EDITOR'S NOTE
LSL
LIFESCIENCELEADER.COM JANUARY 2015
6
Back in 1985, the Coca-Cola Company launched
new Coke as a replacement to its 99-year-old for-
mula and flagship product. The move was met
with an unprecedented firestorm of consumer
protests. Company leadership was blasted by
pundits for having made the marketing blunder
of the century. How could Coca-Cola have made
such an obvious mistake? Simple, it wasn't that
obvious. At the time, the company had been los-
ing market share in its flagship market with its
flagship product for 15 consecutive years. Coca-
Cola had to do something to stop the down-
ward skid. By 1984, the company had secretly
arrived at a new formula, supported by exten-
sive research. In fact, the $4 million reformula-
tion market research was so solid that then
Coca-Cola chairman, Roberto Goizueta, termed
the decision to launch new Coke as, "one of the
easiest we have ever made." In thousands of
blind taste tests, the new formulation not only
topped the fabled secret formula, but it also
beat out rival Pepsi by 6 to 8 percentage points.
Why then did it take just 79 days after the new
Coke launch for the original Coke to return to
store shelves? Only the benefit of hindsight
reveals the company's folly — failing to consider
the ability of focus groups to accurately predict
the effects of social influence in the real world.
I applaud Lewis-Hall for sharing Pfizer's
failure to ask all the right questions of the
right patients at the right time when it came
to the unsuccessful launch of Exubera.
However, if patient-centricity is your goal, all
of us can learn from the lessons supplied
by new Coke. Their researchers did ask all
the right questions of all the right people
and yet still failed fabulously — thanks to
the ability of Coke loyalists to influence pub-
lic opinion. Being patient-centric means
fully accounting for the ability of players
beyond patients to influence public opinion,
which can prevent or delay access to even
those products clearly deemed superior
(e.g., the Cytyc ThinPrep pap test).
l
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J A N U A RY 2 015 V O L . 7 N O. 1
uring my conversation with
Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall, Pfizer's chief
medical officer (page 20), she shared
an example of one of her employ-
er's products that, frankly, didn't resonate with
patients and their lifestyles. Exubera, the first
U.S. insulin option approved for type 1 and 2
diabetes that didn't require a needle for admin-
istration, was launched in January 2006. Pfizer
was so confident Exubera would be a block-
buster, just days before receiving FDA approval
the company paid $1.4 billion to Sanofi-Aventis
for its share of the inhalable insulin. However, in
October 2007, due to lack of consumer demand,
Exubera was pulled from the market.
Dr. Lewis-Hall's story on Exubera's flop
reminded me of the numerous business mar-
keting cases I studied back at Cleveland State
University. Guided by the late Robert Hartley's
best-selling textbook,
Marketing Mistakes
& Successes
, we dug deeply into the factors
behind product feat and failure. As is so often
the case, looking back upon marketing botches
through the lens of hindsight often reveals
leadership decision mistakes that seem bla-
tantly obvious. But are they really? When
Exubera was pulled, it was easy for critics to
point fingers toward Pfizer's failings (e.g., the
drug delivery device was too large). But to
me, Pfizer's miss is no more obvious than the
famous miscue by the company whose logo
has 94 percent global recognition — Coca-Cola.
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Learn From Coke
When It Comes To
Patient-centricity
R O B W R I G H T Chief Editor
D