J&J last night treated about half-a-dozen pharma and medical device bloggers to dinner and drinks at Beppe, a small Italian restaurant on 22nd Street in New York.
The aim of the meeting was for J&J to learn about pharma bloggers, who we are, how we work, and whether the company should get involved in blogging in any way. I made it clear that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, and they still wanted me to show up.
They wisely hosted an open bar.
Biggest surprise of the evening: One idea floating around New Brunswick is giving all 120,000 J&J employees their own blogs on which they could bitch and whine about management. I'll believe it when I see it (more on this later).
Attending from J&J: Heidi Youngkin (executive director/global marketing group), David Swearingen (vp corp comms), Mark Monseau (a director of media relations), Jeffrey Leebaw (Monseau’s boss) and Ray Jordan (vp public affairs and corp comms). There were other J&J execs there too, all mainly from the corp comms division, but I didn’t get a chance to say hello to them all or nab their business cards.
Attending from the blogosphere: Fard Johnson of Healthcare Vox, Nicholas Genes from MedGadget, Peter Pitts from DrugWonks, Steven Palter from Doc in the Machine and Ed Silverman from Pharmalot. And me.
John Mack from Pharma Marketing Blog was invited but cancelled at the last minute, thus insuring that we gossiped about him behind his back.
Silverman turned up fashionably late and was clearly the belle of J&J’s ball—Pharmalot in a short time has come to occupy a high profile in the drug blog area because of Ed’s prolific posting. Turns out Ed is now blogging for the Star-Ledger full time, works from home, and doesn’t do any more reporting. (Mack has previously speculated he has a team of bloggers working for him.)
At dinner I was seated across from Heidi Youngkin. J&J really got their money’s worth from Youngkin last night—she lives in Pennsylvania, commutes to New Brunswick and somehow managed dinner in New York also. She indicated that the J&J acquisition of Pfizer’s Consumer Health Care brands was going smoothly and the culture clash between the aggressive Pfizer culture and J&J’s more family-friendly culture was overblown.
Next to me was Jeff Leebaw, who ate the biggest steak I’ve ever seen.
On the other side of me was Adriana Lukas, a consultant to J&J for the past year on blogging. (That’s her pictured.)
Lukas told me 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. When I put it to her that this was a journalist’s dream and a brand manager’s nightmare, she asserted that the power of the internet will essentially grind all businesses like J&J into a sort of mob-driven series of collaborative networks run by empowered individuals who answer to no one but themselves. Ray Jordan “totally gets it,” she said.
Lukas was one of the most combative, self-confident people I’ve ever met. Having a conversation with her is a bit like being stuck in an argument-hurricane. She made Peter Pitts look shy.
I look forward to the day that J&J devolves into an anarchic, Ayn Rand-style free-for-all, but suspect that Wall Street might have something to say before Lukas gets her wish.
To conclude: A fascinating evening all round. Despite J&J’s image as being a drug company that’s so safe and conservative your mother would approve of it taking you to the prom, the company appears to be grappling substantively with the future. Look at where it’s putting its money, for instance. And besides, which other drug company would host such a meeting?
Thanks for the report Gene.
Did you ask the J&J folks how things were getting along with their "improper payments in two small-market countries" issue? Oh and how about their three subpoenas from U.S. attorneys related to sales and marketing of three of its prescription drugs. How are they coming along?
Anyhoo!
Pip pip.
Posted by: Jack Friday | March 20, 2007 at 02:25 PM
Thanks for the report Jim.
Did you ask the J&J folks how things were getting along with their "improper payments in two small-market countries" issue? Oh and how about their three subpoenas from U.S. attorneys related to sales and marketing of three of its prescription drugs. How are they coming along?
Anyhoo!
Pip pip.
Posted by: Jack Friday | March 20, 2007 at 02:30 PM
Jim, it was fun meeting you. Combative, eh? I thought I was in one of my subdued modes. More than happy to continue the conversation. :)
But man, 120,000 JNJ bloggers...that's not just a brand manager's nightmare! And "mob-driven series of collaborative networks"... somehow I don't see JNJ employees as very mob-like. Not a big fan of Ayn Rand in free-for-all-sense - I'd rather have meaningful change and innovation over an anarchic shake up. But your interpretation of my position reads a lot more sensational... :)
On a serious note, I have seen a genuine curiosity and now understanding of this space and it's good to watch different people at JNJ becoming part of it in their own way.
Posted by: Adriana | March 20, 2007 at 03:37 PM
I think you'll find if they go the whole bloggy route (and they should), the sensitive stuff will be inside the firewall and the rest with have very well thought out guidelines. Communications does not equal anarchy, however much your inner control freak tells you it does :-)
Posted by: Corporate Ferret | March 20, 2007 at 04:14 PM
Well they didn't invite me...and I'll go anywhere for a free dinner!
Posted by: Matthew Holt | March 21, 2007 at 11:42 AM
Jim:
Nice roundup. It was great seeing you at the dinner. I was also happy to see Adriana's clarification. You made her seem pretty wild-eyed and freaky in your post. :) I didn't get that impression.
Thanks again for the post.
Fard JohnMAR.
Posted by: Fard Johnmar | March 21, 2007 at 12:11 PM
Hi, I'm sorry we didn't get to talk at the dinner. I'm Gene and work with Nick on Medgadget, who I believe you were sitting next to.
I spoke with Adriana too, but realizing that she's one of the uncategorized and not to be pigenholed "anarcho-libertarianists", and myself being something like that too, it made sense. I enjoy listening to people, and she's got some interesting things to say, because though her views sometime seem a bit crazy or overly ambitious, they are interesting, intelligent, and provocative.
The whole crowd was quite exciting and as the old English used to say, it was a fine chinwag.
Posted by: Gene O. | March 22, 2007 at 12:50 PM
Wow. I wouldn't have left J&J if I had known I could have had a steak dinner with Adriana and Heidi. Dang. My new employer sees only the fair balance of blogs, and none of the claims.
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