BrandweekNRX blows the whistle on the "Pharma Blogosphere Survey"

Pharma industry consultant John Mack writes the Pharma Marketing Blog and is the publisher of Pharma Marketing News. He is also the man behind the Pharma Blogosphere Survey, which he presented on his blog and at an industry meeting some time ago. More recently, John used the results to conclude that Brandweek should fire me.

John makes his case that I should be terminated from my BrandweekNRX gig in his recent post "Brandweek Hires Peter Rost, Moves to the Dark Side." He even took this message to the comment section of the WSJ Health Blog.

To support his arguments John uses data from the Pharma Blogosphere Survey, which he bills as "The First Ever Survey of Readers About Pharma Blog Credibility, Readability, Usefulness, and Bias" (summary here).

John notes that “whereas 24% of survey respondents read BrandweekNRX on a regular basis, only 17% read Peter Rost's Question Authority blog on a regular basis. This suggests, as far as my survey is representative of pharma blog readers on the whole, that BrandweekNRX's readership will drop (perhaps after an initial transient uptick attributable to curiosity).”

The only problem is that those numbers don’t match actual data for BrandweekNRX or Question Authority.

So I started to wonder about John Mack’s survey, and how come those results could be so far off . . . after all, many bloggers, including myself, thought we sent our readers over to John’s blog to fill out the survey and get some really useful results.

John even goes so far as to tell Brandweek, “IMHO, Brandweek should seriously consider the data I have presented above, because it signals that BrandweekNRX may lose some of its credibility and usefulness, especially among its most important audience: pharmaceutical executives.”

So I thought, why not take a look at all the raw data John collected?

After all, he got almost 150 respondents.

And here is a peak at a snippet of individual data (the other 100 entries show exactly the same trend), which reveals something very surprising (or maybe not) about the Pharma Blogsphere Survey. (Click on image to view full size):

It turns out that in the "biggest pharma blog survey ever conducted," John didn’t really do a survey of pharma blog readers. He simply ended up with responses from his own readers of his Pharma Marketing Blog. Perhaps not surprising, since that's where the survey was done.

Very few of the respondents read any pharma blogs, except for John’s blog. And, of course, it doesn't make sense to consider what they think about blogs they don't read.

So unfortunately for all of us who thought we sent readers to this survey - and for John who spent a lot of hard work on this data - we still don’t know what regular pharma blog readers think. We only know what John's readers think.

But, if anything, this is a good lesson in pharma marketing.

Download complete Blogosphere Survey Results.xls

Thank you John, for sharing the raw data!

- Peter Rost, M.D. is a former VP of Pfizer and the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.

Comments

[John Mack]

Peter, I think you are being very selective. To suggest that I surveyed ONLY readers of my blog is utterly false! Several bloggers posted notices about the survey on their blogs and if your readers look at the data, they will find that many respondents also regularly read other blogs. If most respondents ALSO read my blog, that says more about the popularity of my blog than about "surveying ONLY my readers," which is a lie.

Besides, when I did the analysis of readability, useability and credibility, I only included results from people who actually claimed to read the blogs in question at least occasionally and did not include opinions from readers who never read the blog.

So, you blog's ratings are based on readers of YOUR blog, not mine. If they just so happen to be readers of my blog, that is irrelevant to the analysis.

Nice try at spinning the story, Peter!

BTW, will you ever write anything about something OTHER than yourself?

[Anonymous Blogger]

John Mack has somehow appointed himself to be Lord of the Pharma Blogs. I often wonder if his arm hurts from patting himself on the back so often.

I must post anonymously because he unleashes his arrogant vitriol against any blogger who:
a) disagrees with him,
b) is more famous than him (That's you, Peter!), or
c) covers any pharma topic that he does not deem worthy. (Just check out Mack's many dismissive comments on his Pharma BlowhardSphereTM site.)

Congrats on Brandweek!

[Andrew]

I'm sorry, I'm more interested in posts that help me to enrich the pharmacy profession, not petty bickering that distracts from it. Let's see more posts (from everybody) that help improve patient care. Please don't let this turn in to a blog war.

[Rackjaw]

Peter Rost sucks. John Mack PWNS (for those of you who dont know, it means he is like the best out there). End of sotry. Just accept defeat, Rost.

[Random John]

Peter, you asked for a comment on the validity of the analysis. Preliminary comments here: http://realizationsinbiostatistics.blogspot.com/2007/08/shout-outs.html#comment-8790292499542729131

[Random John]

And some more detail here:
http://realizationsinbiostatistics.blogspot.com/2007/08/web-polls-in-blog-entries-i-dont-trust.html

[402300572]

http://www.coachoutletstoreonlinenew.com