Chiat\Day was the agency that Apple had used. Therefore, Theranos would too.
Patrick (Chiat\Day) was enamored by Elizabeth’s mission. The website models featured all demographics. Elizabeth scheduled Wednesday meetings because that’s how Apple did it.
Stan Fiorito (Chiat\Day) was more circumspect. Sunny’s sales targets had measly research. How were they affording $6m/year retainer?
Elizabeth claimed Theranos was saving soldiers' lives in Afghanistan. She wanted bold claims:
- 800 tests on a drop of blood
- More accurate than traditional lab testing
- Tests ready in < 30min
- Tests approved by the FDA and endorsed by key medical centers.
Theranos: 93% of lab mistakes are due to human error. Automating the testing process thus makes us more accurate than other labs.
Elizabeth didn’t even ship a device to Johns Hopkins Hospital as per the 2010 meeting.
The time was watered down to “4 hours or less”
Theranos was still using traditional venous draws for some tests.
On the evening before the launch, the legal team had ordered last-minute changes: “Welcome to a revolution in lab testing” -> “Welcome to Theranos” “Faster results. Faster answers.” -> “Fast results. Fast answers.” “A tiny drop is all it takes” -> “A few drops is all it takes” “Goodbye, big bad needle” -> “Instead of a huge needle, we can use a tiny finger stick or collect a micro-sample from a venous draw”
“At Theranos, we can perform all of our lab tests on a sample 1/1000 the size of a typical blood draw” -> Remove ‘all of’ Under “Unrivaled accuracy”, the 93% statistic claiming that accuracy supremacy was gone.