Ask Your Doctor About

ROMAN MARS: This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars. 

SEAN COLE: Roman, what prescription drugs do you take? 

ROMAN MARS: Well, I– I don’t–

SEAN COLE: Do you take Journavx? 

ROMAN MARS: This is Sean Cole, everybody. He’s an old friend of mine–a friend of the show. 

SEAN COLE: Or Exdensur? Do you take Exdensur? 

ROMAN MARS: I don’t think I want to discuss, you know, like–

SEAN COLE: Or Xiaflex? 

ROMAN MARS: What is going on? 

SEAN COLE: Ask your doctor. 

XTENVI AD: Ask your doctor about Xtenvi… 

NEXPLANON AD: Ask your doctor about Nexplanon… 

RAPATHA AD: Ask about Rapatha… 

NUCALA AD: Ask about Nucala… 

CAPLYTA AD: Ask your doctor about Caplyta. [SINGING] Help see more of the light inside of me… 

ROMAN MARS: Okay, Sean. Why are we talking about this? 

SEAN COLE: So the reason I’m sitting here with you today can pretty much be boiled down to the Seinfeldian question, what is the deal with pharmaceutical brand names? It’s like watching TV in the middle of the day can make you feel like you’ve had a partial stroke that’s scrambled half the words on the screen, which is ironic considering that that’s probably what some of the drugs they’re advertising are supposed to prevent. 

EBGLYSS AD: Once monthly Ebglyss is a treatment that can be used with or without topicals… 

DUPIXENT AD: Dupixent can help you stay ahead of eczema… 

INGREZZA AD: Ingrezza… 

BIMZELEX AD: Bimzelex… 

COBENFY AD: Cobenfy… 

PRISTIQ AD: Pristiq…

CAPLYTA AD: Caplyta… 

CAPVAXIVE AD: Capvaxive…

CABENUVA AD: Cabenuva…

JARDIANCE AD: Jardiance…

KENAN THOMPSON: Maybe we don’t need a bill for everything… 

SEAN COLE: You can say that again, Kenan Thompson. 

KENAN THOMPSON: But for managing weight, there’s Wegovy, the first and only… 

SEAN COLE: It’s funny that Kenan did a real pharmaceutical ad, given that he was also in this Saturday Night Live sketch about a fake hormone supplement for women. 

MOLLY SHANNON: [SINGING] There’s a new drug for gals over 40–

KENAN THOMPSON: [SINGING] It’s called Vajay-jay! 

MOLLY SHANNON: I think it’s Vagerted. 

KENAN THOMPSON: Whatever, just dance…

SEAN COLE: So we all laugh about these drugs, but the question becomes, why do they all sound like Star Trek villains? Is that by design? Is it necessary for some reason? Is it simply wrongheaded on the part of the marketers? 

ROMAN MARS: I mean, those are a lot of questions. But do you have some answers for those questions? 

SEAN COLE: Yes. I got to the bottom of it. And I’ll just say underneath the noisiness of the names is not just a logic that you’d never guess is in operation. In a lot of cases, there’s–I know how this is going to sound–an actual poetry going on that I never imagined and that I now want everybody else to be thinking about the next time they see one of those ads. 

ROMAN MARS: That’s a big claim when you’re talking about brand names of drugs. 

SEAN COLE: Okay. But just hear me out. We’ll see what you think at the end. But just to start at the beginning… 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Hello. 

SEAN COLE: Scott? 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Yes, Sean. 

SEAN COLE: Hi, how are you? 

SEAN COLE: This is Scott Piergrossi, who is in practically every article you read about pharmaceutical brand names. And there’s a reason for that. He’s the head of creative at the Brand Institute, which is kind of a clearinghouse. They helped name more than 75% of the new drugs on the market in a given year. 

ROMAN MARS: 75%? One company? 

SEAN COLE: Yep, at least according to them. 75% percent of both brand names and generic names too, which are even longer and wilder sounding, as you know. They have a separate department for generics, or non-proprietary. They get upset when you say “generics.” Non-proprietary names. But we are focusing on the brand names–the Brand Institute names. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Can I also respectfully correct you and say it’s just Brand Institute? 

SEAN COLE: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, yes. “Lose the ‘the.’ It’s cleaner.”

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: That’s right. That’s right. 

