Absolutely, I think I now understand a bit of what you are saying. Brand positioning is a very difficult process in any market and most marketers do it poorly.

However, in the case of apabetalone, I think it would be far too limiting in terms of creating the right expectations in the medical and scientific communities because if you think like I do then you think of apabetalone as a breakthrough...a completely new approach to diseases and health. Branding a potential breakthrough in biotech is extremely difficult from a believability and credibility point of view because everyone has seen the failures. Failure is the norm in this business and hype over many years has undermined credibility. This lack of credibility is reinforced by current "doctor recommended" ads.

However, regarding the investment & medical communities I can see a statin "plus" strategy as having merit. Crestor (rosuvastatin) is a proven drug in the LDL area. Doctors tend to be very conservative and risk averse. The Crestor + apabetalone marketed as "Crestor plus" has merit in term of leveraging credibility with both the medical and investor communities. I assume the Crestor brand name could not be used. So it would have to be rosuvastatin + apabetalone unless AZ buys apabetalone or sells the Crestor brand to RVX.

Personally I see this strategy as too limiting AND YET once a drug gets in the doctor's door the doctor has the discretion to use it for other indications. So the implication of this would be to use the Crestor link to get in the door and then build the brand from there.

Just some thoughts. If BoM succeeds or if other trials build momentum I would rather see the apabetalone brand stand on it's own.

Toinv