From the Department of Headlines that make you click through...
Bush taking a big hit of off the bong, filled with Dutch cleanser, no doubt (from my archives, don't know where the original came from).
Brandweek: Pfizer Taking Some Hits Over Billion-Dollar Bong :
Last year, Pfizer paid Sanofi-Aventis $1.4 billion for Exubera, a new inhaled insulin product for diabetics that Pfizer forecast would produce $2 billion in sales every year.What Pfizer got for its cash was a device that looks a lot like a marijuana bong—and a brand that analysts, doctors, drug sales reps and some patients believe is a struggle to sell because it is so inconvenient to use.
And what was expected to be a dramatic blockbuster launch has turned into a bust, with repeated delays and negligible sales.
Now, few observers outside Pfizer believe that Exubera can reach $2 billion in sales, a forecast the company repeated to analysts in January.
“I think Pfizer is on drugs” if it believes it will get $2 billion a year from Exubera, said David Kliff, publisher of Diabetic Investor, a specialist investment data company. If Pfizer does reach its goal, “I’m going to run down Madison Avenue naked,” he says. Kliff believes Pfizer will be lucky if Exubera ultimately does half the business that Pfizer is predicting.
...
But in the absence of consumer advertising to drive interest in the Exubera, diabetics are talking about it themselves.Amy Tenderich, who writes the Diabetes Mine blog, wrote recently that Exubera “is looking like a bomb.” The device’s “hospital-grade beige” color makes it “an aesthetic nightmare in an age of cool gadgetry,” she said.
And she’s noticed Pfizer instructional video on the Exubera Web site. It shows a man huffing on his Exubera tube at a restaurant table. The man “must live in a city as tolerant or as jaded as San Francisco or New York because not one patron even glanced over as he cocked and sucked on his medicinal bong,” she wrote. Exubera “really is as bad as it looks in the pictures.”
And what the hell does that mean? Cocked and sucked on his medicinal bong . Sounds pretty funky if you ask me.
Technorati Tags: health, Pharmaceuticals
