MarketBeam: Distribute Compliant Social Media Content Directly from Veeva Vault

This video provides an in-depth exploration of how pharmaceutical and life sciences companies can distribute compliant social media content directly from Veeva Vault PromoMats, leveraging an integration with MarketBeam. The webinar, featuring Pushpa Ithal (CEO of MarketBeam) and Hugh Jenkins (Director of Strategy for Digital Asset Management and Content at Veeva), addresses the significant challenges faced by the highly regulated life sciences industry in adopting social media for marketing and communications. It highlights that while 2021 was deemed the year of "social-first marketing," compliance risks and stringent regulations have historically hindered pharma's ability to fully utilize social media's potential.

The core problem identified is the laborious, multi-step, and risk-prone process of getting social media content approved. Traditionally, this involves an eight-step workflow spanning content creation (often by external agencies), internal marketing review, manual preview generation, submission to the Promotional Review Committee (PRC) or Medical, Legal, and Regulatory (MLR) teams, back-and-forth revisions, and finally, manual publishing. This process is not only time-consuming, often taking weeks or months, but also introduces significant compliance risks due to human error, data inconsistencies as content moves between systems (spreadsheets, emails), and a lack of transparency for all stakeholders. The dynamic and multi-component nature of social media content (text, images, videos, tags, hashtags, destination URLs) further complicates review, as all elements must be approved holistically.

The solution presented is a streamlined, automated three-step workflow enabled by the MarketBeam-Veeva Vault PromoMats integration. MarketBeam acts as the social media publishing and analytics platform, while Veeva Vault PromoMats serves as the central hub for compliant content management and MLR review. The integration allows users to create social media posts in MarketBeam, pull pre-approved images and assets directly from Veeva Vault, and then automatically generate a comprehensive PDF preview of the entire social media post (including text, image, and destination URL) for submission to PromoMats. Within PromoMats, the system leverages features like auto-claims linking to connect marketing claims to their substantiation documents, ensuring reviewers have all necessary information. Once approved in Veeva Vault, the content is automatically scheduled and published via MarketBeam, drastically reducing manual touchpoints, mitigating compliance risks, and providing robust analytics on post-performance.

Key Takeaways:

• Pharma's Social Media Dilemma: Despite the shift towards "social-first marketing," the life sciences industry has been slow to adopt social media due to strict regulations (FDA, EMA, ABPI) and the inherent compliance risks associated with promotional content.
• Importance of Individual Confidence: For effective social media engagement, individuals within pharma companies need confidence that the content they create and distribute is fully compliant, as compliance breaches can have severe consequences not just for the brand but also for individuals.
• Traditional PRC Process Inefficiencies: The conventional social media content approval process is an eight-step, manual, resource-intensive workflow involving multiple teams (creative agencies, marketing, MLR/PRC), leading to delays (weeks to months) and a lack of visibility.
• Complexity of Social Media Content Review: Unlike static documents, social media posts are dynamic and comprise multiple components (text, images, videos, tags, hashtags, URLs). All these elements must be reviewed holistically, which is challenging with manual methods.
• Veeva Vault PromoMats as the Compliance Backbone: Veeva Vault PromoMats provides established workflows, access controls, and audit trails crucial for managing compliant content. Its features, such as auto-claims linking, are essential for substantiating marketing claims in social media posts.
• MarketBeam-Veeva Integration for Streamlined Workflow: The integration transforms the eight-step manual process into an efficient three-step automated workflow, from content creation to approval and publishing, significantly reducing manual effort and potential errors.
• Automated Preview Generation: MarketBeam automatically generates a PDF preview of the complete social media post (as it would appear on platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter) for review within Veeva Vault PromoMats, ensuring reviewers see the final context.
• Enhanced Risk Mitigation: Automating the content flow between MarketBeam and Veeva Vault reduces human errors, ensures data consistency, and prevents non-compliant content from being published, thereby protecting brand reputation and individual liability.
• Maximizing Content Investment: By enabling the reuse of pre-approved assets directly from Veeva Vault PromoMats, the solution helps companies get more value from their existing content investments and maintain brand consistency.
• Improved Agency Collaboration: Agencies, often responsible for content creation, can directly utilize PromoMats within the workflow, fostering greater transparency and reducing the need for external communication channels like emails and spreadsheets.
• Addressing Localization Needs: The system supports scenarios where content is centrally reviewed but requires local customization (e.g., images, minor text tweaks), which then triggers a re-review process to maintain compliance.
• Comprehensive Social Media Analytics: MarketBeam provides an integrated analytics dashboard across multiple social networks, offering insights into earned media value, clicks, engagement patterns (by time, day, network, geography), and content type performance to optimize future strategies.

Tools/Resources Mentioned:

• MarketBeam: A California-based social media publishing, amplification, and analytics platform.
• Veeva Vault PromoMats: A leading platform in the pharmaceutical industry for digital asset management, content review, and approval, specifically for promotional materials.
• Veeva Systems: The company behind Veeva Vault PromoMats.

Key Concepts:

• Promotional Review Committee (PRC) / Medical, Legal, Regulatory (MLR) Review: The formal process within pharmaceutical companies for reviewing and approving all promotional and medical content to ensure compliance with regulatory and legal standards.
• Auto Claims Linking: A feature within Veeva Vault PromoMats that automatically identifies marketing claims within a document and links them to their supporting substantiation references, streamlining the review process.
• Date of First Use: A critical compliance metadata point indicating the initial date a piece of content is published or used, often required for audit trails and regulatory reporting.
• Social-First Marketing: A marketing strategy that prioritizes social media channels as the primary medium for content distribution and audience engagement.
• Earned Media Value: A metric used to quantify the monetary value of organic social media reach and engagement, often calculated by comparing it to the cost of equivalent paid advertising.