Welcome Back CNTO411!

Just when I was going to post something about the inactivity over at Centocor's CNTO411 blog, I see that Michael Parks, Centocor's Vice President of Corporate Communications and now CNTO411's only voice, just submitted a post about "GeneRAtions," a new rheumatoid arthritis awareness program and web site.

Parks does not get into what he has been doing since he last made a post over 2 months ago on May 20, 2008. I guess this RA awareness program gobbled up much of his spare time.

Side note: Michael, I missed you at my networking dinner reception! Maybe you'd like to be a guest again on one of my Pharma Marketing Talk show and podcast interviews and talk about GeneRAtions?

The GeneRAtions web site has this visual time line, which is shown here (click to enlarge):

An attempt is made to personalize each generation with an image of a person representing that generation. All I can say is:

Mike, don't let John McCain see this!

While the "peacenik" depicted here was kinda what I was like in the 70's -- my grandmother called me Jesus because of my long hair, beard, sandals and beads -- it is not a politically correct image for John McCain who missed out on all the fun.

I see that a black woman was chosen to represent the new millenium geneRAtion, an image that I'm sure Barack and Michelle Obama would approve of.

Of course, it would be more interesting if it looked like this:

Which is more like how McCain sees the world today!

CNTO411: A New Pharmaceutical Company Blog

Centocor -- a J&J company that was the first to produce a feature length disease awareness documentary ("Innerstate") -- has just launched a new corporate blog that may break new ground in pharmaceutical company blogging. It's called "CNTO411".

The brains and bloggers behind CNTO411 are Melissa Katz, Senior Director of Corporate Communications at Centocor and her boss, Michael Parks, Vice President of Corporate Communications.

Here's an excerpt from the Inaugural Blog Posting:

“Why Centocor?” and “Why now?” Many of you may read John Mack’s blog, Pharma Marketing Blog. Almost a year ago, he blogged about the first of its kind patient education documentary film we made called Innerstate ( “No Oscar for Centocor PR Effort” [Feb. 26] and “The Innerstate DVD. Is TV Next?” [May 21]). Michael Parks, our VP of Communications who also produced the film, broke the traditional news comment mold and used the blog forum to respond to the comment and correct some inaccuracies by putting forth Centocor’s perspective and facts. In addition, he treated this blogger as we did every other journalist and let him screen the film. These small acts may appear to the casual observer to be incidental transactions, but for us, it was a big deal. Why? Because by engaging in a dialogue with John Mack in real time, he was able to immediately correct mis-information, provide the facts, and thus, give John a reason to restate his perspective.

How could he do that? Is that allowed? Should we be doing that? And what will the backlash be? Nobody knew. But that’s what pioneers do: they forge a path through the wilderness and hope they aren’t going to fall over a cliff.

I am flattered to be mentioned in this first post to CNTO411 and to be an inspiration for its launch. You can read more about my relationship to Michael, Melissa, and Innerstate on Pharma Marketing Blog (see "CNTO411: Centocor's Groundbreaking Blog").

I will be interviewing Melissa in a Pharma Marketing Talk podcast on Tuesday, March 4, 2008 at 2 PM. To learn more about this and get instructions for listening in and participating in this podcast, please click here.

Of course, Melissa and Michael owe a lot to Marc Monseau who started up the J&J corporate blog, JNJ BTW, in June 2007 (see "'Round the Sphere: Pharmaco Blogs and Carlat's Crusade").

Michael and Melissa promise to comment on Centocor product-specific news or issues on CNTO411, which would make it the first pharmaceutical blog to do so for prescription drugs, which are heavily regulated. How they plan to do this without "falling over a cliff" remains to be seen (REMICADE is mentioned in the inaugural posting). I hope Melissa will share some insights on that in my upcoming podcast interview.