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by JK - Editor in ChiefPower in Language - in the news and behind the scenes
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28/09/2007
Just Launched: MyMixedMarriage.com Our sister site is now up and running. It features international communications and relationships. Visit it at MyMixedMarriage.com … Note to RSS Subscribers: Working to repair problem on EnglishMojo RSS feed. Your patience is appreciated.
EM 29 - Naming Drugs: Superstars
25/08/2007
Download Episode 29 - Naming Drugs: Lifestyle Superstars You can't fight human nature. Heroes who save us get our thanks, respect and veneration. But the true stars in our lives are more likely to be those who bring us pleasure and enhance our lifestyles. Theirs become the names we look for and remember. Drug makers haven't overlooked this fact. They now market a new kind of pharmaceutical - the lifestyle drug. This includes medicines developed to treat problems previously thought of as purely psychological or a common consequence of maturity. Such drugs have the potential to become blockbuster products. Naming these kinds of drugs raises a special question. Generally, asemantic, or never-before-used words or word fragments, stand a better chance of passing government approval. As we've seen, these names can be made to sound appealing, but convey no real meaning. However in the world of lifestyle drugs, spin doctors appeal directly to patients. How can they pass the inspectors while satisfying their pharma clients demands for attracting customers? They've mastered the knack of creating relational names. These connect in some way back to the condition being treated. Often the name suggests an image of the desired result. Because deep-pocket public-awareness campaigns will promote these names, they've got to be durable enough to stand up outside doctors' offices, something not generally demanded of their asemantic counterparts. [Thanks for taking this story from EnglishMojo.com] Where do you find them? If the medications are those prescribed for the dreaded men's malady, erectile dysfunction, you could see their labels sponsoring superstars in the sports world. One name climbed on the shoulders of Major League Baseball. Another rode the carts of the Professional Golf Association Tour. Yet another huddled with the National Football League. Their emblems appear at yacht and car racing events. Clever naming and brand positioning has taken treatment of an embarrassing male condition and turned it into a superstar activity. By inventing and associating the names with youthful masculinity, speed, and power, the focus on a problem has been shifted to celebration of an aspiration. Two of these male lifestyle drugs bear a look. To many, Viagra suggests the endurance and force of Niagara Falls. It's competitor Levitra combines the root for life, the appealing idea of levitation or rising and the phonic rhythm of the word, libido. With heavy advertising backing them, these names sell not only the drug, but also introduced a new condition into the vernacular. You couldn't ask for a better way of feeding the spiral of awareness, hope, social acceptance, purchase. [Take a look at the other free stories, audios, videos and subscriptions at EnglishMojo.com.] Lifestyle enhancement of this type sells well around the world. But in the age of the global competition, can one name be the brand of choice for a whole world? Apparently not. In the huge anything-goes market of India more than one drug company has copied these prized pharmaceuticals. And to sell them, new names have been developed. In India the male performance enhancer goes by the handle of Silagra. For Latin America the name Tarzia was considered, but Eviva ultimately prevailed. In the Middle East, it became plain and simple Erecto. Before we depart the drug-addled world of name-smithing, here are the answers to the question raised in EM 28, Which are the real, and which the fictional drug names. Norvasc & Novril: The real drug is Norvasc, a treatment for hypertension and chest pain. Novril is a highly-addictive Steven King analgesic. Qualex & Seroquel: The real drug is Seroquel, an antipsychotic medication for schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. Qualex is a MadTV housewife tranquilizer. Klonopin & Retinax: The real drug is Klonopin, used for treating seizures and panic disorder. Retinax is a Star Trek cure for far sigh...
22/08/2007
According to Rudyard Kipling, “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” To find out about disappearing words & phrases, listen to applied linguist Ruth Wajnryb on Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Lingua Franca.
