PFIZER "la mayor de las batallas" por..(IV) / Lipitor y..."valores"

Lipitor...

By 2010, Lipitor was the most-advertised pharma brand in the world, cycling through advertising agencies and spending around $275 million annually on consumer promotion to halt the sharp downward slope of its trend line. In the end, the Lipitor team was hurling globs of DTC against the wall, hoping something would stick long enough for cognitive impact. Its legion of sales representatives did not help stop the crumbling.

Somewhere along the line, all the creative and intellectual energy to influence Lipitor business, and presumably build shareholder value, either stopped working completely, or at best were marginally effective. Nothing Pfizer did reversed the slide in Lipitor sales, or its stock price. Part of this is due to a marketplace that is now socially resistant to the effects of advertising in general; another part is due to a media industry using obsolete metrics and no longer able to measure results reliably. Despite these new features in its operating environment, Pfizer clung to what it knew, and was left dragging around the corpse of “promotion” as its best solution to changing business dynamics for the drug, as well as itself. It still believes this is a good idea.

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"Valores"...

It also took about a decade for Pfizer to see its corporate reputation evaporate. By 2006, Pfizer was ranked 38th on Interbrand’s list of the 100 “Best Global Brands,” with a brand value of almost $9.5 billion. But this position was a step down from previous years, and reflected another dimension to Pfizer that began degrading around the time it acquired Warner-Lambert in 2000, and continued after acquiring Wyeth nearly six years later, in a deal for $68 billion. Pfizer is now trying to unravel that deal.

Among a host of other civil and criminal settlements it has made for deceptive marketing, including the largest criminal fine of any kind ever (for illegally marketing its painkiller Bextra), Pfizer is currently facing litigation by a group of pharmacies – a customer segment -- for price-fixing and delaying the launch of generic Lipitor. Its once credible science is now referred to in medical journals and editorials as “useless studies”. In 2007, the Pfizer brand disappeared completely from Interbrand's list. It has not returned.

Pharmaceutical executives work with business objectives that can be in conflict with objectives the healthcare system as a whole is trying to reach. With Pfizer, the goal was – and still is -- to "protect the Lipitor brand" as a core and critical piece of its business. Part of this means trying to stop customers from using a competing product, even if that competing product is a generic equivalent, which the people who pay for healthcare prefer because it lowers the cost of care. Even now, Pfizer aims to keep about one-third of Lipitor sales by employing "unprecedented" promotion, including raising fear among consumers that a generic atorvastatin may be coming from a dubious source. Bayer used the identical tactic in 1917, when its patent on aspirin expired. (Más)

Ver también:

Pfizer - Lipitor: ageing silverback (imagen tomé "prestada")

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