Compliant Social Media Publishing from Veeva PromoMats for US Pharma Companies

This video provides an in-depth exploration of compliant social media publishing for US pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, specifically focusing on integration with Veeva Vault PromoMats. The speaker, Pushpa Ithal, CEO of MarketBeam, highlights the significant challenges faced by regulated industries in leveraging social media due to stringent compliance requirements and cumbersome Medical, Legal, and Regulatory (MLR) or Promotional Review Committee (PRC) approval processes. The presentation establishes that while social media's footprint is growing, the need for agility often clashes with the lengthy review cycles and the high risk associated with non-compliant content, making it difficult for companies to fully utilize these platforms.

The core of the discussion revolves around three major challenges: compliance risks for both brands and employees, suboptimal and often manual review processes, and the resource-intensive nature of coordinating multiple teams (agencies, internal marketing, MLR/PRC). The speaker emphasizes that FDA guidelines, while existing, are broad, leaving companies to interpret and implement them in daily operations. This often leads to manual workflows, lack of traceability, and increased costs. A significant pain point identified is the difficulty in creating accurate mock-ups of social media posts for review, as platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram render content differently, making it hard for reviewers to approve content without a clear visual representation.

MarketBeam presents its solution as a direct integration with Veeva Vault PromoMats, designed to automate and streamline the entire social media content lifecycle. The platform aims to eliminate human errors by ensuring that only approved content is published and by providing a complete audit trail. The demo illustrates how MarketBeam automatically generates platform-specific PDF previews of social media posts (including text, images, videos, hashtags, and URLs) and uploads them directly to Veeva Vault PromoMats, along with automatically attaching relevant claims and references. This automation significantly reduces the manual effort involved in content coordination, mock-up creation, and reference management, ultimately saving time and resources while enhancing compliance and traceability.

Key Takeaways:

• Growing Social Media Footprint in Regulated Industries: Social media's increasing adoption and influence present both opportunities and significant compliance challenges for pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies. The expectation for agility on social media often conflicts with the need for rigorous regulatory review.
• Mandatory MLR/PRC Approval for All Content: In regulated industries, all social media content, regardless of whether it's promotional, non-promotional, branded, or unbranded, must undergo a formal MLR/PRC review and approval process, which can significantly lengthen time-to-market.
• Three Major Challenges in Compliant Social Media: Companies repeatedly face compliance risks (for both the brand and individual employees), suboptimal and often manual review processes, and high resource intensity due to multiple stakeholder involvement (agencies, marketing, MLR/PRC teams).
• Complexity of Social Media Content Review: Unlike traditional content, social media posts comprise multiple elements (text, image, video, URL, tags, hashtags) that render differently across platforms, making it challenging for reviewers to visualize and approve the final published output without accurate mock-ups.
• MarketBeam's Veeva PromoMats Integration: MarketBeam offers a direct, technical partnership integration with Veeva Vault PromoMats to streamline and automate the compliant social media publishing process, positioning itself as a unique solution in this space.
• Automated Mock-up and Reference Management: The platform automatically generates platform-specific PDF previews of social media posts (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn) with functional links and uploads them directly to Veeva Vault PromoMats. It also automatically attaches relevant claims and references from Veeva, reducing manual coordination effort.
• Elimination of Human Error in Publishing: By ensuring that the content approved in Veeva is precisely what gets published through MarketBeam, the solution removes the risk of human error, such as posting outdated versions or making unapproved changes.
• Comprehensive Audit Trail and Traceability: MarketBeam documents the entire content lifecycle, providing a complete trace of who created, approved, and published content, along with timestamps. This detailed record is crucial for FDA audit purposes, which often require extensive documentation of social media activities.
• Cost Savings Through Automation and Reuse: Automating the review and publishing workflow, reducing manual tasks, and enabling the reuse of previously approved content (images, videos) significantly cuts down on operational costs and resource allocation.
• Compliant Employee Amplification: For companies with employee advocacy programs, MarketBeam ensures that employees can only share pre-approved content without the ability to modify it, thereby reducing individual compliance risks.
• Importance of "Date of First Use": The "Date of First Use" for a social media post is a critical piece of information that should be included and tracked during the approval process, as it is essential for regulatory records and audits.
• Future Platform Integrations: MarketBeam plans to incorporate posting to YouTube and is considering integrations with messaging platforms popular in Asia, such as WhatsApp and WeChat, to expand its reach.
• Executive Thought Leader Content Review: The platform also supports the review process for content posted by executive teams or thought leaders, ensuring even high-visibility posts undergo MLR/PRC approval before publication.

Tools/Resources Mentioned:

• MarketBeam (AI-driven social media publishing, amplifying, and monitoring platform)
• Veeva Vault PromoMats (content management platform for regulated industries)
• LinkedIn (social network)
• Twitter (social network)
• Facebook (social network)
• YouTube (video sharing platform, future integration)
• Vimeo (video sharing platform, recognized by MarketBeam)
• WhatsApp (messaging app, future consideration)
• WeChat (messaging app, future consideration)

Key Concepts:

• MLR (Medical, Legal, Regulatory) Review: The mandatory process in regulated industries for reviewing and approving all content to ensure compliance with relevant laws and guidelines.
• PRC (Promotional Review Committee) Approval: A specific committee responsible for approving promotional materials, often used interchangeably with MLR review in the context of marketing content.
• FDA Compliance: Adherence to regulations set forth by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, particularly critical for pharmaceutical and medical device companies.
• Date of First Use: The specific date a piece of content is first published or distributed, a crucial data point for regulatory tracking and audit trails.
• Corporate Publishing: Managing and distributing content through official company social media channels.
• Employee Amplification: Empowering employees to share company-approved content on their personal social media profiles to extend reach and engagement.

Examples/Case Studies:

• A medical device company experienced a "fire" (crisis) because an employee mistakenly posted an outdated, unapproved version of content, highlighting the risks of manual processes.
• Large, multi-billion dollar companies are still using spreadsheets to manage social media content and its various components, indicating a widespread lack of integrated, automated solutions.