If I got an English pound for every time a business asked me to give them a name like ‘Google’ I’d be a wealthy man. Their thinking is usually sound – it will help them to differentiate from the crowd in their market. The trouble is, when presented with names like ‘Google’ or ‘Yahoo’ the business suddenly loses all confidence. It seeps from them in front of my very eyes as they contemplate their new logo on their website, in a supermarket aisle or store frontage. Google-type names sound just too...different.
The trouble with made-up or ‘clever’ names (that have a back story) is they tend not to trigger any familiarity bells, so they get rejected by businesses.
“It should do exactly what it says on the tin” I hear. No it shouldn’t if you are late to the market and there are already 1001 competitors already trampling on your new patch.
So they are offered names that communicate invariably generic attributes or benefits, literally and metaphorically, which of course they think are too dull. And the .com domain isn’t available. So off we head to Google-land again.
There are some great exceptions to this rule – Moonpig, Moo.com and Ocado being a few - fun and distinctive names that mean absolutely nothing, but which we can remember with relative ease. Unlike easyprint, cardsmadeeasy and other slightly dull generics.
Our Story
Mimo was created from the names of our director’s children. It also means Multiple Inputs Multiple Outputs, which describes our approach to brand development, and is therefore what we do every day to create lasting differentiation for our clients.
On discussing the subject of naming your brand on Twitter, there is a common theme emerging with these successful businesses: