December 2008
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Day December 9, 2008

Entries 2 Total

My biggest fault? Well, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. . .

Dec 9, ’08 11:39 AM

Merck gave a “state of the biz-nass” presentation today. Here’s their statement about it. As with every other major pharma company, they plan to

  1. develop more vaccines and biologic drugs
  2. sell more in emerging markets like India and China
  3. use “diversity” when they mean “diversification”

My favorite statement was this sentence on the company’s “focus”:

The Company is focused on developing novel, best-in-class or follow-on treatments for patients in primary care, specialty care, and hospital settings.

That is, they’re “focused” on making all types of drugs for all settings.

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Lost in the Supermarket: The Flavor of Night

Dec 9, ’08 9:02 AM

This series of posts about adventures in my local supermarkets began with a single product. This is that product:

I suppose the indigo packaging, set off against the sky blue of the other toothpastes, was enough to catch my eye. Who puts toothpaste in a dark box? Wouldn’t that be tantamount selling it in a dingy yellow carton?

Not if your toothpaste possesses . . . the flavor of night!

Yes, this brand of Crest is somehow imbued with “clean night mint,” as opposed to the dirtyDIRTY day mint of other toothpastes. Studying the box, I was struck by two thoughts:

  1. It’s pretty ballsy for a company to try to convince consumers that they need to use two different toothpastes, depending on time of day. Maybe they can come up with a mid-day toothpaste to mask the odor of a lunchtime martini.
  2. The Color of Night was such a bad movie that the New Yorker decided to review it as a comedy, instead of a thriller.

See the whole Lost in the Supermarket series

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