On TikTok, Tugba films himself in a selfie and plays an imaginary scene between a patient and his pharmacist, discussing cough syrup. “Do you use it for oily or dry coughs?” asks the healthcare professional. “To sleep”, answers the fictitious double, causing a disgusted pout in his interlocutor. The sequence takes up all the codes of a trend broadcast at lightning speed on the social network: against the backdrop of a dialogue from the American series Modern Love, users must describe the worst thing someone they are dating could do. “Let’s please respect each drug for its primary indication: using them differently can have dramatic consequences,” Tugba comments on his post. Posted last October, the warning has already been viewed more than 52,000 times. Same success for a video in which this 27-year-old pharmacist warns about the waste and recycling of drugs (267,000 views), or for a humorous sequence where she stages herself working overtime for a late patient ( 228,000 views).
Among the dozens of educational, preventive or comical posts published by Tugba, its more than 150,000 subscribers will also be able to find videos sponsored by major cosmetics or parapharmaceutical companies. One of them, promoting the use of a melatonin spray supposed to promote sleep, has for example reached 10,500 views since last September. Ditto for a range of skin products from a British cosmetics brand, whose components it describes while praising their effects (6,000 views), or for a brand of food supplements that promote digestion – for which it even offers promo codes up to -20% (5,000 views).
“As soon as I know that these products work and that they can meet the needs of my community, I accept collaborations”, explains Tugba, who warns his followers the promotional quality of the message using hashtags or the “paid partnership” banner available on TikTok. The pharmacist, who now lives in Switzerland but practiced in France until November 2022, assumes without taboos to receive on average between “300 and 500 euros” for a sponsored message – while working “several hours” on each video. “For some luxury brands, it can even go up to 1000 euros per video,” she adds, specifying to select “carefully” the products promoted. “I have never accepted those from dropshipping, for example. And when I am offered partnerships that are inconsistent with my content, such as ads for dating sites, for example, I refuse!”
Health and entertainment, a mix that appeals to young people
Since the Covid, Tugba is far from the only health professional to have broken through on TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat. Some pharmacists, physiotherapists, dental surgeons, dermatologists, doctors or nurses have made social networks their new playground, explaining to their hundreds of thousands of subscribers the right actions to adopt, while evoking comic or surprising anecdotes of their professional lives. “The interest of these practitioners is that they mix educational content on health and entertainment. This is all that young people come to seek on social-digital networks”, analyzes Stéphanie Lukasik, teacher-researcher in science of information and communication and author of The influence of opinion leaders: a model for studying the uses and reception of digital social networks (The Harmattan, 2021).
Their community, which is usually difficult to reach via traditional communication networks, attracts all kinds of advertisers – brands, but also health insurance companies, laboratories, e-health platforms or institutional players. “It’s a very interesting market: these companies rely on the notion of trust that is established between the healthcare professional and the users”, deciphers the researcher. Goulven Cornec, co-founder of the influence agency Fraich’ Touch, goes even further. “When a health professional agrees to support a public health message with such and such a partner, it is that he validates it scientifically and ethically. This gives brands an additional quality stamp in the eyes of subscribers”, explains this entrepreneur. , who has been working since 2016 with many health professionals on social networks.
Anyone who hates the word “influencer” – preferring the term “content creator” – wants to be versatile: his partners have already worked with major cosmetics brands or pharmaceutical companies, in particular, but also institutional players such as the Biomedicine Agency or Health Insurance, for remunerated and negotiated videos of “a few hundred to several thousand euros”. But beware: these collaborations remain “extremely regulated” by the law and the various professional orders to which these content creators belong. “I would say that we refuse between 97% and 99% of the requests received. Because we cannot do anything,” summarizes Goulven Cornec.
A tightly regulated market
While direct or indirect advertising processes were previously strictly prohibited for health professionals, this rule has been repealed by a decree dating from December 2020, for the benefit of the principle of free communication of health professionals on their professional activity. This decree indicates in particular that the health professional may, “by any means, including on a website, communicate to the public or to health professionals, for educational or health purposes, scientifically substantiated information on questions relating to his discipline or public health issues. All “with caution and measure”, states the text.
For pharmacists, Goulven Cordec also recalls that their “dual status of merchant and health professional” allows them to advertise non-reimbursed and non-prescription drugstore products. Asked about the subject, the legal director of the union of pharmaceutical companies, Marianne Bardant, specifies that in the event of collaboration with a laboratory, the influencer will in no case be able to produce promotional content for the general public for medicines “subject to prescription and reimbursed by health insurance”.
Partnerships “to several thousand euros”
In summary, “a health professional does not have the right to directly sell a product or service, but may collaborate with an institution or a brand that finances or supports a health-related message”, simplifies Goulven Cornec. This is how “Doc Amine”, a general practitioner in Marseille and content creator represented by Fraich’ Touch, for example produced an informative video on type 2 diabetes sponsored by a Danish pharmaceutical company, an explanatory sequence on the corks of earwax with a French brand specializing in hearing protection, or even a partnership with a health insurance fund for healthcare professionals.
“We explain that it’s a collaboration, but without ever quoting or encouraging people to buy the products of this or that brand, from this or that lab”, explains the doctor to 115,000 subscribers on Instagram, who admits to having already accepted collaborations to “several thousand euros”, while refusing to work with sports equipment manufacturers, a clothing brand or even a company preparing for medical competitions.
To “frame things calmly”, Dr. Laure Geisler, followed by nearly 188,000 subscribers on TikTok, also called on an agency in early January. Result ? No to requests for food supplements, but banco for a live video in partnership with a dermatological care brand to talk about the theme of eczema. “It’s an expert opinion on a general theme: I’m not quoting the product. You really have to respect this ethics,” she argues.
“Retoque” copies
“You have to be very careful: we have already seen some of our copies retoquées”, confides Goulven Cordec. Last year, three collaboration projects between its content creators and various companies were thus refused by the Orders, including the request of a “famous laboratory which produces vaccines, which had proposed to us to make a campaign to promote the reminders of their brand”, explains the agent. “Theoretically, we could have talked about the importance of getting vaccinated. On the other hand, we cannot promote the vaccine of a specific lab”.
Audrey Elfassi, lawyer at the Paris Bar, specializing in the defense of health professionals, testifies to this “strong awareness” of the different Orders on the subject. Since the Covid pandemic, she assures that the number of doctors sentenced for non-compliance with the principle of advertising on social networks “is increasing”. “It can be for filmed videos of operations broadcast on the Internet, the publication of before/after photos even though this type of promotion is prohibited… Or the fact of having cited brands without respecting the legislation in force”, explains she, giving the example of a health professional recently sentenced for promoting a specific brand of prosthesis on the networks.
“Our ability to regulate the content of influencers, especially in the world of health, is too weak: it is still too often the law of the jungle”, considers for his part Arthur Delaporte, PS deputy for the second district of Calvados. . On January 25, he presented, with LREM deputy Stéphane Vojetta, a bill aimed at more firmly regulating these practices, by “totally” prohibiting the promotion on social networks of pharmaceutical products, medical devices and surgical procedures, with the exception of “collaborations carried out with the aim of relaying the government’s public health campaigns”. The deputy also wishes to reinforce the obligation of a “permanent mention of the advertising nature of content” in order to “awaken alerts in the viewer”, by a video overlay throughout the sequence, and no longer via ” just a hashtag”. “This is a matter of great concern to us,” he insists to L’Express, while the text should be examined by the National Assembly by the end of March.