Merck, Vioxx, science, and marketing
In case you missed the story, Merck recalled Vioxx, a painkiller that killed as many as 60,000 Americans. In one of those ironies that make you faint, Merck got away with just a few billion dollars in settlement because almost all the victims were either elderly or out of shape or had other illnesses, that made it easy to Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK) legal to put the blame of their misery or death on their poor health rather than the painkiller.
It is widely known that both Pfizer (PFE) and Merck used the same marketing techniques to sell painkillers like Vioxx, Celebrex, and Bextra that are used by The Coca-Cola Company (KO).
In a shocking article in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers have shown that the so-called Advantage trial that was supposedly done to test side effects of Vioxx was actually conducted to support a marketing campaign.
It is tempting to engage in unethical or even illegal activities to do increase sales or to raise your firm’s stock price, but it is simply poor business strategy.
Italian wine in a box
There is a strong argument being made why you should buy wine in a box rather than a bottle unless you have a very strong reason to do so, like, you want to age a wine or the wine that you absolutely must drink for whatever reason is not available in a box (in that case you should try to make sure that you recycle the bottle and also let your favorite winery know that they should make the wine in a box option available).
I have some more good news to report that comes from Tyler Colman. Italy, source of some of the best wines in the world, is allowing wine to be sold in boxes and still be able to get the Italian Ministry of Agriculture’s quality assurance label.
Just to point out that in case your favorite wine is not available in a box, you can buy many excellent wines from France, Australia, and the United States. Then there is always water or vodka.
One perfect ad
Major tech advertisers are shifting a bit of the money they spend on Google to Yahoo, according to Covario.
My experience with ad placement on websites has demonstrated over and over again that more ads does not necessarily mean more “value” for anyone (consumer, advertiser, publisher, and the facilitator like Google). The CTR, even for Google ads, is still extremely low. At best it is in high single digits. The reason people do not click on ads is that they are still off-target despite all the advancements made by Google.
So what creates value is that one perfect ad that shows up when you are ready to buy. Today there are a lot of bad ads and advertisers on the web and we have to get rid of them.
The conclusion: It is not going to help Yahoo if it accepts what is rejected by Google.
