Financials Laid Bare: At Medicis, Another Annual Report Means Another Naked Woman

There are no prizes for guessing what adorns the cover of Medicis (MRX)'s annual report: Once again, it's a disconcertingly flawless female model, the latest in a line of often naked women shown in magazine-style cover images by the maker of Dysport (a rival to Botox) and Restylane (an injectable wrinkle filler).

Medicis' 2009 report (above right) is a modest affair compared to some of its previous ones, notably the 2008 annual review, whose expressionless model was topless (below). Medicis has used unclothed models on its reports for 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008. (The report for 2005 featured a ballet dancer; I was unable to locate a cover for the 2002 annual.)

When drug companies pick cover photos for their annual reports, they usually make one of two choices: They go all science-y, usually with a researcher peering through lab goggles at brightly colored liquid in a test-tube; or they can go patient-y, with images of smiling elderly people hugging their grandchildren.

Medicis could do the same. In addition to cosmetic pharmaceuticals it also makes Ammonul for acute hyperammonemia, but how sexy are urea cycle disorders associated with encephalopathy, hmm?

Medicis' covers are all perfectly tasteful, of course. But they're a bit too perfect -- they seem to have received as much attention from Photoshop as they have from one of Medicis' syringes. The company's message to its customers is not subtle. You don't need to have attended a feminist theory class to decipher the subtext of the 2006 report, which showed an image of a nude woman sliced into four quadrants under the headline "Clarity of Purpose."

Here's a gallery of recent Medicis annual report covers: