Guiding a Global Pharmaceutical Company and Drug Brand Through an Acute Safety Crisis
The Client
The client is a leading pharmaceutical company that produces a range of therapeutics, including one of the world’s best-known over-the-counter (OTC) drugs. When concerns were raised in the media about its flagship OTC product’s overdose potential, our client needed a plan and data to steer them clear of the storm generated by this bad coverage.
The company’s communications team needed crisis monitoring services to gauge the impact of both the media’s and the public’s reaction to this rapidly-developing story. By fostering an understanding of the issue by measuring the impact on the company’s brand, Fullintel helped the team better contextualize the risk and de-escalate the public’s reaction.
Even the biggest brands in the world can be swamped by negative coverage. Dealing with repetitive news stories on the same topic, with increasingly negative tones, means companies have to take action. This story dives into just that situation.
In this case, after a series of negative stories appeared linking overdose risk to our client’s product, Fullintel recommended the client – a global pharmaceutical firm – deploy our 24-7 crisis media monitoring and measurement package. Within minutes, the client began receiving media intelligence curated by expert analysts with deep experience of the pharmaceutical industry – providing the PR team with the tools needed to appropriately respond to and mitigate the crisis.
The Challenge
A hospitalization and a wave of clinical studies turned a single incident into a fast-moving reputational crisis. Three problems stood out:
Negative perceptions were crystallizing fast
A young woman was hospitalized from an overdose, and studies from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and universities linked the client's leading OTC drug to overdose risk — hardening negative perceptions in the public's mind.
Crisis efforts needed to be aligned, fast
The client's communications team realized it quickly needed to align its crisis management efforts and mitigate the situation using the right media intelligence, across both traditional and social sources.
Deeper theme-level sentiment tracking was required
Beyond general coverage monitoring, the client wanted the ability to track and measure sentiment around a handful of specific key themes tied directly to the crisis.
The Solution
Fullintel recommended its crisis monitoring and measurement package. The service delivered intelligence immediately, and within 24 hours Fullintel's reporting began evaluating the client's social media channels in a single human-curated report to provide the clearest picture possible of the issue's impact. To ensure the most relevant information, Fullintel proposed including news only from a shortlist of key media outlets, including client-vetted trade and business publications.
- Standard measurement & monitoring only
- No dedicated crisis-response workflow
- General coverage tracking, not theme-level
- No regional sentiment or SOV breakdown
- 24-7 crisis monitoring & measurement package
- Analyst-curated real-time executive alerts
- Sentiment tracked around specific key themes
- Regional sentiment, baselines & share of voice
Real-time alerts: analyst-curated (not automated) alerts to top-level executives and other stakeholders the moment any significant news or social post surrounding the crisis was published, giving the PR team situational awareness and time to plan a response.
Daily media impact reports: daily coverage reports for context and clarity on what was said over the past 24 hours across traditional and social media.
End-of-crisis analysis report: a quantitative and qualitative media analysis report combining Fullintel-suggested metrics with additional metrics the client requested, especially around sentiment and key themes.
Fullintel's global content reach expanded measurement to track the issue everywhere, providing accurate regional sentiment, baselines, and share of voice at the regional level.
The Deliverables
The client had already engaged Fullintel for human-curated measurement and monitoring, which let the team move quickly — needing only an email from the client to deploy the crisis monitoring and measurement package. Analysts' deep knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry, and of the client specifically, meant Fullintel could drive value and timely intelligence from day one.
Monitoring & alerting
- Real-time, analyst-curated alerts to top-level executives for peak situational awareness
- Daily media impact reports covering traditional and social media over the prior 24 hours
- Traditional media analysis performed alongside social media analysis and influencer tracking
- Influencer and key opinion leader tracking of posts that mentioned or quoted them
Analysis & measurement
- Qualitative insights on top coverage drivers and themes, cross-referenced by sentiment
- Reach and syndication data, including original articles vs. syndications
- Share of voice (SOV) across online, broadcast, print, newswire, and magazine coverage, plus social channels
- Advanced sentiment breakdown, including key themes cross-referenced by sentiment
- Global and regional coverage tracking, with regional sentiment and SOV breakdowns
The Result
The speed and flexibility of Fullintel’s crisis measurement package enabled the client to immediately begin receiving media intelligence within minutes of alerting its dedicated Fullintel media analyst. This non-disruptive approach of deploying additional crisis resources also provided invaluable time for the PR team to plan and craft an appropriate response, helping to mitigate the impact of the crisis.
Fullintel’s media intelligence also helped the client meet its goal of tracking and measuring sentiment and SOV around its most important key themes and topics.
Meeting these goals was important for the company, considering the relatively fickle nature of consumer behavior. An excess of negative news coverage or social media activity could lead directly to a compromised brand, decreased sales, and reduced market share.
The client could trust in and act on the data provided by Fullintel partially because of our expert curation approach, which combines supervised automation for certain processes overseen by full human curation and analysis by media analysts to ensure relevance and accuracy.
Make your media data a strategic input.
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