J&J laying off 400 in marketing overhaul

With Procrit under siege, Johnson & Johnson wants to divert its promotional efforts elsewhere--a strategy that will lead to some 400 job cuts in its sales-and-marketing ranks. The company told employees it would consolidate sales-and-marketing operations of Ortho Biotech and Centocor and shave the payroll accordingly.

With Procrit sales sinking ever since the FDA put new safety warnings on its class of anemia drugs, J&J wants to "free up resources that can be redeployed to opportunities that will make the greatest difference to patients and to our own future success as a business." Translation: Heavily marketing Procrit won't help that drug [1], so why not concentrate sales efforts somewhere we can see some ROI?

- read the Star-Ledger article [2]

Related Articles:
Johnson & Johnson - Top 8 layoffs of 2007 [3]
Ranks of sales reps thinning [4]
U.S. R&D headcount tumbles in key categories [5]