The scene has played out in movies countless times. Someone unwittingly gobs a peanut and swells up in a choking panic, only to be saved at the last second by the manic stab of needle that some bystander fumbles out of a box. Even real-world advertising for the EpiPen, which dispenses life-saving epinephrine to counter allergic reactions, has portrayed harrowing scenes of anaphylaxis.
Now the maker of a newly approved medicine is leveraging this fearsome cultural image in its bid to take over the market, positioning its novel “needle-free” nasal spray as the gentler, simpler alternative the allergic have all been waiting for. And that company, ARS Pharmaceuticals, has given its product the perfect name: Neffy.
The moniker is refreshingly short and approachable compared to drug names like Xeljanz (say that five times fast). In the world of pharma, having a product name that looks anything like a real word is a win. But the appeal goes beyond being intuitive to say, spell, and remember (and the acquirability of its exact .com). In fact, the list of boxes this name checks might just rival the number on an FDA application.
* * *
In a context that involves a lot of fear and worry — especially among parents who stock such medicines for their children — a name like Neffy sounds like a friendly sidekick, a diminutive that conveys affection and familiarity. The double f evokes the playfulness of a nickname like Nessie or Nellie and subtly recalls a “puff” that can be used in a “jiffy.”
“We’re not going to run a fear campaign,” Richard Lowenthal, president and CEO of ARS Pharmaceuticals, told FiercePharma in an interview about the new medicine. “We’re going to run a campaign that you should treat your disease and relieve your symptoms and not be afraid.” It’s a message, the piece notes, meant to be delivered to moms, dads, and other “loved ones of kids with life-threatening allergies.”
Taking a little puff from a familiar-looking spray bottle is quite the contrast to stabbing yourself in the thigh. The departure is akin to the revolution that has been Narcan, an OTC nasal spray now widely used to treat opioid drug overdoses, tragedies that have their own entrenched cinematic cliches: pumped stomachs, oxygen masks, harried EMTs.
The FDA itself alluded to this emotional context in a press release announcing the approval of Neffy. “Anaphylaxis is life-threatening and some people, particularly children, may delay or avoid treatment due to fear of injections,” said the FDA’s Kelly Stone. “As a result,” she added, Neffy “provides an important treatment option and addresses an unmet need.”
It almost sounds like a name that a kid could have come up with for their own plush stuffie (the double f strikes again!).
* * *
A great name doesn’t just convey a feeling, however, but some suggestion of the material benefits the product provides. In this sense, ARS’s branding cleverly plays on the medicine the bottle dispenses: The word epinephrine is clearly echoed in the sounds of Neffy. You might even hear echoes of needle-free, a phrase that contains almost every letter in the product name.
It has the effective, direct simplicity of a name like Vuity, which Catchword worked with Allergan to develop as the company prepared to launch an unprecedented eye drop to treat nearsightedness. As we explained in our case study, the name “Vuity instantly conveys the solution’s ability to improve viewing acuity while recalling the phrase ‘View it.’”
Our only quibble with the ARS approach is that the company is trying to make lowercase styling happen for its flagship product, i.e., neffy, not Neffy.
You could argue that this cutely imitates the way a child might write a word, but in reality it’s a recipe for awkwardness and inconsistency. Some outlets will respect the convention in press coverage, while others won’t. When reading something like the FDA press release, which does play the lowercase game, the name reads like a typo whenever it appears in the middle of a sentence. This gives an otherwise easy name a needlessly distracting quality (which is why we chose not to use the convention in this piece).
* * *
As ARS waited for the FDA’s official seal, the company predicted that some 80 percent of EpiPen users will switch to Neffy within two years. ARS also hopes to see wide adoption by public-facing outfits such as restaurants and airplanes. It’s an ambitious goal to so quickly dominate the competition and become a household name, but in this case, the branding can only help.
