Names for Pharmaceutical Firms & Pharmaceutical Products
While every industry is unique and developing a targeted name can be challenging, the Pharmaceutical industry is particularly tough. Naming a pharmaceutical can be boiled down to this, the end user needs to trust your product. The end user isn’t going to ingest something they don’t believe will help them.
Building trust starts on first contact patients have with your pharma product, usually your name.
Names for a Pharmaceutical Company
Blog Update – Be sure to check out the bottom of this post for an interesting update by the Brandings team. We’ll be posting updated thoughts about this article, years after it was first written. Our team is revisiting naming a Pharmaceutical company and Pharmaceutical products!
Changes in legislation have significantly altered the marketing and advertising of pharmaceutical products. What was once a fairly stodgy and static industry has now become increasing dynamic. Henceforth, new emphasis on pharma name development has emerged.
Unlike consumer products, most pharmaceutical products typically have three names associated with them. These products first have their chemical name, next is their generic name and finally their brand name.
Let’s look at an example. Let’s use the US based brand of “Excedrin.” It first has the generic name “aspirin” then the chemical name “acetylsalicylic acid.”
One area where the pharma industry is finding significant opportunity is applying traditional brand development practice to pharmaceutical products. With direct-to-consumer targeting possibilities, pharmaceutical companies can establish significant brand equity and market share domination.
The process of developing chemical, generic names and ultimately a brand name for a pharmaceutical product is extremely complicated.
The process involves a multitude of agencies across multiple continents. A few of these include the United States Adopted Names Council which assigns a US Adopted Name (USAN), the International Non-proprietary Name Committee of the World Health Organization which assigns an International Non-proprietary Name (INN), the United States Food and Drug Administration and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Trademarking Pharmaceutical Products
Brandings strongly advises securing a patent and trademark attorney. You’ll need to insure you’re able to use your name within the industry. Specifically, choose an attorney who specializes in pharmaceutical products. This way they’re uniquely qualified to guide your firm through the labyrinth of applications and processes.
Our team will gladly help when it comes to selecting a brand name for a pharmaceutical product. When time comes to trademark, our research has found something interesting. The more distinctive and unique a pharmaceutical name is, the easier it is to protect it from use by others.
Not every name is equally unique. In fact, names can be categorized on a sliding scale of uniqueness with the most distinctive being invented names. This is followed by arbitrary names, evocative names, literal names and finally generic names that have no legal protection.
Types of Pharmaceutical Product Names:
- Invented names or “created” brand names, are the ones who were “brainstormed” by our etymologists and strategists. These names are unique, distinctive and highly brandable. Examples of “invented” names in the Brandings inventory include — Vygen, Septar, Huxy, Aplya, Vonetic, and Zoltus.
- Arbitrary names are existing words used for products different than one would expect. There’s no logical relationship between the goods for which the term is used. Examples of “arbitrary” names include “PeachTree” (for a computer software firm), “Virgin” (for an airline company) and “Apple” (for a computer company).
- Evocative brand names elicit or draw forth positive associations. In summary, evocative names are short, meaningful and call up good feelings. Examples of “evocative” names in the Brandings inventory include — BlueSurge, MegaBath, AlohaVibe, BlueberrySky, and MissClever.
- Literal names are fairly straight forward. Literal names follow the primary or strict meaning of the word yet are not figurative or metaphorical. Examples of literal names include — SupplyDepo, VetStores, CherryGlaze, RiverDubai, TryPeru, ContactsOnly, and FuneralAid.
- Generic brand names have no legal protection and cannot be registered or protected. A few examples of names which lost their protection are “Linoleum,” “zipper,” “escalator,” and “aspirin.” All these examples were once registered trademarks however are now generic names. This was cause by the failure of the firms to maintain distinctive brand identities.
- Brandings maintains an extensive inventory of pharmaceutical names. Some of these names include: AlertPain, Valoxin, Baxium, Flovian, Suplima, Proseum, Exalgia, BlastACold, UlcerPill, Ambyex, and Biozyn.
Available Names for a Pharmaceutical Company:
For a complete list of available pharmaceutical business names for sale at Brandings, just follow the link. Our team is here to assist any entrepreneur in securing a great name for their pharmaceutical product. The right name for your business, product or service is just a call or click away.
Update: Sometimes even we surprise ourselves. In rereading this article, we got chills. How our team that put this article together predicted the changes in the pharma industry, is amazing.
With time, and the huge changes that rocked the pharmaceutical industry are further behind us now, we can have a better perspective on the changes that happened. With this distance we can look back and see clearly just how this industry had changed. The biggest shift we can detect is the move to more “brandable” or created names.
Additionally, these created names all have positive connotations or evocation associated to them. While these names are almost all created, they have a medical sound to them. Topping it all off, these names evoke the outcome of use, conversely, they simply allude to the health benefit.
Thanks for checking out our updated Brandings Blog!
Lastly, should you have any comments on the shift in pharma product naming, please let us know. You’re always welcome to post your comments below.