At the risk of stating the obvious, consumer expectations will continue to change and marketers’ level of embrace will continue to amplify towards the the rapidly changing and increasingly powerful social platform. With the understanding that pharma is an extremely heavily regulated industry, you still have to wonder why more pharmaceutical marketers not only don’t embrace social, but many cringe at the mere thought of a social task.

Look at the list of the top 50 pharmaceutical companies by revenue.

1. Pfizer
2. GlaxoSmithKline
3. Sanofi-Aventis
4. Novartis
5. AstraZeneca
6. Johnson & Johnson
7. Merck
8. Roche
9. Wyeth
10. Eli Lilly
11. Bristol-Myers Squibb
12. Bayer
13. Abbott
14. Amgen
15. Boehringer-Ingelheim
16. Schering-Plough
17. Takeda
18. Genentech
19. Teva
20. Novo Nordisk
21. Astellas
22. Daiichi Sankyo
23. Merck KGaA
24. Eisai
25. Otsuka
26. Servier
27. UCB
28. Baxter
29. Nycomed
30. Solvay
31. Gilead Sciences
32. Genzyme
33. Forest
34. Menarini
35. Allergan
36. Mitsubishi Tanabe
37. Chugai
38. P&G
39. Ratiopharm
40. CSL
41. Barr Pharmaceuticals
42. Alcon
43. Mundipharma
44. Shire
45. Biogen Idec
46. Stada
47. King Pharmaceuticals
48. Lundbeck
49. Actavis
50. Watson

Only 5 of these companies actively participate in two-way conversations with their audience via social media. Only 5! Those 5 are Novartis, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Roche, and Boehringer-Ingelheim. What are the reasons that the remaining 45 don’t socialize?

1. They’ve stayed true to their old media standards and don’t understand where social fits. Social is a hybrid platform that doesn’t quite fit directly into marketing, communications, PR, web dev or customer service, but rather a mash up of all of these. No one knows whose responsibility it is to understand, strategize and ultimately be responsible for social initiatives.

2. They’ve been short-sighted and myopic with their limited social efforts, often equating them to marketing campaigns. Social media is not a campaign, it’s an everlasting commitment. They need a long term approach to establish relationships, build communities and distribute content through the social platform.

3. They’ve focused their efforts on trying to quantify the ROI of social initiatives; which is no easy task; and they’ve cowered at the lack of guaranteed and often immeasurable results. Again, they equate social to marketing where they are accustomed to a campaign based on CPC or CPM, KPIs that are part of the typical push mediums. Social doesn’t work that way. Social media is a pull medium where engagement and interaction is completely at the discretion of the end-user. Lack of relevance, creativity and sincerity are three reasons why a social initiative will fail.

Pharmaceutical companies need to understand the expectations of today’s consumers and adapt accordingly. They need to take a sagacious look and understand the value that social media can bring to not only cultivate brand loyalists, but to give companies the direct feedback from consumers to continually improve.