Healthy Skepticism Library item: 10702

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Edwards J.
Who's at the Door? J&J With Your Meds
Brandweek 2007 Jun 18
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003600000

Full text:

NEW YORK — Johnson & Johnson wants to turn Girl Scout troops into “drug dealers”-but it’s all for a good cause.

The drug giant said it will launch a promotion this month, in which churches, charities and nonprofit groups-such as the Girl Scouts-will be encouraged to sell J&J’s painkillers and cough medicine to their friends and neighbors. For every purchase of a J&J brand, including Tylenol, Sudafed, BenGay and Motrin, J&J will donate 8% of the sale to the community group.

It includes all the OTC brands that New Brunswick, N.J.-based J&J acquired from Pfizer in December, such as Benadryl and Listerine.

Traditionally, community groups have raised funds by selling anodyne objects like calendars, greetings cards and, most famously, Girl Scout cookies. But the program, called Ucare, offers nonprofits an advantage, said J&J. Because customers will buy their drugs online, activists and volunteers no longer have to lug knickknacks or cookie boxes when they sell them.

Here’s how it works: The volunteer persuades a neighbor to buy their regular over-the-counter medicine from J&J as part of the fund-raiser. The consumer then goes to Ucareorg.com to punch in the code for their specific fundraising group. After that, any product they buy will benefit the community group. (Info is at Ucare’s Web site.)

The push will be backed by a modest number of print and online ads, via Integrated Marketing Services, Norwalk, Conn. One ad asks “Who Cares?” Another reads, “Fundraising Is as Easy as 1-2-3.”

“We’re always looking for new, creative, breakthrough ways of getting to our consumer base,” said Eric Bruno, vp-marketing at McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Fort Washington, Pa., the unit that handles J&J’s nonprescription drug brands. “This program does specifically highlight an increasing trend of wanting to more proactively engage consumers to participate with our brands, versus our brands just speaking to consumers.”

Bruno said J&J execs don’t know how big the program could get or whether it will even make money. “We haven’t really looked at this, to be candid, at hard volume metrics. We look at it as an opportunity to penetrate the communities which we serve.”