The 'J&J Girl Scout Drug Dealer' Thing -- a Lesson in How Media Viruses Work

About a week ago, I published this story about a charitable effort currently being launched by J&J unit McNeil Consumer Healthcare. Briefly, J&J -- or McNeil, as they insist on being called -- is allowing community groups to sign up at a website where their members can buy OTC drugs like Tylenol. For every sale that is made, the charitable group will get 8% of the sale.

But the website in question has since been "temporarily" shut down.

Interesting but not world-shattering, right?

In an attempt to hook readers into this story, I wrote a rather flippant lead sentence: "Johnson & Johnson wants to turn Girl Scout troops into 'drug dealers'—but it's all for a good cause."

The rest of the report was a straightforward summary of how the effort will work, and what J&J/McNeil is doing to promote it.

To my surprise, McNeil was furious, and I got an earful from one of their PR people about a day after it came out. "We're not trying to turn Girl Scouts into drug dealers," they fumed. "We demand a correction."

After some back and forth Brandweek declined to run a correction on the ground that the matter was more about tone than fact. No one really thinks J&J/McNeil is trying to get girl scouts to deal drugs. It was a journalistic turn of phrase. And besides, despite that one line the entire rest of the story was told straight.

We offered to publish a letter to the editor from McNeil, but they declined.

I figured the matter would end there ... but then Pharmagossip produced an item (which has since moved off his frontpage so I can't reproduce it here for you but Jack Friday kindly provided the link in a comment below) ... and then Tampa Bay News 10 did this item ... and (9 News Now in Virginia did this (including that fancy logo at the top)...

Which explains why McNeil was so pissed at me.

For the record: J&J is not literally trying to turn literal girl scouts into literal drug dealers. The program, which does involve the distribution of pharmaceuticals, is open to any charitable group, including the girl scouts, who want to participate. I only wrote that "girl scout" line because the girl scouts and their cookies are the most famous nonprofit group who sell things to raise money.

Guys, you can put your website back up now.

Comments

[Jack Friday]

http://pharmagossip.blogspot.com/2007/06/promotion.html

Here's the link.

To find recent posts click on the current months archives in the right hand column.

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