v-Fluence Blog

Challenges of facing up to FDA social media scrutiny

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently cautioned Novartis Pharmaceuticals for its use of a Facebook widget (and associated meta data), which was intended to educate consumers about its leukemia drug Tasigna. Similar to recent actions taken by the FDA, this warning letter has been widely reported on a range of news sites and blogs and has lit up robust discussion in social media and topic-specific channels. For instance, Pharma Marketing blogger John Mack notes that the Novartis citation, “clearly warns pharma advertisers that the FDA is looking at metadata content when that content is controlled by the marketer and becomes visible to consumers as in Facebook Share widgets.”