Articles by Levick Experts
To say the least, such a decision, and the predictable attendant publicity, pose a formidable public relations challenge for any pharmaceutical company. The fact that one of the drugs in question is a new version of the anti-AIDS drug Kaletra increases the challenge a hundredfold.
Media accounts variously slam Abbott as an “angered” giant “banning” life-saving drugs and “pulling” life-sustaining medication from hundreds of thousands of AIDS-afflicted, destitute Thai citizens. One critic decried it as “an immoral act.” Meanwhile, Christian Brothers Investment Services, Inc. (CBIS) and 13 other faith-based institutional investors with approximately $35 million in Abbott holdings sharply criticized the company’s decision.
Perhaps more than any other major industry, Big Pharma finds itself embroiled in legal and communications crises virtually every day – especially as drug makers get hammered both by the policies of foreign governments and the upswing in generic competition. Not surprisingly, there are bottom-line consequences for companies already mired in adversity. Bristol-Myers Squibb, for example, saw sales for its heartburn drug Plavix fall 64 percent in the last quarter of 2006. After Merck lost patent protection for the cholesterol drug Zocor, its earnings took a big hit as well.
On the global front, pharmaceutical companies continue searching for alternatives to the kind of impasse that Abbott now faces with Thailand. Some have negotiated protections of their intellectual property, as Abbott did with the Brazilian government to preserve its Kaletra patent. Sometimes the companies are able to persuade governments to delay introduction of generic drugs by several years.
Once they opt for a face-off, however, the industry’s many critics are sure to trot out their strident messages about companies that put “patents before patients.” The good news is that these attacks are by now predictable, which means that companies like Abbott have ample opportunity to gather their lawyers and communications professionals into teams and devise strategies for offsetting the inevitable excoriations.
Aggressive moves like Abbott’s in Thailand are easier to explain in the court of public opinion if the company is already taking steps to soften their image. The job of the communications team is, in effect, to propagate a counter story about the company and thereby assuage the harsh criticism that a situation like Abbott’s invites. In particular:
- Convey community commitment. For example, the Partnership for Prescription Assistance campaign, which includes the major Big Pharma names, features a “Help is Here Express” promo in which two busses crisscross the country, stopping off in hundreds of communities to educate the uninsured and under-insured about drug assistance programs.
- Use third-party endorsements with broad popular appeal. For example, television celebrity Montel Williams is the spokesperson for The Partnership for Prescription Assistance.
- Engage in comprehensive communications efforts to promote healthy diets and exercise routines.
Such campaigns simultaneously talk about the industry’s extensive R&D activities.
- Help the public understand the economics of the pharmaceutical business. The message needs to be delivered in the most straightforward terms: It takes 10 to 15 years to create a drug, and it costs billions of dollars to research, manufacture, and market our product lines even as we navigate the FDA’s labyrinthine approval process.
- Proudly disseminate corollary messages, that profits allow us to produce life-saving drugs. Take away those profits, and there will be nothing to infringe. All companies have an obligation protect what they’ve invested in. Many thousands of jobs are at stake.
- Find alternative sinners when push comes to shove. The plaintiff’s bar is still a viable target and Chamber of Commerce attacks have drawn blood even in so-called plaintiffs’ havens. With life-saving medicine as the stake, Big Pharma can effectively portray trial attorneys as the real obstacles to universal availability.
Big Pharma companies may have already lost a beat in allowing others to define them so melodramatically in recent years. Nor does Abbott’s response to the Thailand situation seem to be keeping pace with the attacks, as a quick Google search will confirm. But when companies throw down the gauntlet, as Abbott has done in Thailand, there’s really no choice but to run to the crisis. The attacks are shrill, so the response must be at least equally unambiguous.