Earlier this week, Bristol-Myers Squibb signaled its continued focus on becoming the world’s most successful specialty pharmaceutical company, and a global oncology leader when it announced the acquisition of Flexus Biosciences for up to $1.25 billion, along with a $339 million research agreement with Rigel Pharmaceuticals.
So far this year there has been a lot in the news about M&A activity within the pharmaceutical industry, and lately the coverage seems to be about what’s happening with mid-tier companies, or specialty pharmaceutical companies. These companies are by no means small, but they aren’t on the same level as the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies. And they tend to be focused in markets where they have particular strengths.
In my work with global pharmaceutical, diagnostics and medical device companies, I am often called upon to help clients struggling to develop their strategic positioning. Sometimes my clients have a well defined, systematic and robust approach to developing their positioning and building their plans, and they just need help going through the process. But sometimes, more often with smaller organizations and start-ups, they don’t. Sometimes companies really need help creating the process first, and then going through that process to develop their plan.
Source: Buzzfeed
Today there was news about a viral video of president Obama on Buzzfeed. The video is very funny, and the message is about enrolling in a healthcare plan.
This blog has nothing to do with politics. Whether you support our current president our not is entirely your business. We are very interested in corporate storytelling and content marketing however, and this video is an excellent example of the power of humor in storytelling. As the leader of a country or an organization, having a sense of humor about yourself, even being able to use self deprecating humor in the right way, can be an extremely effective tool in marketing. And let’s not be naive. Our presidents have always needed to be very good at selling their ideas and programs to the American people. In other words, they’ve always needed to be good marketers and storytellers.
Recently there has been a lot of news about Precision Medicine, from president Obama’s announcement of a national Precision Medicine Initiative during his State of the Union address on January 30th, to the more recent announcement from the United Kingdom’s government innovation agency that it was launching a Precision Medicine Catapult (pun intended)–an initiative designed to accelerate the development of precision medicine and make the UK the ideal place to develop and launch precision medicine technologies.
Today’s news about Pfizer’s $17 billion deal to acquire Hospira, a leading generic injectibles and biosimilars company, shows some of the tectonic shifts taking place in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. This is a big deal for a number of reasons. It demonstrates where some of the biggest growth opportunities are for pharmaceutical companies; hospital products, injectibles and biosimilars, which are generic copies of biological therapies. With an estimated $100 billion in biotech drugs losing patent protection in the next five to ten years, biosimilars represent a huge opportunity for pharma.