Picking an Identity Is Name of Game for Biotech Boosters

The pitchmen’s battle continues over brand names for Southern California’s technical industries.

While promoters mull the merits of “Tech Coast” or “Digital Coast” for everything from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border, boosters of the region’s biomedical businesses are proposing their own monikers.

David Anast, an Irvine publisher for the devices trade, offers “OrangeMed.” He reasons that Southern California makes more medical devices and related items than any other area in the world--and Orange County employs more people in the industry than surrounding counties.

“Medical manufacturing is a separate, stand-alone industry, just like the entertainment industry is,” says Anast, who figures the industry deserves its own identity. He has trademarked the name, is seeking licensees and plans to produce T-shirts.

Meanwhile, San Francisco publisher Synergistic Media Network Inc. is pushing “Biotech Beach”--meant to encompass all the drug developers and makers from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border. (Synergistic’s names for other hotbeds of drug research and development include “Biotech Bay” for metropolitan San Francisco, “Pharm Country” for the New Jersey-Pennsylvania-New York area, “Genetown” for metropolitan Boston and “BioCapital” for the Washington-Maryland area.)

In Southern California, Synergistic sells space to biotech companies on a colorful map of the region that shows outlines of their headquarters. Advertisers also get referrals on the company’s Web site.

It’s clear, however, that “BioTech Beach” lacks the cachet of the Bay Area’s magic moniker “Silicon Valley.” One Los Angeles biotech executive says “BioTech Beach” makes for “a nice poster, but that’s all it is.”

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Barbara Marsh covers health care for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7762 and at barbara.marsh@latimes.com.