SEAN COLE: Scott’s been at Brand Institute for more than 20 years. And I just asked him to, you know, take me through the process from the beginning. Like, where do they even start naming a drug? 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Have you ever seen the movie Brain Candy? 

SEAN COLE: No. Should I? 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: You should see it, absolutely. This is a Kids in the Hall movie. 

SEAN COLE: That’s Kids in the Hall, the sketch comedy troupe from Canada. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: And Brain Candy was about a new antidepressant drug that came to market. But they have a scene where the marketing guy comes into the boardroom and he tells the story of how he thought of the name. 

CISCO: I was driving around last night in my $62,000 car. And I’m trying to think up a name for the drug. And suddenly it hit me. 

DON RORITOR: The name? 

CISCO: No, a bird. It hit my windshield. When that happened, I got depressed. 

NATALIE: Not you, Cisco. 

CISCO: Yeah, even me. But as soon as I got depressed, I got undepressed, because as I was cleaning the gleaming guts of that bird off my windshield, I thought of the name for the drug…

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: And he says… 

CISCO: Gleemonex! 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: And everyone does, like, a slow applause. And it’s the opposite of how it actually works. 

SEAN COLE: How it actually works is much more rigorous and time consuming. They meet with the client–be it Pfizer or Amgen or whomever–kind of get a sense as to what they’re thinking. And from there, Brand Institute assigns a small team to come up with an initial list of, like, three to 500 ideas on their own. 

ROMAN MARS: 500 names! That’s a lot of brainstorming for names that will not get used. It’s amazing. 

SEAN COLE: It is. And at that point, the job is pretty much just figuring out which ones are actually viable and good enough to test out with the client. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: It’s funny because clients will say, “Just give me an easy to pronounce name and we’ll call this a win. “And then we present a slide, let’s say, of 25. And we’ll be lucky if we get to retain two of them. And they are all solely easy to pronounce. And the client’s just like, “Meh. I just don’t like it.” And I’m like, “But that’s what you asked for. Just remember that. That’s what you asked for.”

SEAN COLE: Why don’t they like those ones? What is it when they say “nah?” 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: They can’t see it. They can’t see it as the product. It doesn’t fit. 

ROMAN MARS: And how are they generating these ideas in the first place? When they’re coming up with all these ideas, where are the ideas coming? 

SEAN COLE: Well, historically how it worked was everybody was just sort of foraging omnivorously anywhere and everywhere for different combinations of words and letters: magazines, foreign language, dictionaries… Another company I read about–so not Brand Institute but a competitor–they sometimes leaf through cowboy dictionaries and surfer dictionaries. 

ROMAN MARS: What’s a cowboy dictionary? 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: I looked it up. There’s one from 1968 called Western Words, by Ramon F. Adams. “A little hoss is soon curried.”

ROMAN MARS: [LAUGHING] I’ll take your word for it. 

SEAN COLE: Brand Institute has also started using an AI platform called Brandy–cute–that’s just helping out with the initial phase of the process. Scott says a lot of the work is still done by humans. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: You might explore types of names like palindromes or anagrams. One of the more helpful exercises we do is we try to get the client to state–like, if it’s on the cover of Time Magazine, for example–what would the headline say. And then we actually might even try to mold that expression into a name. 

SEAN COLE: Hang on, so you would try to take that sentence–

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Yeah. So let’s say a drug alters your course in life… “Altacourse.”

SEAN COLE: I want a drug that does that, by the way. If I could take Altacourse? Boy oh boy… 

SEAN COLE: Or they could look at the drug and say, “Okay. What is the hopeful outcome of taking this thing?” and then explore that from a bunch of different angles. So, for example, sleep aids… They could say, “Okay, this is a drug that helps you stay asleep through the night,” or “This a drug that leaves you feeling refreshed in the morning.” Same section of the drug store–two different ways of looking at it. So, for example, there’s Lunesta, a drug that Scott’s company named. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: The reason Lunesta works is because of the lunar imagery. The suffix, “esta,” has an inference of restorative sleep. 

SEAN COLE: As in “siesta.”

ROMAN MARS: Ah, okay. Very cool. 

