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Sohail Kasmani

Sohail Kasmani. Brand and marketing strategist in London: pharma brand management at Cipla and Alembic, now marketing strategy and AI adoption at ACTAsia. MBA, Brunel University London.

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Home Pharma Marketing How Pharma Companies Use Social Media in the UK (and Who Does It Well)
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How Pharma Companies Use Social Media in the UK (and Who Does It Well)

Pharmaceutical companies in the UK use social media mostly for things that never name a prescription medicine: corporate news, employer brand, disease awareness, patient support content and tightly targeted posts for health professionals. Advertising a prescription-only medicine to the public is banned, and the ABPI Code treats a UK employee’s LinkedIn like or repost as the company spreading that content.

In January 2025 the PMCPA (the body that runs the ABPI Code) ruled against GSK because one UK-based employee clicked “celebrate” on an American medical institute’s LinkedIn post about niraparib trial results in glioblastoma, an unlicensed use. One reaction, three clauses breached.

What are UK pharma companies actually allowed to post on social media?

The law is the Human Medicines Regulations 2012, enforced by the MHRA, whose guidance for companies puts it bluntly: “You can’t advertise prescription-only medicines (POMs) to the general public but you can promote them to healthcare professionals and others who can prescribe or supply the product.” It lists “posts or text in social media” as advertising, so nobody gets to argue that a tweet is a different species. On top sits the stricter ABPI Code of Practice, run by the PMCPA (the full rulebook is in my piece on UK pharma advertising rules).

The core line is Clause 26 of the 2024 ABPI Code. Clause 26.1 says prescription-only medicines must not be advertised to the public (vaccination and other campaigns approved by health ministers aside). Clause 26.2 says anything about a POM that reaches the public must be factual and balanced, must not “raise unfounded hopes of successful treatment”, and must not encourage people to ask their doctor for a specific medicine.

The PMCPA’s social media guidance, whose sections were last revised on 2 February 2026, turns those clauses into platform behaviour. Its section on types of content is the closest thing the industry has to a menu:

Type of post Allowed to a public audience? What the PMCPA guidance expects
Corporate news (appointments, new sites, awards) Yes Must be non-product and suitable for the general public; no reference to specific medicines.
Pipeline or approval milestones for investors and media Only with care Keep the medicine’s name out of the post; a linked press release can carry the detail. “Any mention of a medicine in a social media post is likely to be considered promotion of that medicine to the public.”
Disease awareness Yes No brand names, no narrowing of treatment options that points to one product; certified under Clause 8.3 and recertified every two years or taken down.
Patient support for people already prescribed a medicine Only in non-public spaces For example unlisted videos, with the target audience clearly identified.
Job adverts Yes Keep medicine names out of titles; detail further down the advert may be acceptable.
Clinical trial recruitment Yes Regulated by the Health Research Authority rather than the PMCPA.
Promotion to health professionals No Must be targeted to health professionals only, with prescribing information, an adverse event statement and prior permission under Clause 15.5.

What brand teams find hardest to accept is that the product you spend your working life on is the one thing that can’t appear in public. Pharma brand management, which I did at Cipla and Alembic (see the Cipla dry eye portfolio), is about building preference for a named product with prescribers, and on UK public social that muscle has nowhere to go.

Why a LinkedIn like can breach the ABPI Code

A lot of recent UK cases start here. The PMCPA’s social media principles say proactive dissemination of information about a medicine is likely to be promotion, while providing it reactively, as reference information someone has to search for, is less likely to be. The guidance then notes that “in most cases, by engaging with a post the content is disseminated to the account’s own connections/followers”. So the platform turns a like into proactive dissemination, and if the post names a medicine, your like is now promotion to whoever is in your network, which for most people includes their mum, their old school friends and a recruiter in Leeds.

The responsibility section says companies should “assume that the ABPI Code would apply to all work-related, personal social media activity by their staff unless, for very clear reasons, it could be shown otherwise”, and there are no exceptions for which part of the business someone works in, whether that’s finance, IT, manufacturing, medical or commercial.

The recent cases read like a series of the same accident:

  • AUTH/3854/11/23, GSK (completed 22 January 2025): one “celebrate” reaction on an American institute’s post about niraparib in glioblastoma. Breaches of Clauses 5.1 (high standards), 11.2 (unlicensed indication) and 26.1.
  • AUTH/3879/2/24, Pfizer (completed 19 February 2025): four UK-based employees liked a cancer research charity’s post about talazoparib. Breach of 26.1.
  • CASE/0563/04/25, AstraZeneca (completed 17 October 2025): three R&D employees liked a US cancer researcher’s post on breast cancer trials that used only the abbreviations T-DXd and Dato-DXd, and the company still breached five clauses including 26.1 and 26.2.
  • CASE/0587/05/25, AstraZeneca (completed 22 December 2025): an employee liked the MHRA’s own LinkedIn post announcing approval of Trixeo Aerosphere with a lower-carbon propellant. Seven breaches, including missing prescribing information, because there is “a difference between the MHRA publishing such a post and its subsequent dissemination by an employee”.

So the regulator posted it and the company ended up in breach for it. We keep treating these as individual slips (we blame the employee, the algorithm, the “celebrate” button being right next to “like”, probably Mercury in retrograde), but four rulings in twelve months says it’s a system problem.

Old posts come back too. In AUTH/3888/4/24, completed in April 2025, the PMCPA ruled on a Pfizer UK Twitter thread from 19 November 2020 about Covid-19 vaccine trial results. The Panel found promotion before marketing authorisation and a breach of Clause 2, the most serious finding, plus a high standards breach, partly because Pfizer hadn’t taken the tweets down even after earlier cases had found similar efficacy claims misleading. A tweet from 2020 turned out to have a longer shelf life than most brand strategies.

Personal profiles count as well

The types of activity section says job titles and descriptions in employee profiles “should avoid mentioning prescription only medicines”. So congratulations on your new role as Brand Manager for a named oncology product; the headline announcing it is now a compliance problem. Brief mentions deeper in the profile, where it takes clicks or scrolling to reach them, may be acceptable.

How do pharmaceutical companies use social media for marketing in the UK?

UK pharma social tends to fall into five jobs, each with its own audience and compliance route, and mixing them in one account is where teams get into trouble.

1. Corporate reputation and employer brand

LinkedIn does most of this work, and it’s the one space where the company can have a personality, provided it stays off specific medicines. Pipeline news is the edge case. The MHRA upheld a complaint against Vertex in 2024 over a LinkedIn post announcing a new marketing authorisation in Great Britain. Vertex said the channel was for global investors; the MHRA found the post was open to the public without safeguards and used “emotive language”.

2. Disease awareness for the public

Clause 26’s supplementary information allows campaigns that encourage people to seek treatment for symptoms, provided nothing promotes a particular medicine. The brand benefit is indirect (more people diagnosed and a company associated with a condition), which is why companies need to be careful when the only realistic treatment is theirs, because narrowly restricting how treatment options are described can point to a product without naming it. Getting that material through certification is covered in UK pharma content marketing.

3. Health professional content in controlled channels

Promotion to health professionals on social is possible, but only in closed groups or targeted placements where the audience is verified and the full obligatory information is present. The channel options are in how pharma engages HCPs digitally in the UK.

4. Influencers and patient voices

The working with others section covers influencers under Clause 24. The company can be held responsible for what they post even if they ignore their briefing, needs a written agreement before work starts, and is expected to carry out “ongoing monitoring of their social media account during the contractual period (at the very least)”. The line that surprises consumer marketers most: “Use of ‘#ad’ which is common in many industries is not sufficient to meet the transparency requirements under the ABPI Code.”

5. Listening, moderation and safety

Every company account is also an adverse event inbox, so the guidance expects procedures to monitor activity “including monitoring of adverse events”, documented pharmacovigilance training for staff, and information on how side effects can be reported. It also notes that comments and direct messages can be disabled on some platforms, which explains why so many pharma posts feel like a lecture with the audience asked to leave.

Is the rest of the UK market held to the same standard?

Yes, and increasingly by machine. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), with the MHRA and pharmacy regulator GPhC, issued an updated enforcement notice on 23 September 2025, aimed mainly at pharmacies, saying weight-loss ads can break the rules without naming a product if they say “weight-loss injection” or “GLP-1” or show injection pens. Its AI-based Active Ad Monitoring found, per the April 2026 enforcement report, approximately 900 likely breaches from 38 of 44 monitored advertisers, with compliance among monitored paid-for ads now “around 99%”. The ASA also said “non-paid content, especially influencer and affiliate advertising, presents a higher risk of non-compliance”. So the open door is creators, exactly where pharma companies are most tempted to expand.

What is the impact of social media on pharmaceutical brand building?

It’s smaller than the conference keynotes suggest, and it works mostly at the corporate level.

First, audiences don’t rate pharma’s social presence. Dominic Tyer, research director at DT Consulting (part of Indegene), writing in PMLiVE in 2023, reported Customer Experience Quotient scores for pharma social media of 37 out of 100 from 6,270 health professionals surveyed globally in 2022, and 28 out of 100 from 540 patients in Europe and the US surveyed in 2021. Only 0.3% of HCP interactions with pharma happened on social, though 3% said they’d prefer it; for patients it was 5% using social against 10% preferring it. People want more from the channel than they get, which points at the quality of what we post.

Second, the reputation that social media is supposed to build is under strain. PatientView’s 2024 UK survey of 117 UK patient groups, run between December 2024 and March 2025, found 46% rated pharma’s corporate reputation as excellent or good, down from 55% the year before. One respiratory patient group asked companies to “focus more on what information/support patients need long term, rather than running one-off campaigns around specific issues”. That’s a better brief for pharma social than most agency decks, and it doesn’t ask for more awareness days with a hashtag.

Third, in the UK the product brand gets built with prescribers and payers. Social supports the conditions around it, such as a company people trust and a disease patients recognise and raise with a GP. When a launch depends on NICE and local formularies (the subject of my piece on market access strategy for a new drug in the UK), a viral public post about the brand mostly gives the compliance team something to explain to the PMCPA a year later.

Which pharma companies do social media well?

Good UK pharma social is mostly invisible, because much of the best work is the plumbing that stops the next case.

ViiV Healthcare: people talking, no product in sight

ViiV Healthcare, the London-headquartered specialist HIV company, worked with the production company The Skin Deep on “Navigating HIV: Real Stories, Real Impact”, unscripted conversations between clinicians, advocates and people living with HIV. According to the campaign’s entry in the 17th Shorty Awards (a Silver Honor in pharma and healthcare), six 12-18 minute YouTube episodes plus short Instagram and TikTok clips reached 1.7 million organic views by 17 December, with 600+ average engagements per Instagram post. It was a global campaign rather than a UK one, but the format is what the UK rules reward: the company visible, the medicines absent.

Pfizer: the compliance programme that got credit

In the talazoparib case above, Pfizer still breached Clause 26.1, but the Panel found no breach of high standards because Pfizer “appeared to provide appropriate training and have clear company policies communicating its expectations regarding the use of social media”, and all four employees had received a reminder or completed training in the previous 12 months. It is a handy exhibit when you’re asking for budget to train people nobody thinks of as “marketing”.

AstraZeneca UK: rules published where users can see them

AstraZeneca has had its share of rulings, including one over a LinkedIn post naming Calquence and its CLL indication, as Fierce Pharma reported in March 2025. Its UK social media community guidelines, though, are a clean model for the moderation side: no medical advice, product claims or off-licence discussion in comments, a stated right to remove posts, and side effect reporting routes including the MHRA Yellow Card scheme. It’s boring and public, and it’s exactly what the PMCPA’s monitoring section asks for.

A checklist for a compliant UK pharma social programme

If I were setting this up for a UK affiliate tomorrow, I’d go in this order:

  1. Map every account to one audience: public corporate, disease awareness, HCP-only or patient support.
  2. Write the employee policy around reactions as well as posts. Staff don’t react to, repost or comment on anything mentioning a medicine, including posts by regulators, charities and journals.
  3. Train by role and repeat it. Pfizer’s evidence of reminders within 12 months is what kept it clear of a Clause 5.1 breach.
  4. Audit profiles: job titles and headlines with product names get edited.
  5. Sweep old company posts, especially pipeline and approval news, because the archive is still in scope.
  6. Certify disease awareness under Clause 8.3 and diarise recertification at two years.
  7. Check every hashtag feed and tagged account before use and keep a record, as the guidance asks.
  8. Put influencer contracts in writing, with a declaration stronger than “#ad”, monitoring during the contract and rules on content after it ends.
  9. Connect social monitoring to pharmacovigilance, with a named owner and a response time.

