What's Up With The Goofy Drug Names??

 Whenever one turns on the TV, one can't help but to see several of those drug commercials targeted at curing this or that health condition.

The commercials depict someone, usually a boomer, happily enjoying a hobby or engaging in a pleasant outdoor activity, whilst the ad narrator describes a long list of possible side effects (including death) that the drug could potentially cause.

What has struck me lately with these ads is their use of incredibly corny product names accompanied by equally corny 'logo' representations.

Being the nerd that I am, I began closely studying and analyzing this phenomenon.

I've noticed that the product names typically are three syllables consisting of four consonants and three vowels.  The words are consistently heavy with the letters 'Q', 'Z', 'X', and sometimes 'Y'.

The accompanying logos usually consist of some random geometric shape or color splash which no one would ever remember.

Then, I thought, who is responsible for coming up with this drivel?

Are there teams of corporate marketing people that actually get paid big bucks to sit around a big conference table and concoct the silliest words they can think of to describe their particular product?

Then it struck me....

Right out of the blue!

SCRABBLE !!

Of course, that's got to be it !

Here's my envisioned scenario:

The setting is a corporate marketing 'think-tank' meeting in which the coordinator (boss) announces to the team,

"OK, people, we have a new drug product to think up a name for."

He or she then pulls out a Scrabble board game.

With this version of Scrabble, no game board is required.  The only needed pieces are the letter tiles and the wooden racks.  The tiles are already sorted into baggies - one containing all of the set's consonants, and the other, the vowels.  Obviously, the team has been through this process before. 

The blank tile pieces are not used here, 'cuz that would be cheating.

Each team member is given a letter rack, after which the tiles in the two piles are turned face down and thoroughly mixed up.

Each participant is instructed to select four tiles from the consonant pile, and three from the vowel pile.

The resulting group of seven letters is what each individual has to work with.

It might be noted that anyone lucky enough to land one or more letters from the QXYZ subset is the most likely to be in the money. 

Now, it's just a matter of coming up with the best word they can from their individual rack of random letters.

The coordinator (boss) can then decide which of the names is 'the one',

Easy-Peasy.

So, this is one of the few things that any of us can try at home.  This morning I pulled out my Scrabble game set and recreated this scenario.  

Here are the two piles of tiles - consonants on the left, vowels to the right:

Here are the four racks of letters I then picked out from the piles:

Hmmm....the middle two appear to have the greatest potential as they include some of the 'golden' letters.

After spending several minutes on each rack sorting and arranging some 'words', these are the best that I feel I came up with:

All of them would qualify for use as a corny medicine name, but I think HOLARIQ is clearly the winner!

Now, what about the logo?

I'm not going to take the time to design one for HOLARIQ, even though I do have some graphic arts background. Instead, I will merely envision a few ways that they might accomplish this:

1.  A real graphic artist might be employed to come up with just the right squiggly lines and colors.  This shouldn't take but a few moments of his or her time.

2.  The task is given over to a computer which is equipped with a random font/color/squiggle generator. Just a couple simple keystrokes and it's done.

3.  One of the team members is assigned to climb the nearest local bell tower and hand off a drawing pad and some colored pencils to the hunchback that lives there.

Now that we have a product name and logo in hand, my burning question is the one that is encouraged on the advertisements:

"Ask your doctor if HOLARIQ is right for you."

Will any doctor know what HOLARIQ is or what it's supposed to treat?

Probably not, at least without consulting a cross-reference database of corny drug names.

So, there you have it - my theory on how these silly-sounding drug monikers are originated.

If there are any drug company marketing types out there reading this, you are quite welcome to use my concoction - HOLARIQ - for your next product name.

Be sure to let Quasi-Moto know you're on the way.

I would even accept royalties!

Cheers....