Debbie Weil performs liposuction on Alliconnect

You may not have noticed the new Alliconnect Blog,. Alliconnect is a place to discuss weight loss with the creators of alli, an over-the-counter weight control medication, approved for OTC sales in the USA, made by GlaxoSmithKline.

I am not quite sure how alli works.. the blog is coy on the subject, but since it discusses "oops moments" ("Good thing I was close to home so I could change my clothes!" says chief blogger Steve Burton) and "undigested fat floating in the toilet," I can only speculate that the drug blocks fat absorption. Why be coy about that? Were I seriously overweight and committed to losing weight, I am perfectly fine with learning the possible side effects. But since it's a corporate product fluff blog, we can leave that.

The problem for GlaxoSmithKline is that the alliconnect blog has attracted almost no readers and only a handful of comments -- all but one of those are from the GSK "alli" team the GSK "alli" team or prominent corporate blogging adviser Debbie Weil, who advised on the project.

Now, that would normally be a problem between GSK and Weil. But Weil has made the bad results -- the falling short of client expectations -- brutally obvious in a public way. Can things be so bad she's asking PR bloggers to "seed" comments onto the alliconnect blog?

Yes.

David Murray quotes this email from Weil on his blog:

***

Hi everyone,

This is a shameless request. I'm working with GlaxoSmithKline on the
official corporate blog for alli, the first FDA-approved, OTC weight
loss product. You may have seen the TV ads.

While traffic to the blog is growing, readers seem shy about leaving Comments.

You can help jump start the two-way conversation! Take a peek at the
blog at http://www.alliconnect.com.

If you're inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No need
to say that you know me, of course.

It really is kind of neat that a Global 100 company is doing a blog
like this. It's not easy.

- D

--
Debbie Weil
t: 202.364.5705 m: 202.255.1467
site: http://www.debbieweil.com
blog: http://www.BlogWriteForCEOs.com
book: http://www.TheCorporateBloggingBook.com

***

Weil (an IABC conference speaker, by the way) has truly wedged herself in a tight spot. I cannot believe GSK's alliconnect is going to get a sudden surge of comments from her feeble plea -- you'd have to be an obese PR blogger more than ready to shill for no pay -- and I'm certainly skeptical of her professional ethics. What I wonder is who thought this up? Weil, alone, in desperation? Or did GSK lean on her? Either way, it's another sad ethics tale for our profession.

If you're inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No need
to say that you know me, of course.

OK! Who can resist!

Technorati : GSK, OTC weight loss, PR ethics, Steve Burton, alli, alliconnect, bad corporate blogs, david murray, debbie weil, glaxosmithkline, possible drug marketing violations

Posted by Allan Jenkins on July 11, 2007 at 10:49 PM in Bizarre & Unexpected, Blogging for Benjamins, Corporate Communication, Marketing, Pharmaceutical Industry | Permalink

Comments

There's nothing underhanded about the email I sent, as I posted the same request publicly on my blog. And I didn't send it to a list of "prominent PR bloggers." Just a list of folks I know. It's not that big a deal. Bloggers - corporate and otherwise - use the backchannel of email all the time to communicate with one another.

Posted by: Debbie Weil | Jul 12, 2007 12:57:49 AM

The point is that you made such a request. That you made it on your blog and added friends in addition to prominent PR bloggers only makes it worse. But I appreciate your candor.

Thanks for the email tip... until now, I had email pegged as just an easy way to mail Mom...

Posted by: Allan Jenkins | Jul 12, 2007 2:28:38 AM

You're a naughty boy. (I'm grinning a little bit when I say that.) Now I have to go see if you left a message on the blog...

Posted by: Eric Eggertson | Jul 12, 2007 3:10:31 AM

"I posted the same request publicly on my blog."

Yes, none of the alli audience reads your blog.

Transparent would be posting the same request publicly on the alli blog. "Please, shy fatties, respond! Glaxo is feeling lonely!"

Transparent would be letting us know who are the "folks I know" who got the e-mail, and why you chose us.

I agree, Debbie; it's not that big a deal. It's not a wholesale fake blog, as happened with Wal-Mart.

But it's dumb nonetheless, and unseemly and tone deaf to the blog culture about which you profess to be a leading expert, and I'm just about 100% sure you won't do it again.

