Lilly PowerPoint: "Execute the *%#&! Out of Them"; a Photo Gallery of Dodgy Drug Sales Advice
A study of drug company marketing materials published in the journal Bioethical Inquiry includes a treasure trove of old PowerPoint slide shows and emails that, in hindsight, don't reflect well on their authors. The article -- by Metropolitan State University's Glen Spielmans and P.I Parry of Flinders University, Australia -- includes some advice from Eli Lilly (LLY) to its sales reps for Zyprexa, an antipsychotic associated with weight gain and diabetes:
We will select tactics for each strategy that offer us best chance of success and execute the *%#&! out of them.
The study concludes that companies engage too much in "marketing-based medicine" and not enough in evidence based medicine. Here's a gallery of some of the other images, starting with a Pfizer (PFE) slide for the antidepressant Zoloft, which seems to be promoting the off-label, or unapproved, use of the drug:
This was a slide advising Lilly sales reps on the issue of weight gain among users of Zyprexa:
And another, which concludes, "Get back to selling!":
Separately, a BBC Radio 4 documentary on AstraZeneca (AZN)'s antipsycotic, Seroquel, also turned up a blast from the past, in the form of an ad in the British Journal of Psychiatry in April 2004. The ad says Seroquel has "a favorable weight profile" even though the drug's label now warns of weight gain and diabetes:
