LONDON: Celebrex, Zocor, Nexium. The names may be puzzling, but when it comes to launching a new medicine, the brand on the package matters more than ever.

Gone are the days of anonymous brown bottles and uniform white tablets. Today, the brand is king and the right name is central to creating “blockbusters”, the elite group of drugs selling more than $1 billion a year.

This month Pfizer Inc, the world’s largest drug maker, faces a huge marketing challenge as European firms launch rivals to two of its best known medicines, Viagra and Lipitor, in the United States.

The multi-billion-dollar battle will be fought as much on the television screens as in doctors’ surgeries — and much will ride on a clutch of apparently meaningless invented names.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Bayer AG think they have a winner in the anti-impotence market with Levitra, whose name plays not only on “vital” but also “levitate”.

AstraZeneca Plc, meanwhile, is betting on Crestor, with connotations of peak achievement, to take on Lipitor in the $20 billion-a-year anti-cholesterol market. Such attention-grabbing names are nothing new in fast-moving consumer goods. But their use in the drug industry represents a sea change, driven by the new-found ability of companies to address end-users — or patients — directly.

“A few years ago, marketing a pharmaceutical product was all about targeting the prescriber,” said Rebecca Robins, global marketing director at Interbrand Wood, a consultancy which has invented names for six of the world’s top 10 medicines.

The result is a shift away from names referring to a disease or mechanism of action to ones highlighting the end benefits. Amgen Inc’s Enbrel, for example, hints at enabling arthritis sufferers, in contrast to the more obviously named older drug Arthrotec from Pharmacia, now part of Pfizer.

Prime-time television adverts have helped make products like Viagra, Prozac and Claritin household names in the US.

But the plus for drug companies is that a successful brand will get their product to peak sales faster, maximising its limited patent life and holding out the prospect of commercial life after patents expire. Increasingly, drug makers are seeking to give off-patent brands a new lease of life as over-the-counter (OTC) remedies. It is a strategy that has attracted consumer goods firms like Procter & Gamble, which this month launches an OTC version of heartburn and ulcer drug Prilosec.

All drugs start life as simple codes. Crestor, for example, was known as ZD4522 before getting the International Non-proprietary Name of rosuvastatin, under a generic naming system controlled by the World Health Organisation.

Only later did it win a brand name — which had to be different to the generic one, not liable to cause confusion with other drugs on the market and not conveying misleading claims.

Meeting those rules is easier said than done. Some 35 to 40 percent of all proposed drugs brands are rejected by the US Food and Drug Administration or European regulators, most commonly because of mis-prescription fears.

An alphabet soup of names coupled with illegible doctors’ hand writing can be dangerous. Classic mix-ups include Losec, an ulcer drug, being confused with Lasix, a diuretic.—Reuters