Brandweek has a very thoughtful post today. He is now completely on Zubillaga's side, and pens the headline, "Worst PR Move of the Week: AZ Turns 'Bucket of Money' Incident Into a Full-Blown Fiasco."
And most voters on the PharmaGossip poll appear to agree with Jim at Brandweek. 237 votes so far, and they indicate that 57% think that Zubillaga was just motivating his troops or AZ tried to put out fire they started or he was just telling it as it is.
Of course, none of those options are palatable to AstraZeneca, which is just as hard at work to change the image of big pharma as any other big pharma company.
As for me, I agree that this doesn't look good for AstraZeneca, however, I also note that Mr. Zubillaga's reign has been filled with controversy, as exemplified by comments on AstraZeneca's message board and allegations of "code of conduct violations."
Also, we still don't know why AstraZeneca was in such a rush to suddenly fire him. At a minimum, me thinks there are more things going on in this affair, that none of us know about. And to AstraZeneca's and Edelman PR's credit, whatever they would have done, they would have been critizised. This is a no-win situation.
And what the real truth is we may never find out.
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