Admission: Even though I try to update my blog here on a regular basis, I don’t troll the blogosphere all day. My editor requires me to actually report and write at times.
So I’d never before run across this site, http://www.cialisblog.com, which is now the center of some debate among biotech and pharmaceutical-related bloggers.
The question at the heart of the debate: Who writes the Cialis blog, and is it someone inside either ICOS Corp. in Bothell or Eli Lilly &Co.?
One thing is clear: Neither ICOS nor Lilly claim to be officially associated with the blog. Since some trade publications began asking questions about it, a disclaimer has been added to the blog to make that point clear.
This all began about two weeks ago when John Mack, writer for Pharma Marketing News and author of the Pharma Marketing Blog, made reference to the Cialis blog as a not-so-great example of blogging as marketing. He then followed up online, http://www.pharmamkting.blogspot.com/ (scroll down to Feb. 1 and Feb. 7 postings).
As he and other questioned whether the Cialis blog was officially a Lilly ICOS site, the disclaimer went up on the blog site. But that didn’t end debate, as Jim Edwards from Brand Week added his two cents: http://www.brandweek.com/bw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001956545.
There’s a larger issue here. Some bloggers don’t like companies (or their unauthorized substitutes) using blogs as marketing. Corporate blogging is raising more questions as it gains popularity. (This is something touched on in a Feb. 13 posting in Bryan Corliss’ aerospace blog, too: http://www.heraldnet.com/blogaerospace/.)
My question is this: ICOS and Lilly say the main customer base for Cialis is men between about 45 and 65 or so. Is this a group that’s really reading lots and lots of blogs every day? I have a hard time believing the Cialis blog will ever be better read than Cialis’ main Web site, http://www.cialis.com/index.jsp.
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