Pfizer Canada shares its social media response flow chart

This article was published on my original blog, Marketing4Health.ca, on Jan 3, 2011. There are plans to update it as some of the content is quite outdated, but since some of the content might still be relevant to some of my readers, I am publishing it as is for the time being. Stay tuned for an update.

What better way to kick off 2011, than to provide you with a gift from Pfizer Canada:  their social media response flow chart which provides guidelines as to when and how to respond (or not respond) to comments on social media networks.

Every company should have some sort of guidelines as to how they will respond to social media comments about their brand(s) and corporation.  Even if an organization has not implemented social media tactics, they may be (and should be) tracking mentions of their brand and corporate names via tools such as Google Alert.  Such mentions may require intervention by the company, and a plan prepared ahead of time will help ensure that an appropriate response is provided.

Pfizer Canada has modified an assessment chart that was originally developed by the U.S. Air Force .  The flow chart will guide Pfizer Canada in responding to remarks on social media networks which are either the property of, sponsored by or have a relation of some kind to Pfizer Canada (ie. the Canadian Medical Association, CMA, discussion panel which is hosted by Pfizer).  In fact, the flow chart was set up when Pfizer Canada launched the discussion panel on the CMA site.  At the moment, Pfizer Canada is not scouring the internet for comments.  They focus only on the comments made on the networks that are linked to Pfizer Canada in some way.

Pfizer Canada estimates that the original Air Force chart covers approximately 80% of potentialv scenarios.  Therefore, Pfizer Canada fine tuned the diagram to address potential medical, legal and compliance issues.  Both the original Air Force chart and the Pfizer Canada chart are found below.  The most noticeable difference between the two are the 3 columns that Pfizer Canada added, which are found at the far right of the chart.  There are a few other modifications that were made by Pfizer Canada, but none of these appear to be major shifts from the original chart.

The response flow chart was designed for the Canadian subsidiary of Pfizer.  It is not used globally by the organization.

A picture of both the U.S. Air Force and Pfizer Canada flow charts are included below:

I applaud Pfizer Canada for their level of preparedness, and I thank them for allowing me to share their response flow chart on my blog.

Christian Roy (Vice President, Marketing, Pfizer Canada Inc.) and Elena Chouw (Manager, eMarketing, Pfizer Canada Inc.) originally presented this diagram at the Eye for Pharma eMarketing Canada conference, which was held in Toronto, on November 1-2 2010.  Many thanks to Elena for taking the time to discuss the flow chart with me.

What do you think of these two social media response flow charts?  Do you think there should be any changes to the modifications that were made by Pfizer Canada?  Leave your comment below.