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Nick Dutnall
- 3 min
Putting our lives in their brands
From www.theguardian.com What if brand loyalty was actually as serious as life and death? Nick Dutnall looks at how we might trust a brand with our lives As consumers we’re loyal to particular brands that play a role in our lives. Kevin Roberts, CEO at Saatchi and Saatchi, even goes as far as describing the brands we allow closest to us as “lovemarks” – brands that create “an intimate, emotional connection”. It’s a potent scenario that evokes brand loyalty of the highest orde


Megan Hillen
- 2 min
Making medicine emotional
from www.mmm-online.com Since the birth of branding, and particularly in the advent of the “like,” people have been using brands as a means of self-expression. We create emotional ties to brand names because we identify not with just the product, but with what it represents—and how that reflects who we are to the world. Brands can personify a tangible thing into something powerfully intangible. A strong brand decommoditizes a commodity because it lives in our heads and in our


Jennifer McKenzie and Amy Dam / Bereskin &Parr LLP
- 2 min
Update on pharmaceutical brand name requirements in Canada
Sponsors filing a drug submission must also provide a brand name assessment as part of the drug safety and effectiveness evaluation. The objective of this assessment is to evaluate the potential for a proposed drug name to be confused with other authorized products in Canada with the aim of preventing medication errors. In an effort to standardize the brand name review process, Health Canada released a new Guidance Document for Industry – Review of Drug Brand Names, which rep

Meg Tirrell | Eric Chemi | Mark Fahey / CBNC
- 4 min
What's in a name? For drugs, a lot of Zs and Xs
Farxiga. Hetlioz. Otezla. Zykadia. No, these are not the names of distant planets visited by the starship Enterprise. They're the brand names of medicines recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration. If it seems as if drug names have been getting weirder, it's because, in some cases, they have. And they're likely to continue to, as the FDA approves new medicines at record rates, and regulations require a certain degree of differentiation from both other drugs and re


By Beth Snyder Bulik / FiercePharmaMarketing
- 2 min
Back-to-'Biogen' shift signals wider industry branding trend
Biogen's ($BIIB) recent change back to its original name - from the decade-old merger name Biogen Idec - made sense in many ways. Along with the nod to its biotech founding heritage, most people already called the company simply "Biogen," anyway. But the switch to just Biogen also signaled a new direction for the company and recognized the new reality in pharma. Companies can no longer rely on one or two blockbuster drugs and product messaging to attract attention with consum


Jennifer Rankin / The Guardian
- 3 min
Cancer breakthroughs trigger big pharma interest in drugs and deals
Companies are scrambling to get into the immunotherapy market, which experts think could eventually be worth up to £26bn a year in sales. The new generation of drugs hailed as a once-in-a-generation advance in treatment for cancer patients is also viewed as good news for the pharmaceutical industry – just when analysts had started to voice concerns that the pipeline of blockbuster treatments in development was starting to run dry. Immunotherapy treatments, which use the body’


By David Coleiro and Michael White / eye for
- 5 min
Defining brands and why they are critical to success in healthcare.
As we start our column in earnest, we thought we should perhaps state our position, be clear on some boundaries and definitions of what we mean by ‘brand’ and why we believe brand building in healthcare is critical to success. What are brands and why are they important? At its core, a brand is a promise made and importantly, an experience delivered to your customers. When well managed, it can be an emotional connection that is hard to break". A brand is not a product or a ser


By Donald G. McNeil Jr. /
- 4 min
The Science of Naming Drugs (Sorry, 'Z' Is Already Taken)
Not only is the process of christening a new product a lot trickier than it sounds, the most obvious candidates can be the most perilous. When British drug regulators told doctors recently to stop writing prescriptions for six antidepressants for children under 18, the drugs in question sounded like a "Star Wars" cast list: Paxil, Effexor, Celexa, Lexapro, Luvox and Zoloft. (A seventh, Prozac, was approved.) It has often been noted that drug makers have favorite letters, and


by John Phillips, Director
- 3 min
Biosimilars: Making the most of an “inexact” science
There’s no question that biosimilars are a revolution in life sciences. The development of these complex medications made from living cells, blood, and tissue is a brave new world, especially for generic manufacturers who may have less experience with the process than the drug designers in many branded companies. More than $67 billion in global biologics value is expected to face biosimilar competition by 2020. As with most uncharted territory, however, generic and branded dr


Raji Reddy Kesireddy / ETHealthworld.com
- 2 min
India to open drugs database to global regulators
India had exported medicines worth $15.2 billion (about Rs 97,000 crore) in 2014-15, an increase of 5% over the previous year’s figure. Drug regulators and retailers across the world will soon be able to access a large database that India is building on domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers. India has decided to throw open the database to global stakeholders following concerns over spurious drugs emanating from the country.
The government had earlier introduced barcoding on