SEAN COLE: See what they’re doing there? 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: But really the lunar is what anchored it. So nighttime sleep. Within the category, you have Ambien. What is Ambien? It’s “A.M. bien.” “Good morning.” So that’s the good morning. Then you have newer products like Belsomra. That’s a beautiful night’s sleep with Belsomra. “Belle.” “Som.” “Somnus,” which is “sleep” in Latin. 

SEAN COLE: Then there’s other sources of little name building blocks. They might grab a few letters from the generic name of the drug or the active ingredient. For example, bupropion hydrochloride–that’s the active ingredient in the antidepressant Wellbutrin. And then sometimes the name is derived from the science of how the drug works. A lot of cancer drugs are like that, Scott says, because the audience is really more the doctor than the patient in those cases. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: So oftentimes we want to highlight what’s unique about that product from a scientific standpoint because that’ll resonate with oncologists. And about half of new cancer therapies are derived from the mechanism of action, so the science behind the drug. 

SEAN COLE: That is what the drug is actually doing and to what part of you. So there’s this one drug called Imdelltra. It’s I-M-D-E-L-L T-R-A. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Imdelltra is a DLL3 immunotherapy. 

ROMAN MARS: [CHUCKLING] Well, of course. 

SEAN COLE: I mean, everybody knows about that. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: So the double L’s and the “tra” suggesting three is so intentional to represent the mechanism of action of the product quite elegantly.

SEAN COLE: And if Scott Piergrossi sounds ever so slightly defensive about the name Imdelltra it’s because another drug namer I talked to did not agree with him! 

ARLENE TECK: It satisfies a meaning, but look how it looks. And that doesn’t really look that good. Imdelltra. It’s hard even to say. 

ROMAN MARS: Okay, so who’s this? 

ARLENE TECK: I am Arlene Teck. I have worked in brand naming for 30+ years, most of those, naming pharmaceuticals. 

SEAN COLE: Arlene is kind of a legend in pharmaceutical branding. And once I learned a little bit about her and her background, I couldn’t not reach out to her to get her perspective on how prescription drugs get their names. 

ROMAN MARS: And does she sort of predate the Brand Institute style of naming? 

SEAN COLE: Yeah, she’s like an OG. And unlike Brand Institute, with its teams of 15 people or whatever, the places Arlene’s worked, people tend to tackle projects on their own. And just to give you another picture of how drug names are invented, there’s this one drug she was assigned back in 1992 that was for benign prostatic hyperplasia, enlarged prostate basically, which makes it difficult to pee. In trying to figure out what to name this drug, Arlene ran a focus group with a bunch of urologists. And this one doctor in particular said something that stuck with her. 

ARLENE TECK: It was at the end of the group and I asked the doctor what it was like when the drug worked and the guy got well and the doctor said, “Visualize a strong stream.”

SEAN COLE: A strong stream of urine. 

ARLENE TECK: Yeah. So when I was home and I was writing the notes up, I thought to myself, “Well, a strong stream, that would be vigorous.” And the first thing I could think of that was a stream like that was Niagara.”

ROMAN MARS: No… 

SEAN COLE: Yes. 

ARLENE TECK: So I put “vigorous” plus “Niagara” equals “Viagra.”

ROMAN MARS: Oh my god! 

SEAN COLE: I know. I met the woman who named Viagra. She gave me her pen. I’m going to keep it forever and ever. 

ROMAN MARS: But wait a second, Viagra is for erectile dysfunction, not, like, the enlarged prostate that makes it hard for you to pee. So what is that about? 

SEAN COLE: It is. And this is where this naming business gets even more complicated. Super interesting trick of the industry, just to digress here for a second… So, Arlene came up with the name Viagra for this drug to treat prostate enlargement. But for a lot of complicated reasons, they didn’t end up using the name Viagra for that benign prosthetic hyperplasia drug. And as far as Arlene knows, they just held on to the name. It’s true that companies can bank names in certain circumstances and use them later when a better fit comes along. And around that same time, Pfizer was testing a completely different drug, which had nothing to do with the prostate. That drug was supposed to treat angina, which is chest pain due to a heart condition. 

ARLENE TECK: The test was very successful. Everybody was complying with it, and some of the guys came back and asked for more. 

SEAN COLE: Because, while it didn’t work very well for angina, it did have this crazy side effect. I think the medical term for it is “lumpy trousers.”

