Meta’s new Threads: Is this a social media flash in the pan or real deal for pharma marketers?

When Shwen Gwee launched Vertex Pharmaceuticals on Twitter in 2008, he pitched it as a one-month experiment. No one at the then-precommercial biotech knew much about the social media platform, and so Gwee asked for feedback on Twitter at the end of the social experiment to convince leadership the brand should be there.

Shwen Gwee

Fast forward 15 years, and Gwee is having déjà vu. The latest social media channel is Meta’s Threads — a text-based real-time public conversation app similar to Twitter — that launched two weeks ago. Threads quickly signed up more than 100 million users in less than a week. That’s about 20% of the Twitter population for those keeping score.

Gwee, a consultant and former head of global digital strategy at Bristol Myers Squibb, isn’t trying to convince any pharmas to join this time around, but he does think it’s a good idea for pharma brands to observe and learn — and at least reserve their brand names.

A handful of pharma brands have done just that, including AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, GSK, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi and Pfizer. Others like Amgen and Moderna have already started posting on Threads.

Amgen (amgenbiotech) offered a “Hello Threads!” greeting and a short rundown of company facts, such as its key therapy areas in oncology, inflammation and general medicine, and Moderna (moderna_tx) introduced itself in its first post: “We’re unraveling #mRNA strands – one thread at a time.”

Kate Cronin

“Our goal with the platform for now is to focus on our edutainment-type content – mRNA education, disease awareness,” Kate Cronin, Moderna’s chief brand officer, said via email to Endpoints News. “As we learn more about the Threads audience and see what kind of paid options become available, we will adjust the strategy.”

Paid advertising, as Cronin noted, is not available yet, though most experts believe it will be added in time. Threads is currently working to sign up people, with a focus on influencers from celebrities to micro-influencers, and it’s reportedly already working on a branded content tool for influencers so brands can sponsor their personal messages.

One of Threads’ shortcomings for pharmas and biotechs, which often use Twitter at medical meetings, is that it doesn’t allow hashtags and users can’t search for content. Users can search for individual people or specific brand names, but if the Threads handle is not the same or similar to the actual person or company name, it can be difficult. Most industry experts expect Meta to add hashtag and search capabilities in the future.

“It’s early days,” said Brad Einarsen, Klick Health’s senior VP of social media.

His agency’s advice to pharma clients is “to wait and see, keep your eye on the ball, maybe put your toe in and get that account set up, but not to take too much action yet.”

Isha Dua, Klick’s VP of paid social media, added: “Like Brad mentioned, the genius shot with Threads is it’s tied to your Instagram account. So the audience is there, and the base is already there. When ads are available, I anticipate it to be an easier transition than working on a channel that’s brand new and unfamiliar.”

The familiarity and brand safety of Threads is especially important for typically conservative pharma companies, and that’s the main reason why some in the industry are excited about the potential of Threads compared to Twitter, which has flip-flopped on a number of rules and dismantled oversight of its content amid general uncertainty since billionaire owner Elon Musk took over last fall.

“Twitter laid off their entire PR comms team, and so when you send an email to their PR comms mailbox, a poop emoji comes back,” said Eileen O’Brien, Real Chemistry’s social media practice leader. “It comes back to stability and brand safety…Threads doesn’t have the instability [that’s] around Twitter these days.”

(Editor’s note: I emailed the press inbox at Twitter for comment for this story, and that emoji was indeed the only response I received.)

If Threads does start allowing advertising, as anticipated, it may work to its advantage that pharma marketers are very familiar with Meta’s two other social platforms: Facebook and Instagram. Most pharmas spend advertising dollars on Facebook and many are also on Instagram, meaning they are familiar with the Meta ad process and how to set up guardrails for how ads appear, such as excluding certain topics, not allowing video ads on live streams, and creating publisher allow lists.

The potential for pharma and healthcare advertising on Threads is promising, said Justin Chase, Eversana Intouch’s executive VP of media.

Justin Chase

“This is the most powerful ad platform and probably the most powerful sales team outside of Amazon and Google,” he said. “I’ve already spoken to people on the sales team and they are — this is not hyperbole — literally salivating at the thought of being able to unleash the ad beast of what Threads is going to become.”

Chase is enthusiastic about the opportunity to buy inventory in a brand-safe environment and target specific audiences with the kind of in-depth analytics and reporting back to brands that Meta is already doing with its other platforms.

“The big question everyone’s asking now is: Is it really going to have staying power? I absolutely think it will, but they’re going to have to make some significant changes — like the ability to search, changes to the algorithm and to discoverability,” he said. And if and when Threads does make those changes to paid advertising, he added that the “Twitter doomsday clock is going to start ticking.”

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