Definitions, to be understood further in other blog entries: a craft-based media firm is one in which craft of the products—meeting objectives such as on the artistic, editorial, and factual accuracy levels, which are aimed to in production by “craftspeople”—is key to the company’s aims and success. Though there may be indirectness to how products ended up crafted to these objectives, and there may be excuses, pettifogging, stark disservice, etc., with regard to the handling of some workers in the process of this crafting, the craft behind products is still essential in this way.
A deal-based media firm is one in which the deal between the firm and its client is the central organizing principle: handling of the firm’s products and its workers (whether on a craft level or not) and billing of the client are oriented to the deal between the firm and its client (whether that deal is fair to the client or not), and everything else—such as meeting craft-level criteria—is secondary to this. This nature of this kind of firm is to be determined empirically, over time; no such firm would ever consciously characterize itself this way; but behaviors to be witnessed at such firms convey this nature of the firm quite unambiguously.
One of the keys (or clues) to understanding how medical-advertising/promotional firms (which can be characterized as deal-based media firms) are different from other, more craft-oriented media firms is in their having you sign confidentiality agreements. When I started to work for such firms in 2001, I signed these agreements—not every firm required them, interestingly (in fact, only a minority did)—and as I did, I did not foresee any problem with adhering to their terms.
But by 2007 or so, I would start to find good cause to override these terms in certain circumstances (aside from the issue of whether you talked among colleagues informally and off-hours about work issues, which from about 2002 on never seemed a problem for me).
But aside from the historical reasons for this later overriding, let’s outline reasonable enough ground rules for what (in a limited way) I’ll do (and have already done) in this blog.
The agreements are typically effective for 10 years—you cannot reveal essentially what seems to be stipulated as trade secrets, which very generally is information you are privy to in your work in the media firms’ offices, though sometimes the way the agreements are worded, it’s hard to know whether “trade secrets” means any sort of thing that goes on when and where you work for the firms. By 2006, I would have seen enough, at various firms, that was borderline-troubling (on an ethical if not also a legal level) that—with a firm that fell under the umbrella of Interpublic, a conglomerate I hadn’t often worked witnin—I would demand that a special clarification be added to agreements (not that I suspected this one conglomerate so much; I was taking precautionary action, based on experiences, as it happened, that I’d had outside this conglomerate).
Part of the reason for starting to include my own little provision was that, as I found in 2006, the Interpublic conglomerate demanded you sign agreements that were very specific and detailed, unlike the CommonHealth confidentiality agreement (CommonHealth is owned by the WPP conglomerate, which is actually larger than Interpublic). CommonHealth’s agreement was quite skimpy (and this latter I had only had to sign twice, once in 2001 and once in 2007).
The clarification to the Interpublic agreement (which I hand-wrote on my copy of the agreement--actually, twice, I believe in mid-2006 and in late 2007--and which I had the HR person who was involved understand why I was adding this extra provision) was that—essentially—I could be free to talk to a confidant outside the workplace about work issues, implying that it didn’t interfere with the company’s client/product-relevant interests.
So, for our purposes here, following are specific criteria I will work within in discussing—at my discretion—medical-advertising-related topics:
(1) I can talk about what happened more than 10 years before I signed an agreement, or I can talk about an issue when it has been more than 10 years since I worked on an account that involved the issue (which is consistent with the express language of the agreement); meanwhile,
(2) anything that happened within 10 years from the time of signing is not allowed to be discussed outside the company, except:
(3) given the proper conditions, I can talk about something that is NOT a matter of trade secrets as ordinarily understood—“trade secrets” meaning information that pertains to specific brands or, especially, any “proprietary” strategizing regarding how the brands would be marketed (which, typically, and perhaps ALL the time, I was never privy to in my narrowly defined technical work); or
(4) given the proper foundation, I can talk about something that is NOT a matter of trade secrets and that IS a deviation from accepted practice with respect to ethics that seem to be expected in media offices, and/or with respect to more general office manners, and/or with respect to technically-related methods or assumptions, as understood (or as should be understood) across the medical-media industry and/or across all publishing-related industries in which I’ve had experience; or,
the most conscience-wracking area, (5) when an issue involves the nature of a specific brand or some issues regarding the strategy or more specific tactics for how the brand is marketed, I can discuss this issue if it raises questions of a possible threat to public health and/or a possible violation of federal law regarding health-care-product marketing, violation of the letter of the law or (harder to address) of the spirit of the law.
Whenever I discuss an issue that involves any of the above criteria, I will reference, by number, which criterion or criteria I am following. Believe me, this is all not an easy thing to grapple with.
