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Execs Are Not Rock Stars, and Sepracor's Adorably Delusional Corporate Videos Show Why

A couple of adorably delusional corporate videos from Sepracor have surfaced on YouTube. One positions the maker of asthma drug Xopanex as the natural heir to Albert Einstein via an awesome 80's hair metal soundtrack. The other jokingly compares the company's founding with the struggle of Luke Skywalker's rebels against Darth Vader's Empire in Star Wars.

It's hard to tell whether the films were meant to be taken seriously, but in the harsh light of day outside a company pep rally they come off like a 30 Rock-style pastiche. Something happens to managers at successful companies: They start to believe they are rock stars. And rock stars need music videos. Which is where these howlers come from.

The first one, "Liberating The Power of Pure Medicine," appears to have been commissioned for the company in 1998. Sepracor was founded in the 1980s and its taste in music hasn't changed. As a guitar soloist riffs and chugs in the background we're treated to a montage of black-and-white footage of the great inventors of the early 20th Century, such as Marconi, Ford and Edison. (Suspected Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh is also included in the tableau.) A voiceover gives a portentous account of the company's role in history:

They've forced the envelope and conquered new frontiers. They've changed the course of history. Today there's a new traveler making this journey -- Sepracor!
A couple of years later, management seemed to gain more of a sense of humor about itself and commissioned another history video. This one starting with familiar block letters of text scrolling into the infinity of the universe:
A long time ago ...

Far, far away ...

A brave young band of sales men and women came together to liberate the single isomer generation of beta-agonist therapy ...

If you stick with it until the 2.45 minute mark, the proto-Poison heavy metal starts up again.

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