ARLENE TECK: And so they thought, “Well, that would be a much better way to sell this drug if it did that.” And they tried to do the whole thing right. They tried to have a focus group. 

SEAN COLE: A focus group to name their new miracle erection drug. 

ARLENE TECK: And the names that came up just weren’t that good. They were either too overtly sexual… And then some of the names were just not male enough. 

SEAN COLE: If you want to sell a drug to treat ED, it should have a pretty masculine name. And they just so happened to have the one that Arlene thought up stored away. So they went with that. 

SEAN COLE: So how does it feel to have named Viagra? 

ARLENE TECK: Different. 

SEAN COLE: Different than having not named Viagra?

ARLENE TECK: Well, as my husband always used to say, “I’m married to the Viagra woman.”

SEAN COLE: That could mean a lot of things. 

ARLENE TECK: Yes, it could. Well, I have also told people that I have a one word résumé.

ROMAN MARS: You know, what’s funny about that story is that it really is a lot more like that scene in the Kids in the Hall movie where the guy comes out with Gleemonex. I mean, she was just trying to think of a name for a drug and then this thing happened and it made her think of another thing and it led her to the name Viagra. 

SEAN COLE: It really is much more like that, yeah. 

ROMAN MARS: So why can’t all drugs have that same approachability? Vagra is a very approachable name. Lunesta is an approachable name. But why aren’t they still? Like, when you started, you started naming all these things like Skrillex or something, you know? 

SEAN COLE: Skrillex is a DJ. 

ROMAN MARS: Oh, okay. 

SEAN COLE: I think you mean Skyrizi. 

ROMAN MARS: Okay, Skyrizi and, you know, Wegovy. Whatever. Like, how do we get to there? 

SEAN COLE: Okay, so just to start back in time a bit, even farther back from when Arlene named Viagra… 

So, “the big bang of pharmaceutical naming,” as Scott Piergrossi calls it, comes in 1988 with the introduction of Prozac. That was the first real blockbuster name. It’s short–punchy–and it was all about marketing, as opposed to even indicating what the drug did. It was what they now call a blank canvas or empty vessel type name. Obviously, it caught the public attention and became a household word. The guy who named it, David Wood, is now in the medical advertising hall of fame. 

ROMAN MARS: There’s actually a medical advertising hall of fame?

SEAN COLE: Of course there’s a medical advertising hall of fame. David Wood died in 2007. And Arlene was really a protégé of his. She worked really closely with him.

ARLENE TECK: Basically, I think he was trying to do a name that was semi-abstract. Everybody knew that the word “pro” meant something positive, you were for something. And the “zac” was simply a syllable that woke people up. 

SEAN COLE: It’s like “zap,” “zang,” “zip!”

ARLENE TECK: Well, the K sound on the end, “zac,” had a sharpness to it. You know, a sharp sound might indicate something that was more targeted. 

SEAN COLE: So that year, 1988, only 17 drugs were approved by the FDA for therapeutic use, so 17 prescription drugs that needed brand names. And that number has just trended upward over the years. So last year, almost 50 new drugs hit the market. Number of letters in the alphabet? Still 26. 

ROMAN MARS: And, like, why are there so many more drugs being approved now? 

SEAN COLE: Just sheer growth in the industry, for one thing, more and more drugs being developed, especially with cancer. There’s a big push on that front. And then a few other reasons that–believe me–are too wonky even for this show…

ROMAN MARS: I’m going to try not to take that personally. 

SEAN COLE: Please don’t. Meanwhile, the Scotts and the Arlenes of the world are trying to accomplish something that, in this climate, just gets harder and harder. I mean, in every case, they want to come up with something totally new if they can manage it. A singularly unique name is the goal. Why? Trademarkability for one thing, and just plain marketability. They want the product to stand out. But the main factor driving this ceaseless crusade for nominal innovation, Roman, is the FDA. 

ROMAN MARS: Huh. And so why does the FDA do this? Like, what are the rules? 

SEAN COLE: So, two big things to focus on here. Number one, what a drug seems to be promising. The FDA doesn’t want a name to sound like, “Oh, this is some miracle drug.” So, no big claims in the name. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: I’m sure you’re familiar with Flomax. 

SEAN COLE: Sure. I don’t remember what it does. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Flomax is for BPH. 

