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.
At a glance:
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
With a young woman hospitalized from an overdose, and studies from the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) and universities linking our client’s leading OTC drug to overdose risk, negative perceptions were crystallizing in the public’s mind.
Against this backdrop, the client’s communications team realized it quickly needed to align its crisis management efforts and mitigate the crisis using the right media intelligence. Working with our industry-leading support teams, the client implemented Fullintel’s comprehensive crisis measurement package. This package includes real-time alerts, media impact reports, and crisis analysis reports packed with qualitative and quantitative metrics across traditional and social media sources, including key themes by sentiment and key themes share of voice (SOV) tracking.
Additionally, the client wanted to develop the ability to track and measure sentiment around a handful of specific key themes.
The Solution
Fullintel recommended its crisis monitoring and measurement package. This service delivers intelligence immediately, and within 24 hours Fullintel’s reporting began evaluating our customer’s social media channels (Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram) 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 only including news from a shortlist of key media outlets, including client-vetted trade and business publications.
Fullintel’s global content reach enabled us to expand our measurement and track the issue everywhere, providing accurate regional sentiment, baselines, and share of voice at the regional level.
Specific deliverables proposed by Fullintel included:
- 1) Real-time alerts: Analyst-curated (not automated) alerts to top-level executives and other important stakeholders upon the publication of any news or significant social posts surrounding these issues. This was to provide the client’s PR team with real-time situational awareness – along with valuable time to plan a response – around any negative developments as they happened.
- 2) Daily media impact reports: Daily media coverage reports for context and clarity on what was said over the past 24 hours in traditional and social media.
- 3) Analysis report: A quantitative and qualitative media analysis report at the end of the crisis, including a combination of Fullintel-suggested metrics and additional metrics specifically requested by the client, especially around sentiment and the analysis of important key themes within coverage.
The Deliverables
The company had already engaged Fullintel for human-curated measurement and monitoring. This let our team move quickly, needing only an email from the customer to deploy our crisis monitoring and measurement package. Our analysts’ deep knowledge about the pharmaceutical industry, and our customer specifically, meant we could drive value and timely intelligence on Day One.
Some specific aspects of Fullintel’s crisis measurement deployment included:
- Real-time alerts: Alerts to top-level executives of any news surrounding these issues for peak situational awareness.
- Qualitative plus quantitative insights: Fullintel buttressed its quantitative data with qualitative insights on top coverage drivers and themes cross-referenced by sentiment.
- Reach and syndication data: Reports included the overall reach generated across both traditional and social media, along with a breakdown of original articles vs. syndications.
- Media type SOV: The SOV of online publications, broadcasts, newspapers, newswires, magazines, and other media types was cross-sectioned, along with that of included social media channels.
- Traditional + social analysis: An overall traditional media analysis was performed alongside social media analysis and influencer tracking, to measure the overall impact and effect on the brand from a 360-degree angle.
- Advanced sentiment: An in-depth sentiment breakdown, including cross-referencing key themes by sentiment, allowed the client to understand media and public tone regarding the issue.
- Global and regional coverage: Fullintel used its massive content reach to track the issue globally, while our media analysts broke out regional sentiment and share of voice so the client could track each region specifically.
- Influencer and key opinion leader tracking: Opinion pieces and social posts from industry experts and key influencers, or those that mentioned them or included their quotes, were measured.
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.
Let Fullintel be your managed services partner for media monitoring and reporting. Request a 30 minute, interactive demo to learn more.
