Drug entrepreneurs, crafty marketing teams, street pushers—this is for you! With so many new drugs entering the market, you struggle to make yours stand out. How can you ensure your drug is the hip new thing? Lucky for you, people are sick as dogs these days, and new diseases are discovered all the time. Reach out! Engage the allergies, the cholesterol, the manic depression deep inside each and every potential customer. Using these five steps, your drug will soar to the top of this year’s must-prescribe list.

1. Say My Name, Say My Name. Give your drug a catchy name. Provide the pill-poppers with a sense of what the drug will do for them—its essence—without confusing them with medical terminology. Take Claritin, for example, which makes you think about clarity, clear sinuses, the clearest nose you’ve ever had. Or, my personal favorite, Levitra, Viagra’s newest cousin, which connotes things rising (important things), lifting up, levitating even. Would you trust your or your loved one’s penis with a drug named Flacidose? I think not.
2. Think Technicolor. If you can’t come up with a catchy name, focus instead on color. Make your pill’s hue exciting and invigorating, like turquoise or emerald. This way, people can ask their doctors about it without having to remember much else. Plus, who likes taking a boring white pill? Isn’t life dull enough? Throw in some Red No. 3. You’ll have them asking for the “maroon” pill in no time.
3. Save the Bad News for Last. If you decide to include what your drug actually does in your marketing materials, you unfortunately have to (by law) include the nasty side effects. Have no fear; you can slip these in unnoticed. For a commercial, save the listing of these until the very end, and say them quickly; people are less likely to be concerned about something they don’t hear. And for print ads, just put them at the bottom in tiny print. Nobody reads tiny print.
4. People With Herpes Have Tons of Fun. Make sure your ads show people having excessive amounts of fun. Think water skiing, swing dancing, mountain climbing, people in the best relationship of their lives. Not only will people want your new pill, but they will most likely also want the disease.
5. A Hole in One. Don’t forget about kissing some serious doctor ass. Talk about a group of people easy to buy! Take them golfing or to Hawaii for a week, and don’t forget the free samples. They’ll be prescribing your junk in no time.