DOLs are not your paid media channel

23.01.2025 | Health Strategy

DOLs are not your paid media channel

More than a decade of research by CREATION.co into online healthcare professionals’ (HCPs’) impact on their peers confirms that social media plays a vital role in advancing medical knowledge and practice.

We’ve seen social media play a growing role in building movements for better healthcare and even informing policy decisions about patient care.

On my podcast, where I talk with healthcare professionals about advances in science and the role social media plays, HCPs tell me how important social media is for them to learn about new medical science and to support patient decisions.

Our research shows that some physicians make a considerable difference in their online peers’ learning and behaviours, and they have become highly trusted among other online HCPs. We call these impactful online HCPs Digital Opinion Leaders (DOLs). 

(Sidenote: by the way, we know who the Digital Opinion Leaders are).

The pharmaceutical industry has a long history of collaborating with “Key Opinion Leaders” (KOLs) – expert physicians who are trusted for their academic and scientific credentials in the offline world. But what does the rise of Digital Opinion Leaders mean for healthcare organisations and, in particular, for industry? In the early days of physician social media, it was rare to find traditional KOLs online. Indeed, as one senior KOL said in 2012 when he introduced my lecture to oncologists on social media for clinical trial recruitment, “You’ll not find me on Facebook, because I’m too old”. But today, many of the world’s leading DOLs are, in fact, also well-established KOLs. For some of these DOLs, their credibility among online peers who trust them for the science they share on social media is further enhanced by their academic credentials offline. 

Paolo Tarantino, MD, for example, is an Advanced Research Fellow in the Breast Oncology Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, and is affiliated with the European Institute of Oncology. Within the online breast cancer conversation, Dr. Tarantino is also currently the world’s most impactful and trusted HCP on social media, as ranked by DOL Finder.

In my booklet, Activating Digital Opinion Leaders, I outlined a three-stage methodology that enables industry professionals to leverage the influence of DOLs in an authentic way:

  1. Identify the most relevant Digital Opinion Leaders and understand them.
  2. Engage Digital Opinion Leaders in a meaningful way that aligns with their behaviours and preferences.
  3. Use insights to activate the Digital Opinion Leader in a way that truly adds value – in their eyes – to their motivation for being online.

This methodology has now been tried and tested in hundreds of successful DOL activation activities in which impactful online HCPs have enthusiastically participated in industry-led initiatives to drive better health outcomes. 

But the bad news is, it takes patience. Meaningful DOL activation does not happen overnight. It requires trust and a genuine desire to support the HCP’s objectives. If you want to partner or collaborate with a DOL, it’s essential to discover what really matters to them. You can do this by listening to what they say and observing what inspires them (hint: we can help you discover what’s important to your DOLs).

You must also identify the intersection between what’s important to you and what the DOL cares about. Knowing your own goals is one factor that will help you decide which DOLs you might want to activate. The key is to find the common ground between you and the DOL, and to focus on adding value to each other in this area.

 

 

With insight, patience and a commitment to serve the DOL, you can achieve incredible outcomes together as DOLs get behind your aligned cause, share science and impact their peers.

The rise of the creator economy

Over the past decade, as awareness of Digital Opinion Leaders has grown, the role of social media influencers has been making headlines outside of healthcare. While celebrity influencers such as Kim Kardashian, with more than 350M Instagram followers, may be seen collaborating with brands to position fashion and beauty products on social media, millions of individuals with less reach have also developed enough of a following to see being an “influencer” as anything from a hobby to a career choice.

The topic of the “creator economy” has become such a business phenomenon that it now has a dedicated section in the business magazine Forbes, which ran an article last year on how to become an influencer and how much money can be made from it.

So it is perhaps not surprising if there is confusion about the line between consumer influencer trends and the role of HCP Digital Opinion Leaders. The line may be particularly blurred because some healthcare professionals have also taken part in the influencer trend for promoting products, such as scrubs made by FIGS, which has developed an online fashion movement among healthcare professionals, that has not been without controversy of its own.

But let’s not confuse the influencer movement with Digital Opinion Leaders. Here’s why:

DOLs are not your paid media channel

Upholding a standard of impartiality is essential for scientific leaders to be trusted. Yet this does not make it impossible for DOLs to collaborate successfully with industry; indeed, prior to the adoption of digital channels, industry-physician partnerships through KOLs have played an essential part in developing new medical science for generations.

When it comes to integrity on social media, authentic Digital Opinion Leaders’ credibility can be measured by their peers’ trust in them, often demonstrated in online conversations, mentions and shares of their posts by other impactful HCPs. 

In the US, where pharma brands spend billions of dollars on advertising medicines, an increasing part of that budget is being spent on digital advertising. In recent years, with increased awareness of the impact of DOLs, this has presented a dilemma for some pharma marketers. Eager to find new ways to promote their medicines, the temptation to simply offer to pay an HCP to share their content on social media is sometimes just too much. 

One highly impactful online physician told me they had been approached by a pharmaceutical company offering to pay a substantial sum if they would promote their product on social media. This physician has a high degree of trust among their professional peers. Naturally, they did not want to promote a product simply because they were being paid to do so, so they refused the payment. 

However, not everybody thinks that online HCP advertising is a bad idea. I have heard of some HCPs willing to accept payments to promote medicines on social media, even if they do not prescribe those products in practice. And many advertising agencies now offer “DOLs” as channels among their advertising tactics, as if the DOL were nothing more than an additional advertising media channel. At least one new agency has been founded on the premise of connecting “leading medical influencers” with big pharma brands.

So, given the clear impact that Digital Opinion Leaders have, why should pharma brands think twice before spending advertising budget on simply sponsoring online HCPs to promote their products?

How to build authentic trust with DOLs

The problem with paid product positioning in healthcare is that there is a vast difference between authentic and credible scientific engagement among true DOLs, and some so-called “influencer” HCPs who may have high followers but lack trust among their peers when it comes to treating patients. 

Dr Kevin Fernando is a highly impactful GP with a special interest in cardiovascular, renal and metabolism, who is among the world’s most impactful Digital Opinion Leaders in type 2 diabetes. “No company will ever pay me to say anything – I will give my objective opinion, and [pharmaceutical] companies know not to approach me if they don’t expect a straightforward and objective presentation”, said Dr Fernando in our conversation last year (podcast episode 1, Every day is a school day: Dr Kevin Fernando). His point reflects what I keep hearing from true Digital Opinion Leaders: DOLs are not for hire. To express a view simply because they were paid to do so would undermine the very thing that makes them impactful online.

On the other hand, successful industry-DOL collaborations I have had the privilege to lead and witness with my team at CREATION.co follow our three-stage methodology of identify-engage-activate, which I outlined above and in my booklet, Activating Digital Opinion Leaders.

In one case, for example, by aligning with the observed passions of DOLs in oncology, we were able to guide our client to meaningful engagement with leading physician voices who cared about health equity and committed to start an online movement for change.

Another client saw their new medical data reach thousands of targeted specialists within hours, by supporting the education of just a few well-chosen DOLs.

With the right approach, and some patience, meaningful and highly impactful collaborations between DOLs and industry are indeed possible and can achieve great outcomes.

If you would like to know more about how to identify, engage and activate your Digital Opinion Leaders for effective long-term impact, I’d love to help. Get in touch, and let’s talk.

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Meet the Author

Daniel Ghinn

Daniel has been at the helm throughout the company’s life since 1998. His rich expertise in working with pharmaceutical businesses has enabled CREATION to build business solutions that fit our clients’ needs.

Daniel is married to Jo, has three children, a cat, a dog, 28 fish, and 160,000 bees.