social media

When Coco Chanel said, “Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance”, I doubt anyone thought she was speaking about social media.  When pushing through the digital clutter, I think we all have wished, at one point, that brands would take a hint from Chanel and scale back.

After spending a couple months working in our Milan office, I thought it would be high time to provide some updates and social media usage trends on our friends from the Mediterranean Boot—Italy.
 
Italians are quite the social media butterflies with a recent study suggesting Italians send 200 tweets per minute, the number of Twitter users in Italy doubling over the past year to reach 2.4 million. On average, the country is very engaged in social media: Facebook has 93% penetration and 76% of Italians use social media platforms more than once a day.

During a recent appearance on Conan on TBS, popular comedian Louis CK had less than great things to say about the current obsession with all things social media. When asked for his opinion on social media, Louis responded that he “kinda hates it” and went on to (hilariously) describe how he believes it’s changing the way we view the world. The comedian made the astute observation that “doing everything available to do” isn’t a good idea and that there’s a current sense of urgency to join every new network as soon as it’s available.

“Digital for Pharma is like sex for high school students ‑ everyone's talking about it, wanting it, but no-one's doing it properly.”
 
Or so said Google’s Industry Head of Consumer Goods & Healthcare Jens Monsees at the recent DigiPharm Europe meeting ‑ Europe's leading digital marketing conference for senior pharmaceutical executives. While digital for Pharma is still in its infancy, particularly when compared to other more consumer focused industries, the two day meeting showcased a number of Pharma companies that are leading the digital Pharma charge.