Branding is very important, because it is used to differentiate your company from a direct competitor. When people hear the name of your company, they should immediately know who you are, what you do, and why you’re better than the other guy. This is assuming that you’ve done a good job advertising your business or website, promoting it using creative methods that constantly remind people of who you are. I asked a few of my technologically-inclined associates how they came up the names for their websites and this is what they said. Keep in mind that all three guys run sites that cater to essentially the same niche.
Stephen Fung of FutureLooks said that he and the rest of his team “were pretty much trying to find a cool catchy name that was unique. Since we wanted to look at the future of stuff, why not Futurelooks? It stuck ever since.” Looking to the future makes perfect sense in the world of computer technology, given that the industry is in a constant state of innovation. Years ago, people would have never fathomed why any single person would need more than a megabyte or two of storage. Nowadays, many people have hard drives in their computers that are approaching the terabyte range. With tech, you can’t look at the present, because you’re already going to be out of date.
When I had a brief IM chat with Bob Buskirk of ThinkComputers, he said that “as a kid, I was always thinking of things and when I was coming up with the name, I wanted something that when you heard it, it would define the site. So, I came up with ThinkComputers. [It has] nothing to do with ThinkGeek or anything like that, as so many people think.” The concept of “thinking” infiltrates the entire site, including the logo which features a man with a monitor for a head, hunched over like Rodin’s The Thinker. This route is certainly different than the ones that most other computer-oriented websites have taken.
Dot com mogul John Chow got his start with a website called “Moto’s Project 504″. This site described the first computer that he put together wherein he overclocked a Pentium II 300 to 504MHz, a feat that was unheard of in 1999. After a month, he decided that Project 504 needed its own domain name.
“I made a posted asking readers for recommendation. I think I received a dozen replies. In the end, none of the suggested names appealed to me. Before The TechZone, I own a site call The LoveZone, which served as a home page for members of a chat room. So I thought, “Hmm, LoveZone. TechZone!” And The TechZone was born in April 1999.“
John’s English may not be the best, but he’s got a whole lot of business savvy and ‘net knowledge. The full story can be found on page 52 of his Make Money Online E-Book.
These three guys are running similar (successful) websites, but their branding is distinctly different from one another, taking on wholly different directions. How did you choose your company name? Want to hear the story behind “BlueFur.com”?
