Monday night this week J&J hosted a wild blogger party at a fancy New York restaurant, taking an entire floor to give them privacy. Of course, J&J has a lot of experience doing this sort of thing with doctors, and what works for docs probably works just as well for bloggers.
They invited some key healthcare bloggers to learn about pharma bloggers, who we are, how we work, and whether the company should get involved in blogging in any way. And they knew the best way to get people to talk, was to let the alcohol pour freely, so J&J hosted an open bar.
And, no, I wasn't invited, which is of course a terrible snub by J&J and their blog consultant. And because of this major blog faux pas, I had to check out who all those other bloggers were, who were invited.
Apparently the list was Fard Johnson of Healthcare Vox, Nicholas Genes from MedGadget, Peter Pitts from DrugWonks, Steven Palter from Doc in the Machine, Ed Silverman from Pharmalot. Jim Edwards from BrandWeekNRX, Peter someone from CPMI, Fard someone from Envisioning 2.0 and Gene Ostrovsky from blogborygmi.
Truth be told I'd never heard half of those names. Jim and Ed I know, but the rest?
Who are these wise men? Clearly no women . . .
Anyways, lonely and miserable with no party, I checked the Alexa traffic ratings for those blogs, and most of them didn't even show up. That put me in a good mood again. After all, if I get invited to a party, I want bloggers who are read, not just have opinions (and I exclude Ed Silverman from Pharmalot and Jim Edwards from BrandWeekNRX in this rant, they are both fabulous writers and have incredible blogs with terrific traffic.)
And more by the way, the only two writers who have announced they paid their own tab is Ed Silverman and Jim Edwards. They were also the only seasoned journalists at the party. The other bloggers fell right into the trap and let themselves be fed and loaded with alcohol, and defended that decision vigorously (see comments below).
The peson responsible for snubbing me appears to have been Adriana Cronin-Lukas, whom J&J has hired as a consultant on blogging. Lukas told Jim Edwards that she’s trying to get J&J to give all their 120,000 employees a blog, on which the workers could write whatever they liked. Jim didn't like that idea, since he felt it was a journalist’s dream and a brand manager’s nightmare.
On this I actually disagee with Jim. Here's the deal. If 120,000 employees each get a blog from their employer, that employer will know exactly what those 120,000 employees are saying. Does anyone think for a second that they will say aaaaaaaaaaanything critical? Of course not. Instead you'll have the Internet flooded with happy little messages about the company they work for.
As far as I'm concerend, Adriana Cronin-Lukas might just be a devilishly smart lady. Imagine 120,000 PR persons working for your company! Soon employees will be expected to post something happy about their organization every week, or the won't be considered team players!
As you can tell, I may not support this idea. But based on what I just wrote I probably convinced J&J this was a good idea.
See, J&J, you should have invited me! I wouldn't even have insisted on paying.