SEAN COLE: That is benign prostatic hyperplasia, that same enlarged prostate condition that was the very first inspiration for the name Viagra. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: So maximum flow. 

SEAN COLE: Got it. Flow max!

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Simple, right? Simple. So that name was approved in the late ’90s, I believe. And that name is an example of one that probably today would be more challenged because… And this is me speculating. I have no data to say this. But based on the guidance, what is maximum flow, right? What is that? 

SEAN COLE: I know how to determine maximum flow. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Go ahead. 

SEAN COLE: Pissing contest. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Oh, geez. 

SEAN COLE: Sorry. 

SEAN COLE: Anyway, that’s why Scott, when he talks about these drugs, is pretty circumspect. He’ll name a drug and then be like, “It comes from this, I mean, if you were potentially able to extrapolate that connotation because nobody wants to come right out and say, ‘Take Youlldefinitelysleepthroughthenightanol! It’s on sale.” They want some plausible deniability. Another thing the FDA very much wants to avoid is christening a new drug with a name that sounds or even looks too much like a drug that’s already out there, which is a big deal in terms of our actual physical safety. Medication errors kill people, and sometimes it’s because of that look-alike, sound-alike problem. And there’s this sort of poster case that people point to regarding that kind of mix-up. 

ARLENE TECK: There were two drugs. One was called “Lasix,” L-A-S-I-X, which I believe was a diuretic. And the other one was called “Losec,” L-O-S-E-C, which helped people with ulcers and different types of heartburn. 

SEAN COLE: In short, this one patient was admitted to the hospital. This was, like, the late ’80s, early ’90s. They had a lot of health issues, including an ulcer for which the doctor prescribed Losec. But the attending nurse gave her Lasix, and the patient ultimately died. So, the FDA got involved and said, “You gotta change one of these names.” And somehow it was decided that Losec would be the one to change. 

ARLENE TECK: So Losec came to David Wood and said, “We need this help.” And David Wood realized that there was already a lot of investment in the name Losec. Doctors all knew it. And if there was too much change going on, doctors wouldn’t recognize it and might not prescribe it. The company would lose sales. So what he did was he left Losec the same and added a three-letter prefix. It became “Prilosec.”

ROMAN MARS: Oh! 

SEAN COLE: You’ve heard of Prilosec? 

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. Yeah. 

SEAN COLE: It’s a better name, I think. 

ROMAN MARS: Yeah, I think so too, yeah. Prilosec works. I remember it. And I don’t remember a lot of drug names. 

SEAN COLE: Yeah. Problem being that then Prilosec started to become confused with Prozac. 

ROMAN MARS: Oh. [CHUCKLING] Maybe it’s why I like it, because it sounds like a Prozac.

SEAN COLE: [LAUGHS] Right. Also to point out, with the Lasix and Losec example, the doctor had written a prescription by hand, so it was a visual mix-up, which namers try to avoid by honing in on the physical shape of the name. 

ARLENE TECK: It has to have ascending and descending letters. If it doesn’t have that, it doesn’ t get approved. 

SEAN COLE: It has to have ascending and descending letters? 

ARLENE TECK: Because other than that, the silhouette of the name would be flat. 

ROMAN MARS: Describe this, the silhouette of a name. 

SEAN COLE: So if you picture, like, a city skyline reflected in a river, you can think of that’s what the name looks like, right? There’s skyscrapers and little low warehouses. And these are all built out of lowercase letters. 

ARLENE TECK: And you have letters that stick up… 

SEAN COLE: Like L, T, and H. 

ARLENE TECK: Letters that stick down… 

SEAN COLE: Like P, Q, and G. 

ARLENE TECK: And letters that are flat, you know, like A, E, S, and all that sort of thing. And if that silhouette was just a flat thing like that, that’s easily confused. There are too many other flat things like that. So you have to have, you know– The silhouette would have something that goes up some place, something that goes down some place… You know, and then you get a different perceptual silhouette. 