EM 28 - Naming Drugs: New Words
18/08/2007
Download Episode 28 - Naming Drugs: New Words In each of these pairs of drug names one is actual, one is fictional. Can you tell which is which? Fans of Stephen King, MadTV and Star Trek will have an advantage. The choices: Norvasc & Novril; Qualex & Seroquel; Klonopin & Retinax; and Tretonin & Diazepam. In the third and final part of this series, Lifestyle Superstars, we'll share the answers. Nothing short of wild success will satisfy today's prescription drug marketers. That's why pharmaceutical makers - surpassing even new parents' efforts at naming a baby - lay out between $250,000 to $2.5 million for developing just one name of each new trademarked drug. With these high stakes, imagine the intense pressures on wordsmiths toiling behind the scenes. Drug names after all stand a one-in-three chance of government rejection. So the name-makers then often prepare a whole batch of new names to offer. As the name-making process proceeds, marketing researchers turn to hundreds of paid volunteers for reactions. Graphologists, too, analyze mock prescriptions for possible confusions. And clinicians and patients rate the names for impressions. [Thanks for taking this story from EnglishMojo.com] Developers take several approaches. They can, for instance, invent names that conjure up experiences of the target market. This approach results in names like Wellburtrin or Celebrex. They can also try to evoke memories, stories and other types of association, and produce names such as Soma or Viagra. Sometimes the name harks back to the drug's function, as in the case of Lipitor. And then they have the usual linguistic bag of tricks. Do you want speed? Use fricatives like F, S, X or Z. These sound fast, as in Xanax or Zocor. Want power? Put in plosive letters like P, T or D, as in Tramadol or Paxil. Offering a lifestyle enhancer? Softness might work best by using C, S or L, as in Lunesta or Celebrex. Name-makers sometimes make choices by transposing letters from another word into anagrams, and sometimes they conjure up palindromes so that the name spells the same forwards and backwards, as in Xanax. And you might notice that many pharmaceuticals either use the action-suggestive verb-common letter R, or contain a verb-sounding element inside themselves. [Take a look at the other free stories, audios, videos and subscriptions at EnglishMojo.com.] Some of the latest names to be approved show signs of all these tactics: - Exelon Patch - Exforge - Nuvigil - Xyzal - Soliris - and a personal favorite, Perforomist In the world of pharmaceuticals, name-makers seldom take their eyes offtheir prize, the target market. Commercial messages direct to consumers on television appear more often for medicines than for new cars in the US. So as rigorously guarded as brands of big pharma product names are, the drugs themselves will sometimes be repackaged under entirely new names when new market segments are discovered. The drug has essentially had its personality split. Such is the case with the pharmaceutical, Fluoxetine. As the famous anti-depressant Prozac, its white and green pills offered strength and speed. But when a different market was identified - women with severe premenstrual problems - the drug underwent a sex change to appear in a softer second form as pink and lavender pills known as Sarafem. This leads us toward a new type of name for a new type of drug. Emerging lifestyle drugs and their monikers are designed to address desires rather than medical necessities. They may even be positioned with other brands and activities far outside the pharmaceutical world. If the lifesaving drugs are the superheroes, the lifestyle drugs are the superstars. In the upcoming Naming Drugs: Lifestyle Superstars, we'll look at some of these new drug superstars, and the ways one of the most famous is spreading around the world.
EM 27 - Naming Drugs: Superheroes
09/08/2007
Download Episode 27 - Naming Drugs: The Superheroes Recognize characters in the following short scene? Paxil faced Crestor saying, "Xanax of Lipitor seeks the Neurontin." Hearing this, Zoloft rose from Levitra, dropped his Lyrica and crossed the Cialis to heave an Effexor into Zocor. The Celebrex cheered, "All hail Voltaren". Names like these suggest superheroes and other larger than life figures. But you may have already guessed that these names belong to popular pills and medications. Creating drug names that imply strength, power, speed and youth has become a big challenge and a big business this decade. How big, we'll see in this series. What happens when pharmaceutical companies coin a new medicine's moniker? How do they create the names of their bestsellers? What obstacles stand in the way of a new name? Actual naming begins two to three years before the pharmaceutical comes to market. At this early stage drug marketers naturally seek names on their products powerful and unique enough to attract both doctors and patients, names that say, "improved quality of life". To secure these their name-makers must get past governmental checkpoints. Many times this is possible only by subtlety and indirection. [Thanks for taking this story from EnglishMojo.com] All of the 9,000 generic and 33,000 trademarked US medications, from Aciphex to Zyrtec-D, run the same gauntlet on their way to launch. Every drug that comes to market will carry three names. First comes the chemical name, a scientific designation based on the compound. Next appears a generic name that's used throughout the life of the drug. And lastly comes the trade name that's marketed by the drug manufacturer. These last are the ones we know the best, because their makers promote them heavily during 17 years of exclusive rights. The first hurdle for the next Viagra or Lipitor is securing that generic name. For with it comes permission to test on animals. The group that assigns generic drug names, the U.S. Adopted Names Council, insists that each name have only one pronunciation and no more than four syllables. To try for approval a drug maker can submit up to three candidate names at a time. The name can neither suggest a cure nor a specific part of the body. And it must distinguish itself from other generic or trade drugs on the market. Does any name stand a chance? Not always. Sometimes the Names Council will impose a spelling moratorium, as it did on the letters X and Z as first letters because they sound so much alike. After generic approval stands the obstacle of getting a trade name. This is the money-maker, and drug marketers will try to invent one that's easy to remember. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as well as the Patent and Trademark Office have final say in what goes on the market. Essentially the FDA prohibits names that promise a drug will be effective. Here's where contracted branding consultants earn their living, trying to make just the right name to fit their pharmaceutical clients' marketing ambitions into the government restrictions. [Take a look at the other free stories, audios, videos and subscriptions at EnglishMojo.com.] This name generation is no trivial task, as every year the FDA rejects a third of hundreds proposed. The agency sets up screenings of names in which health-care professionals look for problems that might arise by examining written and verbal orders. Even variations in regional pronunciations come under scrutiny. These strictures often lead to a bending of the original name choice. The now famous hair-regrowth drug would initially have been christened Regain. But as this reportedly too much resembled a guarantee, its ultimate choice became Rogain. Millions of dollars, hundreds of possibilities, and the world's most bizarre spellings. It's from these elements that name-makers generate powerhouse trademarks for the biggest-selling drugs. In Naming Drugs: New Words, we'l
