I apologize if some of my columns over the years have seemed a bit negative or critical.  As a publication, we started up at a time when thought leaders pointed out the seemingly limitless potential to improve and modernize manufacturing.  

Takeda's Rozerem ads needed a drastic rewrite.  One of the company's top U.S. ads uses a beaver and Lincoln as images, but a previous ad used images of school kids, blackboards and a school bus.  Although the ads clearly targeted worried and overworked parents in need of a good night's sleep,  they indirectly appeared to suggest that the drug could also be used to treat children.

That ad earned the Japanese pharma company's U.S. division "first place" in consumer abuse, at an international congress of consumer groups which is meeting in Sydney.

Also cited were Coca-Cola for rebottling some U.K. tap water as Dasani , Kellogg's for its sugary kids' cereals, and Mattel for failing to discover, in time, that many of its toys were defective and contained high levels of lead.  For more information, click here.

Perhaps Takeda's own inhouse marketing department at HQ in Japan could have devised a simpler, more direct sell.  For an example from the 1990s, for an energy drink, click here.

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Back in the old "Kindergarten Cop" days, before his political life began, Arnold Schwarzenegger made an unusual cameo appearance in this short ad. 

Fifteen years later, Takeda has a strong connection to Gov. Schwarzenegger's state,  with a drug discovery center of excellence in San Diego, and a partnership with California-based Affymax, which has just begun dosing  on Phase III trials of a new anemia drug, Hematide, designed to treat patients with chronic kidney failure.  For more, read on.

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The drug, in Phase III testing in the U.S., would have treated diabetes while lowering blood pressure. It combined Takeda's diabetes treatment, Actos, with an angiotensin receptor blocker.  The company reportedly found it difficult to combine the two drugs.  Takeda spokesman Seizo Masuda told Reuters that termination of the product's development has no connection to the development of  the DPP-4 inhibitor, SYR-322, which is now in Phase III and is said to lower blood sugar without promoting weight gain. 

A brief report from Reuters here.

Since GSK's Avandia's potential risks became news, Takeda's stock value has increased, media report.(Actos has not thus far been shown to pose cardiovascular risks.) However, the drug may promote osteoporosis in some patients (brief previous news item here)