons and always like this smaller companies.
have have more limited resources more limited not only Financial Resources, but
but human resources, so the need to be able to manage that interaction and the integration of the different capabilities.
Becomes really really important. I think it’s even more accentuated in the environment where again financial resources are very limited for small biotics. So
I think that continuing integration of the capabilities and the work with with different agencies whether they’re in the same network or not.
Will become more and more important for for the client.
right and you see a movement toward agencies sort of shedding that one stop shop for more of adding on like a quilt work of different other agencies that through m&a and becoming more of a combined entity that can address from Soup To Nuts all the commercial needs of a brand which I would think would be a special useful for somebody like a small biotech who’s agencies whose agency resources may be are more a little bit more limited perhaps in the big farmer and we actually saw in our Healthcare marketers transfer this year a big shift in terms of the marketing spend allocation toward payers and when you
Look at that from a 35,000 foot perspective some might say well, what does that say about the proposition for things like other areas of spend like digital advertising spend which really peaked during covid and now maybe became down somewhat and these have things like transformative therapies like Gene therapies, which require more attention paid to the payer and you know working with payer agencies Market access agencies to do this and I wonder I’m not sure if it’s a zero sum game where clients are taking funds away from you know, things like digital advertising and putting it more toward pay or marketing, but that was one interesting thing. We saw in our data. Yeah all you’re right Mark and to build on that. I think the
you know, even you know the example of you know
Selling Gene therapies is that you were pointing out institutional marketing. If you will that that’s another area where you know, you have to you have that hospital that he has a stakeholder. Maybe, you know, we used to have these these products back in the day that you had. I think that was a big part of
of the marketing organization which within on the client side
and that might be first for some of these Therapies.
Such as cell and gene therapy that might be coming back to an extent maybe in a different form. But but another area where where those capabilities from. The agencies will be important again, I think so that’s yet another and another Trend and another area for for sure a focusing direct client agency relationship great. Great. Well, this has been fascinating or just a lot of you over one more question and word and then we’ll let you go. You know, I know that you were heading up analytics as well and your prior role and I’m sure that that’s still front center for you as you talked about the movement Omni Channel marketing and so forth. What kind of skills do you look for in marketers these days?
Yeah. Yeah Mark, I think always leave markers we had kind of like
Zero Diane Hall create TVD and the ability work with an agency and but as your pointing out, I think one of the areas that that we pay we pay close attention now in hiring somebody and trying to predict that success is the ability to have those in a lady kills kills. They Financial Acumen to be able to
Analyze data and interpret data, right? So that is very important. Not only managing or being able to read it. But but also interpret it, so I think that’s
That’s one important area and I would say.
As most people would imagine the ability to communicate really important and the ability to lead whether it is, you know, a team of their own or the ability to lead across functional team. I think has become increasingly important as
For marketers who are in the in the middle of very large cross-functional teams in any company leading different functions from you know, regulatory clinical in some cases value or within just a commercial organization. So so that ability to lead a team is really important along with some of the other areas that which is discussed great that would imagine that very important indeed. Well Eduardo. I want to take this opportunity to say we at mmm sincerely appreciate your services jury chair for this year’s Awards program, especially during such a busy time for you professionally and thanks once again for joining us today. Really? Appreciate it Mark. No, thank you. Thank you for having me in the podcast very interesting conversation and I am sure many will be interested in some of these trends that are really important to the industry to the agencies and it was on the part of a of the judge panel and looking forward.
Or to Future conversations. Absolutely. I am as well. The 2024. Mm. Awards will be handed out on October 10th at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City tickets are still available for more information about attending or to view the digital simulcast visit. Mmm hyphen awards.com trending and is the part of the broadcast when I have things back over to Jack O’Brien to tell us what’s trending in healthcare. But before we do that Jack you had some news you wanted to update our audience on about the editorial team, right? Absolutely. So last month. We had our new Editor in Chief Jameson Fleming on here and he kind of laid out what really excites him about Haymarket media and what he has in store for the brand and to Mark’s point. He brought this up before we started recording. He basically had two three weeks and they tasked him with come up with a vision forward looking for the brand both short term and long term and I think walking into a new place that you don’t really have a full understanding. You’re still trying to get the lay of the land. That’s
A pretty big task to ask somebody with but he did it and came back with some new titles for the three of us and a new direction in which we’re going so I’ll start off and then we can go around the horn here. I am taking on the new role of managing editor. Basically number two with Jameson and we will be bringing on sometime this fall a new general assignment reporter that will report into me. So this is something that I’m encouraged by obviously anytime you get a promotion. It’s it’s worthwhile, but I’m not the only one that’s changing titles here. Let’s show what is your new title? And what’s your scope? Yeah. Hi everyone. It’s Lasha. I will be taking on the role of editor Pharmaceuticals. So I’ll be focused on doing deep dive long-form reporting on some of the biggest Trends and challenges that are facing marketers in-house at pharmacies and I’ll get a chance to do some editing as well. So I’m looking forward to that.
