Wow is all I can say! This cat is one ego-maniac! How monotonous it must be to come in every day and feed this dude's ego! Holy Shit. Read the article! It is a nightmare. He gloats about how the proudest moment in Vasella's career was the decision to "ignore his own marketing people and instead listen to an Oregon Oncologist...." What the he'll does he think That was? That was Marketing...to listen to KOLs! The dummy! Doesn't matter who's doing it. it's still marketing....and if his Marketing people were telling him to do smthg different that what the KOLs were saying, then it wasn't "insight driven" marketing! then he goes on to say that "What the Marketers thought was a $400 million drug is now a $4.6Bn one....and he goes on to explain that it's because Novartis Quadrupled the price from $24,000 a year in 2001 to more than $90,000 today! wow, isn't that great!? We are raping the payors and patients! He obviously doesn't know that patients have out of pocket expenses with Specialty Pharmacy drugs and Injectables...which I bring up bc this article is about "Will Joseph Jimenez Cure Cancer?" Now the dude is curing cancer bc Novartis is close to a cure for ALL. well, news flash! There is already a cure for other leukemia, like Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia! There are also lots of examples where companies originally undershot what the market could bare or would bare for certain drugs and they under-forecasted the sales significantly. Seroquel was supposed to be $400 million peak year sales and ultimately was several billion and that WASNT from quadrupling the price! Lots of other examples.
In a final affront to his Marketing Teams, Jimenez states, "We keep our Commercial people away from key decisions that are being made in research at an early stage....whereas another company might have commercial people in there looking at business opportunities or market size, we have said we don't want that." Well, i'm sure your investors feel great about that! With patent lives going from an average of 11 years in the early 2000s to about 7 years now, all companies need to redistribute the value of the brand to the front end through good strategic planning as early as possible, to help design clinical trials to meet specific needs in the market place....which is gathered and input through commercial channels within the organization. This guy had no story to tell, so he tried to make himself look good on the backs of the very people who deliver his numbers. He is clearly another empty suit. Good luck working for this "man." I would quit based on this. I want to puke right now and I don't even work for Novartis. I'm embarrassed to be in this industry. Go quadruple some more prices on cancer patients and brag about it.
In a final affront to his Marketing Teams, Jimenez states, "We keep our Commercial people away from key decisions that are being made in research at an early stage....whereas another company might have commercial people in there looking at business opportunities or market size, we have said we don't want that." Well, i'm sure your investors feel great about that! With patent lives going from an average of 11 years in the early 2000s to about 7 years now, all companies need to redistribute the value of the brand to the front end through good strategic planning as early as possible, to help design clinical trials to meet specific needs in the market place....which is gathered and input through commercial channels within the organization. This guy had no story to tell, so he tried to make himself look good on the backs of the very people who deliver his numbers. He is clearly another empty suit. Good luck working for this "man." I would quit based on this. I want to puke right now and I don't even work for Novartis. I'm embarrassed to be in this industry. Go quadruple some more prices on cancer patients and brag about it.