Inventive Life: Approaches to the New Vitalism (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society) by Mariam Fraser & Sarah Kember & Celia Lury

Author:Mariam Fraser & Sarah Kember & Celia Lury [Fraser, Mariam & Kember, Sarah & Lury, Celia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473971844
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2006-01-19T05:00:00+00:00

A good example of competitive outflanking is made by the Reckitt & Colman OTC [over the counter] brand Gaviscon in the … gastrointestinal market. At first sight, its different product type … and mode of action (which prevents acid reflux in the oesophagus, rather than neutralizing acid lower down in the stomach) appears to offer little difference, in terms of practical end result for the consumer with indigestion …

However, by developing communication around a unique problem, such as heartburn (essentially a layman’s description of higher up stomach pain), Gaviscon was able to position itself as a remedy quite distinct from antacids. Normally, a head-to-head fight against a brand as strongly defended as Rennies … would have been fruitless for a newer entrant such as Gaviscon. But by choosing to fight on different territory to the antacids, by inventing a new problem and offering a new solution,10 Gaviscon built a new OTC franchise. The key to success was its maximization of product difference, linked to differentiation at key indication level, and exploiting this through consistent communication to pharmacists and consumers. (Ferrier, 2001: 65)

The pharmaceutical industry was (and to some extent still is) a research-driven industry in which research was primarily conducted by medicinal chemists in association with pharmacologists and biologists. However, the industry is currently experiencing a complex set of related transformations (see Barry, this issue). These include the development of genomics, combinatorial chemistry and predictive technologies that have massively increased the number of potential compounds that are available to be evaluated in the drug discovery process. At the same time, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly making use of computer modelling to conduct drug trials, thus enabling the creation and testing of drug compounds whose use is yet to be identified. These developments have also coincided with a greater orientation towards consumers and groups of patients, including patients’ organizations, and an increasing emphasis on marketing on the part of big pharmaceutical firms, often linked to direct advertising and the promotion of so-called over-the-counter drugs. In other words, it is increasingly possible in pharmaceutical practice to identify the potential of products (or potential products) in the dis-intermediating and re-intermediating (the mixed media) practices of the brand; that is, the brand increasingly provides the experimental conditions for ‘the emergence of novelty’. As one marketer puts it, ‘The challenge for marketers nowadays is to introduce new products, relevant to today’s needs, which will become the new brands of tomorrow’ (Ferrier, 2001: 60).

What is suggested here then is that insofar as Hirst is a brand name, he may be said to be doing both art and science, or at least pharmacy. This is not to say that the conduct of experiments in the media(tion) of relations between things that is organized by the brand is all there is to the doing of either art or science. That is, the emergence of a new way of doing art and/or science does not define the singularity of either art or science. Instead, what is described here in relation

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