That I’ve learned a lot in my almost four years here, but I really think there’s a lot more to learn and there’s so many interesting things to cover when it comes to the behind the scenes of Pharma marketing. So I’m excited to dig into my new role and congratulations to you as well Jack and of course, I’m excited to continue working with with Mark and Jameson and as you mentioned Jack kudos to Jameson for the new Newsroom plan.
Absolutely before I bring Mark in here who has been our stalwart leader. The Neil award champion of I will say the decade because you’ve been on a pretty solid run here. Let’s just focus is going to be primarily on the pharmaceutical side of things mine will primarily be on the agency side of things. So I encouraged those in our audience their medical marketers to reach out and certainly if you have clients that have an interesting story to tell to reach out to lesion for that Mark you’ve been around here forever. That’s not changing, but your title is changing talk a little bit about that.
Sure. Well, yeah 15 years and going and you know, first of all applause applause great to hear you both stepping up into those editorial role editor roles, which is exceedingly well deserved and a really great reflection of the tireless work you both done on behalf of the brand and fulfilling the Brand’s mission of both, you know, keeping up with what’s happening with the agencies as well as the Pharma industry and I’ll be continuing in the role of editor at large which I took on a few years ago and got a update that LinkedIn profile but basically, you know continue with my long-form column 30-day Supply, you know, which basically covers any issue that impacts how a pharmaceutical brand is developed paid for dispensed reimbursed. You name it, you know, it’s kind of a broad Mandate of interest to pharmaceutical marketers as well as collaborating with you both on the podcast, which I really enjoy immensely and
Keeping up with you spry folks and as well, as you know doing some features a little bit of news when I’m able recruiting for things like M&M events and the Roundtable which we have another one coming up this week. So staying busy, you know wearing a few different hats doing whatever the brand needs and I think that’s where I what I enjoy is, you know wearing wearing a few different hats for the brands. So I’ll continue in that mission and eyeing that next meal award which is always always the goal here now, I’m very excited and I want to reiterate what we talked about the top. It’s not only are we all taking on different roles and some add responsibilities here, but we are going to be bringing somebody into the fold. I think by the time that people are listening to this you can double check on LinkedIn indeed. Whatever your job form of choice is we are going to be looking for a general assignment report to help out in our efforts and I think the only thing I think if you learned anything from our internal Molly Huth over the summer is just somebody that’s a go get
I think that’s really what we’re looking for. Is somebody that’s going to be able to mesh with the team and come in here and learn a really exciting industry where there’s a lot of changes on the policy side on the commercial side of things on the marketing advertising landscape. So I certainly encourage if you know of somebody or if you are somebody to reach out to any of the three of us go to the application with hay markets job board and yeah, we’re gonna look forward to bringing that person in and I’m sure we will Factor them into the show sooner than later. So looking forward to that and again plotted to both leche and Mark Jameson and the new direction that mmm is taking on here. So very exciting stuff. Absolutely. Thanks for recapping all that Jack exciting indeed. So what do you got force on the trend segment? So we’ve got two things here for the trend segment both in kind of the digital landscape. The first one is that on Thursday. It’s World mental health day and the Jed foundation and uninterrupted announced the launch of a four-part YouTube video.
Series featuring International intergenerational conversations with top athletes about life mental health and staying on top of their game this includes for any basketball fans that are here. I know Mark is a fervent basketball fan. There’s former New York Knick Iman Shumpert. There’s Jason Richardson and his son Jace who is a Michigan State University basketball player. There’s also Master P who is a philanthropist music mogul and producer along with two-time All-Star, Trey young and former Collegiate football player and strength trainer travel Gaines and I think it’s really interesting getting athletes involved in anything that relates to mental health is something that we’ve talked a lot on the show is you know, this whole idea of destigmatizing the topic and saying like oh this happens to anybody but there is something really pronounced about having Athlete on there this whole idea of machismo being Top Gear game all the store stuff and saying no you can you can have vulnerabilities and you can ask for help and you can try and build
Mental resilience the same way you build a physical resilience. I’m looking forward to seeing the series take off here, especially because the Jed Foundation has done so much work as it relates to mental health causes as it relates to Suicide awareness and certainly with a primary focus on the black and African-American Community leche. I’m curious your thoughts on seeing this role out here. It’s another digital series that really has a hook going for Gen Z and I would say even some younger Millennials for sure. Yeah. I mean, I’ll take straight to the social media angle on here. I think it’s smart that they chose YouTube as the platform for this message because we know that as you mentioned, you know, Millennials and gen Z or spending a lot of time on there, but John Alpha is increasingly becoming the newest generation to reach out to in Market to and they’re mostly on social media platforms, like tiktok and YouTube more than half of YouTube users are between the ages of 18 and 34 and 17% of teenagers who use YouTube
Are on at least once a day and on average, they’re spending about two hours a day on YouTube. So their largely going to YouTube for for entertainment and education. So I think the fact that they’re rolling out this mental health awareness, you know.