SEAN COLE: Now, strictly speaking, there are names that get through without sticky up, sticky down letters. But it is true that variation helps a lot in terms of approval, which when you think about it, is another huge reason why the names are so kooky. If you want a “kuh” sound, sure, you could use a lowercase C there. But you could also use a lowercase Q, which has the tail that sticks down. Or, instead of the letter I, you could use a lowercase y. Scott really likes a lower case y. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Y is the only vowel that has a visually differentiating quality to it. A-E-I-O-U all exist in the same visual plane. And here comes Y with that downstroke quality to It. So now you’re seeing Tryptyr–I believe it was a last year approval–T-R-Y-P-T-Y-R. That’s, like, a double whammy differentiation visually. So yes, 100%. Give me a B. Give me a K. Give me a Z. Give me an X. 

SEAN COLE: What’s that spell?

ROMAN MARS: Bukuzksssskssss…

SEAN COLE: Yes, and that name was approved last year also. 

So, putting this all together, again, no big claims, no look-alike, sound-alike names, a stricter enforcement of those rules, which means the goal now is to come up with something completely novel in an age where there are more and more new drugs coming out all the time… And this, I think, is where the artistry of drug naming really comes to life. But let’s talk about that after this break. 

ROMAN MARS: Sounds good. 

[AD BREAK]

ROMAN MARS: Okay. We are back. And Sean, one of the things that I’ve been wondering for the sort of Scotts and Arlenes of the world, do they really know how much people are scratching their heads and maybe laughing at these funny sounding names that they’ve come up with? 

SEAN COLE: They do. They do. I talked about that a lot with Scott. I even went down the list of last year’s approved names with him and was like, “You know, this one’s crazy.” And these are drugs that Brand Institute named. And I’m like, “Are you aware that people are comparing these names to sci-fi characters?”

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: That is absolutely something that we hear, but understand that where we are is the result of there being 26 letters in the alphabet, right? And you have to combine them in a way that is distinctive and differentiating and contending with this path to a global regulatory approval for the same name across the world. And this is oftentimes the type of names that come out of that process. So, that’s why I don’t get too offended when people joke about drug names. I completely get it. It’s a couple of gut punches, but then you get over it because, as a creative, you want your work to be lauded and everyone to love it. And you do get names that come out and they’re, like, instant hits. Instantly people love saying them. And then you get other ones where nobody even wants to say it. But that’s all just part of the job. 

SEAN COLE: And it is a job. But like I was saying at the beginning, there’s also this distinct, artistic, and even poetic aspect to it that I wasn’t expecting–that I think is apparent in some of the things we’ve talked about already–but especially as regards Arlene because Arlene, as well as inventing drug names, writes haikus. 

ROMAN MARS: Oh, she’s a poet!

SEAN COLE: She’s a poet.

ROMAN MARS: As are you. You’re a poet! 

SEAN COLE: As am I. And, at first, she insisted–insisted–that her drug naming and her haikuing have nothing to do with each other. But finally she conceded that yes, in both pursuits, the sound of the thing is really important–the tonality. You should read your haikus out loud when you’re writing them, she says, and you should do the same with a drug name. 

ARLENE TECK: It has to feel like it fits in your mouth. It has to flow in conversation, so when you tell somebody, “I am taking Viagra,” that’s an easy sentence to say–not awkward. It’s not like you’re going to try to say, “I am taking Imdelltra.”

ROMAN MARS: God, she really hates the name Imdelltra. 

SEAN COLE: She really does. 

ARLENE TECK: What I would do is I would sort of sing them to myself. 

SEAN COLE: Sing them? 

ARLENE TECK: Sure! If a name can sing for you–if it’s easily singable–that means it’s easily pronounceable. 

SEAN COLE: You’re saying literally sing? 

ARLENE TECK: Well, not, like, operatic. [SINGING] Toujeo! Toujeo!

ROMAN MARS: Is that a real drug name that she’s singing, Toujeo? 

SEAN COLE: Yeah, it’s an insulin shot for diabetics. And it’s with Toujeo that I think you can really see the poetical nature of Arlene’s thinking when she sits down to name a drug. 

ROMAN MARS: So explain what you mean. 

SEAN COLE: So the thing about Toujeo is that it’s longer lasting than a similar drug that came before it. Instead of 24 hours, it is effective for 30 hours, give or take. And as Arlene and her team are brainstorming, they developed this prompt–they call it a platform–to riff off of. And the prompt was “your friend for life.” And from there, Arlene unspooled this whole story in her head–a kind of romantic story–about young people, young adults, just beginning their adult lives. 

