a friend wants to start a company with his three friends
and they use they names for it. Similar to Ikea which is
the name and place of the founder of Ikea.
I am not sure about it thus I thought doing a crowd sourcing
to see if people like or dislike the name.
Would you go with ViMuKu as an abstract / created name
or
rather with something like lets say CreativeGear, UnitedDesigners, BlueBrains
etc (just quickly made those up to show what I mean).
I find name findings hard and thus was not really able to help him.
Maybe you can give some insight / opinions.
I think presentation is far more important than the name. People get used to names real quick. How the name is graphically exhibited as a logo can play a far greater role in catching the eye than the actual words themselves. Also, the quality of the actual product and/or services of the company in question will quickly trump any interest, or non-interest, in the actual name of the company.
In short, I wouldn’t worry too much about the actual name. Accept whatever name makes the most people in the company happy, and go with it. Don’t get bogged down on such trivial details. Focus instead on the actual purpose and goals of the company. When you advertise you’ll be listed in the category of the product or service of your company anyway, so the name isn’t going to matter much.
Does your company have a “Mission Statement”? If not, you’d probably be further ahead by focusing on the purpose and goals of the company than on things like what the name should be. If it does have a mission statement, then forget about the name of the company and start focusing on accomplishing the MISSION. The mission statement should be your guiding principle in everything you do.
Knowing where you’re headed and what your goals are, are far more important than what your company is called.
They brought up this as well - and I think that I agree that good work will anchor your company more then the name.
Apple, Blackberry, Idea, Google are just some examples.
I am not a native English speaker and thus not much help for my friend with his venue about names.
In German things are different for me
The name can say a lot but also can work in reverse as suggested where the work gives value to the name. But a name can also give apparent value to the work. There are many examples of this with successful businesses. True Value Hardware, Best Buy, Budget car and truck rentals. In fact a name and an add campaign can be so successful that people in effect overlook the fact that the hardware from such a store is far from a good value, the electronic prices are far from best and the rental prices of cars are not in their budget. These names can then take a back seat to the real reason people shop which goes back to the earlier points. They shop at a hardware store because it is right around the corner and convenient rather than going down to Home Depot. Best Buy is easy to get to and they have a large selection. Budget rental car is usually there at the airport and give good service. This is why companies pay for marketing, to find out the real reasons people shop there.
The only thing about ViMuKu is that seems at first glance to be hard to pronounce, is a tad obscure. But if the company is a small boutique that will concentrate on quality products it could catch on. If it was pronounced Vee MOO Koo, it could sound interesting. It just depends on the market and the product for that market and of course the points made by Abracadabra hold true. The product will add value to the name. Starbucks Coffee, Mc Donald’s etc.
The reverse philosophy is true. You can come up with a name catchy enough and that strikes familiarity enough with potential customers that the name itself is a great advertising ploy. This is done all the time with films. The name is very important to getting interest in the movie.
In the end of course if you don’t deliver then the name won’t help you.
But given the product, the name can also be a draw back. It could confuse people and hurt business, or fail to draw the right customers to that type of business.
But I think it would be hard to evaluate a name without knowing what the product was.
Well it is for the US market and I advised them to go with a word combination in the philosophy of Best Buy where the names indicated the value and orientation of the company.
But most of the suggestions I made for them actually were taken and 80% just only parked.
Domain parking is really a pain.
At the end they fall back to this KuMuVi but I feel it sounds forced and I agree on the spelling problem.
They mentioned to me few people they asked actually like the sound, but I am not sure if those they asked were nice
and said it was great, did really think about it, or if I am simply unsure about the quality of such a name approach.
Something in me simply tells me no to it - but I dont want to say that I am right, I can simply be biased here.
