When is an important announcement really important?

August 4, 2008 – 2:05 pm

I get a lot of PR people contacting me, probably not as many as some in the media, but my e-mail address and contact information are quite freely available and both magazines (Med Ad News and R&D Directions) are fairly well-known in their niches.

So on Monday, I get this e-mail:

Hi Chris,

I wanted to make sure you were going to be in the office on Wednesday morning (8/6). There will be major announcement in the pharmaceutical industry that morning, with a news release being emailed to you, followed by details for calling in to a media teleconference.

This announcement will mark a dramatic shift in how drug companies will compete in the coming years.

If you won’t be in on Wednesday, can you tell me who will be covering for you so I can contact him or her?

Thanks a lot,
Susan

Susan is at Dezenhall Resources, a Washingon, D.C., PR firm that bills itself as as “a high-stakes communications firm” that is “typically brought in during times of intense scrutiny, risk or competition.

“We are known chiefly for our crisis-management prowess, but offer a wide-range of strategic, issues management, public affairs and training services. While we are most often engaged to address an urgent situation, clients also turn to us to restore reputation or market share.”

Well, they certainly sound like folks the pharmaceutical industry needs right now. But what is this announcement all about?

When I asked Susan to give me a hint, she told me that all she could say was that it involved companies that I have covered before. That is like saying the ocean is wet. The last time I checked our database of companies within our coverage, there were almost 9,000 records.

I sent out a few e-mails to people who are very in-the-know, and they have no idea what is this about either. One of them, Ed Silverman at Pharmalot, contacted Susan, and was told that no, the release is not embargoed. Mr. Silverman then replied, “It’s just hype - I don’t know what’s coming or when, so why should I care?”

I’m inclined to agree with my colleague.

By the way, Dezenhall Resources’ Website states, “When approaching the news media or others on behalf of a client, we make clear who we represent.”

Of course, this statement just cries out for this answer:

UPDATE: This is what the fuss was all about. In the past, Lilly has been a Dezenhall client, as you can see here at Political Friendster.com and here in this article in BusinessWeek. But for this particular announcement, the firm was actually representing Covance, not Lilly, according to Susan Haralson of Dezenhall Resources. Correction noted!

If there was a call-in about this, I never did get the information …

Of course, the Lilly employees at Cafe Pharma already knew what was coming.