ARLENE TECK: Imagine, especially when they’re going out to working in their first jobs and they’re meeting new people, there’s always the idea of, after work, the spontaneous sexual flirtation. 

SEAN COLE: But if you’re worried about having to take your next insulin shot, you can’t be spontaneous, unless, again, that shot lasts long enough to give you the freedom to stay out later. 

ARLENE TECK: So that if somebody wanted to go on a date after work, they’d simply have to get home before four o’clock in the morning or something like that to get their shot. It’ll become your friend for life because it will permit you to enjoy your evenings if you want. “Toujeo” came from the Haitian creole word “toujou,” T-O-U-J-O-U, which came originally from the French word “toujour,” which means “all the days always. And “toujou” was the Haitian Creole version of it, always. 

SEAN COLE: So she’s got this whole narrative arc that she wants to express somehow in a word, in a musical word. She doesn’t need people to know the story. She just needs them to feel its resonance. 

ROMAN MARS: I see. So that’s the real poetry. 

SEAN COLE: That’s right–a whole story, a whole world, that you just need to feel the underlying resonance of in the music of a word. 

SEAN COLE: When you’re naming drugs–and you’ve named a lot of them–how did it feel when, finally, it was out on the market? Was there a thing where you’re like, “Oh man, I’m immortal, I’m in people’s households?”

ARLENE TECK: No, the feeling was not then. It was when I originally came up with the name and wrote it down on paper and I said, “This is going to be a good one.” That’s when I had the good feeling. 

SEAN COLE: Say more about that. 

ARLENE TECK: Well, it was like a mental orgasm. You get something that you know is good. You know that you’ve done other things not that good, and here comes this. And when it sings and it looks good and it’s going to work and all that, it just lights you up all over. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: I’m a little more reserved in my feelings, I’d say. I’m also a little bit more pragmatic. 

SEAN COLE: Scott doesn’t even like to talk about himself as an autonomous being in this regard. He’s all about the team and the partnership and literally will say that he gets his pleasure out of creating a lot of great names at scale. But there are those ones–there are other names–that he favors in his heart. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Sometimes there’s a good name and I’ll say in turn, “What’s going on with that name? Is it still alive? Has it died yet? What’s going to– How could we keep it in?” I do keep an eye on some projects and say, “I hope that makes it.” We do have one coming up for a weight loss drug that I’m very excited about. 

SEAN COLE: Can you say? Can you say? 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: Oh, absolutely not. Can I say? I like my job. No, we do have one or two. A lot going on in the weight loss category. But I hope it works. We’re waiting regulatory feedback. So it’s still, like, up in the air. And I have a jingle in my head for it, so…

SEAN COLE: Dude, if this name passes, I am so going to ask you what it was after that. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: I’ll let you know. 

SEAN COLE: Okay, please do. 

SCOTT PIERGROSSI: And I’ll just say this. This name and the jingle or the song associated with it will be so obvious if and when the name gets approved that you’ll text me, “I get it. I get it.” And I’ll leave it at that. 

SEAN COLE: And I’m sitting here, like I never thought I would be, hoping for the moment that I see a TV ad for a weight loss drug with one of those names, and I’m like, “That’s the one.” I really hope that happens. 

ROMAN MARS: I hope so too. You see, this is why we love to have you do stuff for the show. This was so great, Sean. Thank you. 

SEAN COLE: Always a pleasure, Roman. 

ROMAN MARS: 99% Invisible was reported this week by Sean Cole, produced and edited by Christopher Johnson. Mix by Martín Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real. Fact-checking by Naomi Barr. 

Like I mentioned earlier, Sean is a longtime friend of the show and a friend of mine. He’s been doing stories for us for, like, more than a decade. So go to our website and check out all of his greatest hits, including one on how to hack your IKEA furniture, the one on cow tunnels that everyone loves–they still mention it to me to this day–and my personal favorite about the album art of Devo. Check them out. 

Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is our digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jayson De Leon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Vivian Le, Lasha Madan, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, Jeyca Medina-Gleason, Talon and Rain Stradley, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. 

We are part of the SiriusXM Podcast Family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building… in beautiful… uptown… Oakland, California. 

You can find us on all the usual social media sites, as well as our new Discord server. There’s a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI, at 99pi.org.