Pfizer Ends Its "Unwritten Rule": Don't Return Reporters' Calls

Pfizer pr chief Ray Kerins said that Pfizer had an “unwritten rule” for dealing with the media: Don’t return reporters’ calls. Here’s what Ad Age says he told the Business Development Institute’s Real-Time Communications Conference:

Back in 2007, on the second day of his new job as Pfizer’s global PR chief, Ray Kerins said he was told of an unwritten rule: ignore the first message received from any reporter on any given issue.

Oddly, although Ad Age has video of Kerins’ speech, it doesn’t have that snippet. They do have Kerins describing how Pfizer pr folk figured out that not returning calls doesn’t help the company’s corporate rep. Kerins:

… if we’re not willing to engage we only have ourselves to blame. I blame myself and those of us in the industry for the bad reputation that the pharma industry has. We develop life-saving medicines that you take, that will prolongue your life … how in hell do we have such a bad reputation? It makes no sense.

Pfizer’s inability to deal with the media did not go unnoticed. In fact, it actually drew more attention to the company’s dysfunctional PR. In a previous job I noted:

Note to Pfizer pr Pfolks: Guys, not every story has to be bad news. … Try picking up the phone. Transparency is a powerful thing. Just because you’re not talking doesn’t mean all my other sources disappear — why give them all that free mileage?

Having said that, no amount of good pr will wash away headline makers such as Pfizer’s takeover of Wyeth. Bloomberg:

Pfizer, based in New York, said 19,500 jobs will be eliminated from the combined companies. The deal is financed by $22.5 billion in loans from banks that received at least $75 billion from the Treasury Department’s rescue plan, the drugmaker said on Jan. 26.

Unsurprisingly, there are already protests that this job-killing deal “perverts” the purpose of the TARP funds.