Mark Ritson on branding: Pfizer trial reveals brand malady

Marketing 10-May-06

One would expect that an annual marketing budget of $3bn (£1.6bn) would buy you a very well-positioned corporate brand. But that has not been the case for Pfizer.

The world's biggest pharmaceutical corporation has recently launched
some very successful drugs, including Lipitor and Viagra. But when it
comes to its own corporate brand Pfizer is, like many multinationals, a

mess of generic and insipid bland values.

All the usual suspects are there: integrity, innovation, customer focus,
respect for people, community, teamwork, performance, leadership and, of
course, quality. It is a roll-call of the generic from a corporation
that sees branding as a superficial patina and not the fundamental core
of its business.

Does it matter? With profits of $8bn (£4.3bn) last year,
does it even need brand values at the core of its business?

We might get a different perspective from the people of Kano in
Nigeria.

Ten years ago, with a meningitis epidemic raging in the region, a team
of Pfizer researchers travelled to the city in what the company claims
was a philanthropic mission. The team arrived with large quantities of
Trovan, an experimental and, at that time unapproved, drug.

The Pfizer team recruited a Nigerian doctor to act as its leader, who
has since claimed that he was little more than a front man. They then
administered Trovan in oral form to 100 children selected from
meningitis sufferers admitted to a Kano field hospital.

The Pfizer team also administered cef-triaxone, a registered drug for
meningitis, in lower-than-recommended doses to another 100 children also
suffering from the illness.

Pfizer said that it had received the verbal approval of the families of
the patients, although in filing a lawsuit, the families have claimed
that the company did not obtain their consent.

Meanwhile, those children admitted to the hospital who were not selected
by the Pfizer team were treated with the correct dosages of the
antibiotic chloramphenicol, an internationally accepted treatment for
bacterial meningitis, by a team from Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Once the Pfizer team had ended its mission, it returned to the US,
though the epidemic continued.

Of the 200 children involved in the trial, 11 died - although there is
no evidence to suggest the drug played any part - and many others were
afflicted with serious medical conditions, despite surviving.

Since the affair came to light Pfizer has rejected any wrong-doing,
claiming it is 'proud of the way the study was conducted'. A Nigerian
commission, however, has concluded that the episode was a 'clear case of
exploitation of the ignorant'.

Where are brand values when you need them? Respect for people does not
seem to stretch to gravely ill African children. Community, I would
suggest, does not apply to the 30 families from Kano now trying to sue
Pfizer. Integrity did not apparently preclude the drugs company from
using a forged ethics document as evidence that the Trovan trial was
legitimate, something to which it has since admitted.

When an organisation takes branding seriously, it goes beyond the
superficial and instils in its products, its people and its operations
the values that define it.

There are companies, such as Pret A Manger, BP and Nike, that take their
brand values very seriously and, as a result, are able to make money and
make the world a better place at the same time.

There are also companies such as Pfizer that see brand values as a page
on a corporate website and which, as a result, operate with an inherent
imbalance between what makes them money and what makes them human.

30 SECONDS ON ... PFIZER

- Pfizer was founded in 1849 in Brooklyn, New York, by two Germans,
Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart.

- It employs 122,000 people worldwide in 60 countries and sells its
products in more than 150 countries.

- In 2002, Pfizer merged with rival Pharmacia, making it the world's
biggest pharmaceutical company.

- In the first quarter of 2006 its net income was $4.1bn.

- Pfizer's products include erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, children's
painkiller Calpol and oral-health brand Listerine.

- Pfizer has faced various lawsuits over the years. In 2004, it
announced it was negotiating a settlement deal with victims of asbestos
inhalation resulting from the use of insulation products sold by
Quigley, a division it acquired in 1968. Pfizer said it would pay
$430m to 80% of plaintiffs, with a further $535m to be
paid into a settlement trust to compensate the remaining 20% and future
claimants.