On 13th September, the pharmaceutical laboratory, Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), launched, in Europe, a social game, to raise public awareness about science and innovation. The game is devoid of any advertising and does not cover any of the company’s key therapy areas, as marketing initiatives usually do.
Leveraging the power of gaming and the social network, Facebook, Syrum brings to the public the opportunity to understand the research and development of drugs, the challenges faced by the scientists and the complex work of the pharmaceutical industry in order to drive clinical development, and set-up an efficient organization.
Syrum allows players to create and run their own pharmaceutical company, using a virtual laboratory to discover and develop imaginary medicines to improve the health of the world. Molecular compounds can be developed and then traded with other players. At each step / challenge, the player has to solve a particular problem. The goal is to discover cures by first creating a stable medicine, conducting a clinical trial and finally bringing the medicine to the market.
Dr Jez Rose, behavioural psychologist from Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom. “Syrum is a fantastic example of how fun gaming can be used to provide educational delivery, whilst maintaining interest and engagement through a logical, platform learning style.”
The game has been launched first in a beta format outside the US and Canada to actively encourage feedback from the players. It will be constantly developed, based on the players’ ideas and thoughts collected through the Syrum blog:
http://syrum-game.com/blogs/syrum-developers-update/
Two months after launch (information retrieved on 4th September) over 367 pieces of feedback have been collected through the in-game form alone, and according to the developers of the Syrum game: “Syrum is becoming a real example of a crowd-sourced game”.
Does the crowd benefit?
Bloggers are skeptical about the benefit for the crowd outside of “having fun” and creating engagement and some of them are irritated by the requirements: “I have to agree to allow BI to gain access to practically everything I do on Facebook… It seems that BI wants to do some market research about the people who opt in to play Syrum.” John Mack, Pharma Marketing Blog).
This game would be, according to the bloggers, to enable BI to profile the players in order to get Market research future insights.
Social games: communication tools with the crowd
It’s possible that this could be one way of struggling against the poor image of the Pharma industry, particularly in Europe.
Fostering knowledge and understanding the challenges faced by the healthcare industry might help fight the perception that the Pharma companies “are living at the expenses of the public health insurance”.
It is interesting to note that, while the pharma companies are always being closely scrutinized companies in other sectors such as the footwear company, Nike, or General Electric Healthcare’s campaigns don’t attract such controversy.





































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