Series on YouTube is definitely a smart choice. We also know that the overall us suicide rate and mental health rate anxiety and depression rates have been steadily climbing in in the US. So it’s definitely an issue that is not going away anytime soon and still needs a lot of attention. So it’s it’s heartening to see them, you know rolling this out on YouTube and I do lead targeting the young people who are who are largely using this platform.
Absolutely, and it should be noted too and the press release that a company the announcement here that this is being launched with a preview of the series at YouTube’s mental health Summit. So YouTube is really like luscious said leaning into the opportunity to kind of guide this conversation as relates to mental health knowing who Their audience are Mark, you know basketball aside you and I could talk for probably a half hour here just on the merits of whether trade young is welcome in the borough of Manhattan, but I want to I want to talk to you about your thoughts on on this series rolling out. Yeah still stinging from that Sixers lost to the Hawks a couple years ago or Trey young really showcased his skills. But I guess maybe I’m a certain age where I really enjoy podcasts especially with, you know, former NBA stars, you know, Alan Iverson has been interviewed at length in the podcast format and it’s just it’s fascinating to hear, you know, other NBA vets interview him about
Not only the how he paved the way, you know for more athletes to play the play of the game at its highest level, but just the cultural impact. He had you could see that intergenerational Dynamic at play and it’s so meaningful and when we look at the NBA today, I think there’s a real need for that advice from older players to younger players and to be frank, you know from a mental health perspective. I think a lot of the I think it is more prevalence of mental health issues. Now in the NBA, you know, you could see it, you know players on various teams that you know, we’re so promising in college may have had a good couple of years in the league and then just kind of flamed out for know, you know, sometimes there’s a surface level reason but I suspect that, you know the adjustment to the league and the tremendous pressure that players are under from fans and just the pressure to perform, you know has a lot to do with it. So I think adapting that podcasts for you know, the younger generation.
That you know enjoys the YouTube format is really smart. And there’s a nice mix here, you know of Olympians as well. I think there’s a lot more as we’ve all talked about on the podcast awareness of the tremendous pressure that Olympians are under from games to games, you know, that the gear up for the for the games, you know, whether it’s summer or winter and then the two year or four-year break in between and had to maintain that, you know, I of the tiger so to speak and the mental health throughout is very difficult. And there’s a lot of there’s been you know, unfortunately, you know, we had Allison Schmitt on the podcast and you know, we’ve profiled different athletes over the years that have kind of Broken Ground there. So it’s nice to see this. I think there’s a real need for that their awareness to spread, you know into areas like the NBA and on so on and so forth so really applaud this effort. Yeah. It’s one of those things that like, you know, I grew up in the arrow where it was Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant and LeBron James being those those first stars that really
Came to mind and obviously there was this whole idolization of Michael Jordan the CEO gotta win it all costs and I even saw it in the Last Dance where it’s like you can be cruel at times. You can be so detached emotionally. That’s not sustainable too. That might be good. And if you have to win a seven-game series or something, but that’s not a way that you live your life months and years and decades at a time. And so it’s good to kind of see this reframing. I know Kevin Love has done a lot of work in terms of amplifying, you know, his battles with anxiety and panic attacks and everything like that. There is still a long way to go and I think that’s something that like luckily the league and you know, some of these former stars are taking on their shoulders and hopefully it’s something that can resonate with a younger audience to that end. I want to segue into our Second Story here, which is one that Lesha flagged for the trans segment. Is that tiktok in the World Health Organization our teaming up on a mental health collaboration. You want to flush that out for our audience in terms of what that looks like and your thoughts to I thought it was very interesting to see these two organizations.
Come together especially Tick Tock has been as you’ve covered extensively, you know, the focal point of so much misinformation and the who has been swirl around with misinformation since the covid-19 pandemic and its kind of a meeting of the minds where it’s like, how can we help each other? How can we in this sort of way is released a mental health really move the ball down the field for sure. I will say that Mark was actually the originally the one who flagged this one but I’ll give him that credit but ya know this I thought this was super interesting. Obviously. We’ve reported a lot on misinformation the numbers that you know, 84% of mental health content on tiktok is misleading in some way. We’ve talked a lot about those issues on this podcast. So it was interesting to see that tiktok itself as a platform is taking action to sort of develop a Counterpoint to that so tiktok and the who has have announced a year-long collaboration that is aimed at providing tiktok.
