Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Mylan and its CEO Heather Bresch are under fire. It raised the price of its EpiPen product — an essential protection for people with life threatening allergies — by a factor of five in the last eight years. Mylan’s statement defending itself clarifies what it’s doing — providing rebates — but evades the main issue of why it increased the price in the first place.

Here’s the dialogue between Mylan and the public, in a nutshell:

Public: Why is this thing so hellishly expensive?

Mylan: We’ll help you afford it with coupons and rebates.

Public: Why is this thing so hellishly expensive?

Mylan: We’re on your side. It’s the insurance regulations.

Public: Why is this thing so hellishly expensive???

RtMylan: We even give some away to schools!S

So Mylan’s position is that it won’t explain the massive price increase on a product where it has a monopoly on a generic medication product that millions of people could die without, a product that’s essentially unchanged from past years....

Back in 2004, media and TV personality Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in jail for obstructing a federal securities investigation.

To pass the time during her incarceration, Stewart did what she does best: cooking and crafts.

Speaking at a Daily Mail brunch session at the Cannes Lions advertising festival on Thursday, Stewart said the food inside was around three years past its expiry date.

"That's why I made jam out of the crab apples on the trees," she added.

Aside from making jam, Stewart also turned her hand to ceramics. As a child she'd go to ceramic classes at the weekend, so she quickly signed up to a ceramics class in prison too, at a place called Alderson....