For step 2, I’d give staff a rule short enough to remember at 11pm while scrolling:

Before you react, repost or comment on LinkedIn:
1. Does it mention a medicine, a molecule code or an abbreviation for one?
2. Does it mention a trial, an approval or a result for a treatment?
If either answer is yes, scroll on. It doesn't matter who posted it.

The question I’d put to any UK pharma marketing team: if the PMCPA pulled a random sample of your staff’s LinkedIn reactions from last month, how many would you be comfortable defending?

FAQs

Can pharmaceutical companies advertise on Instagram or TikTok in the UK?

Not for prescription-only medicines to the public, which UK law and Clause 26.1 of the ABPI Code ban on every platform. Companies can post certified disease awareness, corporate news and recruitment content, provided nothing names or points to a specific prescription medicine. Over-the-counter medicines can be advertised to the public under separate rules.

Can pharma employees share company posts on LinkedIn?

Yes, if the post says nothing about a specific medicine, such as a new site, an award or a job advert. The PMCPA tells companies to assume the ABPI Code covers all work-related personal activity by their staff, and liking content that mentions a medicine, even by abbreviation or from a regulator, was ruled promotion in 2025 cases against GSK, Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

Can pharmaceutical companies work with influencers in the UK?

Yes, under Clause 24 of the ABPI Code, which covers contracted consultants and influencers. The company can be held responsible for their content, should monitor their accounts at least during the contract, and needs a written agreement before work starts. The PMCPA says “#ad” alone is not a sufficient declaration of the company’s involvement.

What happens if a pharma company breaches the ABPI Code on social media?

The PMCPA publishes a case report naming the company, which gives an undertaking not to repeat the activity. Serious cases bring a Clause 2 ruling for discrediting the industry and extra sanctions, such as the advertisement required in the 2025 Pfizer case over a 2020 Covid-19 vaccine tweet. The MHRA can also investigate separately.

Is disease awareness on social media allowed for UK pharma?

Yes. The ABPI Code allows campaigns that encourage people to seek treatment for symptoms, provided they don’t promote a specific medicine or narrow treatment options in a way that implies one. PMCPA guidance says the material must be certified under Clause 8.3 and recertified every two years or removed.

Sources

  1. PMCPA, “PMCPA social media guidance”, sections last revised 2 February 2026
  2. PMCPA, “Social media principles”, last revised 2 February 2026
  3. PMCPA, “Responsibility”, last revised 2 February 2026
  4. PMCPA, “Types of activity”, last revised 2 February 2026
  5. PMCPA, “Types of content”, last revised 2 February 2026
  6. PMCPA, “Working with others”, last revised 2 February 2026
  7. PMCPA, “ABPI Code of Practice 2024, Clause 26: Relations with the public, including patients and journalists”, 2024
  8. PMCPA, “AUTH/3854/11/23: Complainant v GSK”, completed 22 January 2025
  9. PMCPA, “AUTH/3879/2/24: Complainant v Pfizer”, completed 19 February 2025
  10. PMCPA, “AUTH/3888/4/24: Complainant/Chief Executive v Pfizer”, completed 14 April 2025
  11. PMCPA, “CASE/0563/04/25: Complainant v AstraZeneca”, completed 17 October 2025
  12. PMCPA, “CASE/0587/05/25: Complainant v AstraZeneca”, completed 22 December 2025
  13. MHRA (GOV.UK), “Advertise your medicines”, updated 11 April 2025
  14. MHRA (GOV.UK), “Promotion of a prescription only medicine by Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, June 2024”, published 20 August 2024
  15. ASA, “Updated Enforcement Notice issued on weight-loss prescription medicine ads”, 23 September 2025
  16. ASA, “Protecting people from harmful ads for weight-loss medicines: new research and Enforcement Report”, 2 April 2026
  17. PMLiVE (Dominic Tyer), “Pharma’s struggles with social media”, 27 April 2023
  18. PatientView, “What 117 UK patient groups say about pharma” (Corporate Reputation of Pharma 2024, UK press release), May 2025
  19. The Shorty Awards, “ViiV Healthcare x The Skin Deep: Navigating HIV: Real Stories, Real Impact”, 17th Shorty Awards entry
  20. ViiV Healthcare, “About us”, accessed 30 September 2026
  21. Fierce Pharma, “AstraZeneca, Pfizer rebuked over breaking UK drug marketing rules on LinkedIn use”, 25 March 2025
  22. AstraZeneca UK, “Social media guidelines”, last updated August 2025