Users with reliable and science-based health information. So that’s going to involve tiktok partnering with experts who are also health influencers. And I believe they’ve already listed a handful of them that will be working with them to produce evidence-based mental health content. There’s Dr. Karen schneck who’s a clinical psychologist with over 20 years of experience. There’s Dr. Azmi childrey Who has over 400,000 tiktok followers and has been recognized by The Who and YouTube health and tiktok for his trusted content. And there’s Dr. Mohan sakharam who is a practicing general practitioner who focuses on urgent care medical education. So there’s already a number of influencers who are going to be rolling out content in relation to this collaboration and the who’s director of digital health and Innovation, Dr. Elaine labrecque.
Did that creators who understand their audiences needs have a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between science and everyday life and this is where the who can step in to support influencers to deliver evidence-based information ensuring that Health conversations on platforms, like tiktok are both impactful and informed so I’m going to be looking forward to seeing what content comes out of this collaboration the level of impact. It has how much engagement in generates it’s definitely a good sign that tiktok is kind of trying to develop a strong counter to health misinformation on the site. So Mark, do you have any thoughts on this? Yeah. Thanks. For sure. First. I want to give a hat tip to how I learned about it from a LinkedIn contact the mine Miss Universe who’s in the healthcare social media space influence or space, you know her to take was in I agree, you know, great to see tiktok. As you said Lesha taken a significant step to combat health.
Mis and disinformation on the platform with this partnership, you know, another physician creator that I interviewed several months ago told me about the thighs, you know Global Network of hcp social media creators and I’ve been meaning to check it out and here they are with with this collaboration which I think you know as we’ve discussed many times, you know, hcp’s are of course in a great position to partner with their professional organizations to counter misinformation get accurate information out there to fill that vacuum, which Now is really dominated by the growth over the past year or so of these endorsers these influencers on the platforms like tiktok, which are you know furthering and fostering a lot of species kind of health-related topics and Trends and you know to sort of counteract that counterbalance that with proper information so young people or people of any age really can
Can make proper decisions about their health and so it’s a really it’s still a new trend and it’s great to see I think this this collaboration will really Foster it. I think they’re also, you know plunking down 1.5 million dollars.
In cash tiktok is toward this effort and and providing another million and a half in media free media credit for it to take root. So we’ll keep an eye on how this addresses this. I mean it’s gonna take them. It’s a multi-factorial problem, of course, but I think this is a great way to address it. Yeah, if I can just add one more thought here before we wrap up the show is just I wonder how much tiktok is really learn from kind of the mistakes of the past that you’ve seen from other social networks. Whether that’s Acts or Facebook met up Instagram as even Snapchat too in terms of like how you respond to Chris’s system as it relates to health misinformation, you know, there was there’s obviously been plenty of that. They saw on Facebook during the covid-19 pandemic and obviously Twitter before Elon bought it and afterwards I wonder if there’s some of that words like let’s be proactive here. Let’s look at the fact that you know, like luscious said there’s an 84% of mental health information on the app is misleading or incorrect. It’s like, okay, so let’s actually take a step here if we’re trying to
Also keep Regulators off our tail and still trying to engage with the public and meaningful way. So, you know, there could be a business angle to this as well. I’m not saying they’re doing this just out of the goodness of their own heart, but if they’re able to help people along the line too that certainly something that they should be applauded for. Yeah. I mean, I think from an algorithmic perspective you see those efforts like Facebook has made efforts around, you know, making sure that the algorithm and YouTube as well, you know surfaces, you know accurate content, you know Community notes if you will for health and that kind of thing but this is kind of like you said attacking the problem, you know From The Trenches making sure we get the right content into the algorithm so that it can be surfaced. So that’s very important as well again multi-factorial problems going to take a number of solutions, but this is a step in the right direction. Absolutely. All right. Well, we’re going to call it there. Thanks so much for joining us in this week’s episode of the mmm podcast. Be sure to listen to next week’s show when we’ll be bringing you another event preview this time around the upcoming hlth conference in Las Vegas.
That’s it for this week. The mmm podcast is produced by Bill Fitzpatrick Gordon. Our theme music is by Susie himself rate review at follow every episode wherever you listen to podcasts new episodes out every week and be sure to check out our website. Mmm online.com for the top news stories at Farmer marketing.
