Sean Cole

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.

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.

A focus group to name their new miracle erection drug.

If you want to sell a drug to Treaty D, 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.

So how does it feel to have named Viagra?

Different.

Different than having not named Viagra?

That could mean a lot of things.

Okay.

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.

It became a household word.