Many of you following Merck’s Vioxx lawsuits know the $253 million verdict against the company rendered by jurors in about an hour.
What I found most telling are these statements (Wall Street Journal Aug 22, 2005):
Interviews with jurors suggest that many tuned out Merck’s arguments and focused instead on evidence they understood: that a big corporation allegedly covered up defects with its product.
“Whenever Merck was up there, it was like wah, wah, wah,” said juror John Ostrom, imitating the sounds Charlie Brown’s teacher makes in the television cartoon. “We didn’t know what the heck they were talking about.
When the general population supposedly reads at a sixth grade level, they aren’t interested in understanding how cyclo-oxygenase-2 (which I hope they abbreviated to Cox-2 during the trial) inhibitors work; they want to know how this affects someone’s life or death and what the company did with the knowledge of potential safety concerns.
A basic lesson in communication is ensuring your message gets across to your audience in a manner that they can understand – not what you think they should understand – not how you assume you should present to look your best.
We are familiar with these communication lessons in both the corporate world and with how we interact with our customers. In a business transaction, it’s not about us – it’s about the employers, it’s about the customers – it’s about them. Corporate executives can’t care less how beautifully you write your reports, they want the one-page most-important bullet points that help them make the best decisions. Customers don’t want to hear you wax about your service/product features and benefits, they want to know how you can solve their problems.
I hope Merck learns from this very expensive lesson and rethink their presentations for future trials to come.