Posted by: David Murray | Jul 12, 2007 7:01:58 AM

I did leave a comment, Eric.... waiting for it to show up.

Posted by: Allan Jenkins | Jul 12, 2007 10:22:44 AM

I look forward to reading your comment when it appears on alli blog - maybe you could share it now, Allan, to save the suspense!

Two things occur to me. Firstly, the warning light should have flashed for Debbie when she added "No need to say that you know me, of course."

Secondly, she is either trawling her email contacts list for people who happen to be fat and therefore interested in the product (and as most bloggers show their faces not their stomachs you can see her problem) or she is inviting PR bloggers to comment on a commercial pitch. If you are trying to build dialogue with real people there are probably better ways of doing this than soliciting comments from PRs with an interest in CEO blogs.

Personally, I would rather cycle up mountains than take some horrible potion that provoke 'oops moments' - that's what wine (and, unfortunately in Debbie's case) blogging are for.

Posted by: Philip Young | Jul 12, 2007 10:49:33 AM

"If you're inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No need
to say that you know me, of course."

In Debbie's follow up comments, she never addresses that second sentence. To me it's the one sentence I take issue with. It's the one that calls the rest of the email into question. Were it not in the email, it would not be a big deal.

Paull Young sent me a note today as part of a mass send about a project he's working on. He handled it transparently and I have no issue with his note.

Posted by: Kevin Dugan | Jul 12, 2007 7:09:05 PM

Alan,

What's your source for, "alliconnect blog has attracted almost no readers"?

Apologies if I'm missing the obvious somewhere, but I feel like I haven't specifically picked that up from what I've been reading on the subject.

Thanks,
Michael Sebastian

Posted by: Michael Sebastian | Jul 12, 2007 7:57:39 PM

1) Because she's worried about the number of comments. If they were getting loads of eye-balls, they wouldn't give a rat's ass about comments. It's a promotion blog, for Chrissakes, they don't, in an ideal world, WANT comments.

2) Because of her plaintive appeal. If readers where streaming to the blog, Weil wouldn't be gambling her reputation on pimping comments. When a consultant goes desperate, times are real bad on the engagement.

3) 27 years experience listening to and watching corporate jargon, bullshit, CYA moves, bad excuses, appeals...

So. "Almost no readers" = "far below what GSK was told they could expect."

Posted by: Allan Jenkins | Jul 12, 2007 8:55:02 PM

Allan,

You really are a j--k. You don't know me (and I've never heard of your blog til yesterday). Traffic to the alli blog is just fine. The GSK folks I'm working with do want a two-way conversation. Read the blog for goodness sake... Or send me an email with questions. I'll be sure to keep it private (heh heh).

Posted by: Debbie Weil | Jul 13, 2007 12:22:30 AM

"There's nothing underhanded about the email I sent, as I posted the same request publicly on my blog."

Not true. Debbie left out the most important point on her blog post.

"If you're inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No need to say that you know me, of course."

She was criticized for astroturfing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

"Astroturfing is a term for formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising that seek to create the impression of being spontaneous, grassroots behavior. Hence the reference to AstroTurf (artificial grass) is a metaphor to indicate fake grassroots support."

and she doesn't really address the issue except a bit in the comment section "Yup, it was an offhand remark and would have been better omitted."

Really?

You're an experienced blogger, promoting a new blog sending a promotion to prominent bloggers and you do offhand remarks like this in the promotion? we're not talking a single email to a single person, we're talking a campaign here.

Nothing wrong with asking your friends to check out your new blog on topic x built for company y. But this was more than that, no one's criticizing her for telling people about her blog, that's a common acceptable practice. They're criticizing her for what she asked them to do when they got there and for asking them to hide the fact that she asked them to do it.

Perhaps her efforts will be listed as a case study here

http://www.thenewpr.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?pagename=Astroturfing.CaseStudies

Posted by: Pete Quily | Jul 13, 2007 12:30:36 AM

Interesting post from Jaffe which totally misses the mark. Have a look at my comment, because it lists another two blogs which weigh into the debate, both at the expense of Ms Weil, who should have known better.

http://www.jaffejuice.com/2007/07/bloggers-v-blog.html#comment-75879880

Posted by: Lee Hopkins | Jul 14, 2007 11:43:06 AM

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