Meaning Behind Brand Names & History of Logos
Brand names are the persona of any company which leave an everlasting impression in the mind of the consumer. Some brand names have a history as to how they have been created. Here are a few global brands and how their brand names came into existence.
ACCENTURE
Accenture is a famous multinational company known for management consulting, technology, services, and outsourcing. It is a fortune global 500 company. It started out as business and technological consultant to the former famous accounting firm Arthur Andersen. The name ‘Accenture’ was adopted on January 1st 2001 by Andersen Consulting. According to sources, the term Accenture refers to "Accent on the future". The reason behind the acronym signifies the urge and passion of the brand to be a world class company in terms of performance, consulting leader and technological services .On July 19, 2001, the company got listed itself on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). The company employs more than 300,000 people in its workforce and it just grows bigger and better every passing year.
APPLE
The name of the company and their logo is based on the name of the fruit: Apple. The founders of the company were Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Some say that the company derived its name because its founder, Steve Jobs, favourite fruit was apple. Others believe that it was based on the famous theory put forth by Isaac Newton’s Gravity. The bite on the logo deciphers that it is an apple and not a cherry, also iterating the fact of the ‘byte’ data. The logo has transformed over the years and so has the company. The company has always come up with innovative and creative products. The company got listed on the December 12, 1980, on the stock exchange.
MICROSOFT
The company present in every household today, originated in April 4, 1975, by its founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen. The term “Microsoft” was coined by Bill Gates himself, because it was mainly devoted to microcomputers software. Hence the name Microsoft originated from Microcomputers software. There used to a slash (-) between Micro-soft, but it was removed after revamping the logo post 1987. The slash (-) signified “soft” part of the name which is motion and speed. The company got listed in 1986. The four colours in the windows logo signify a window and depict the association between the fire, water, flora and fauna. In 2007, the company acquired Skype and in 2013, it bought Nokia and entered in the mobile market.
CISCO
The company was founded by Leonard Bosack, Sandy Lerner and Richard Troiano in 1984. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, and its main business comprises of networking equipments. The company got listed on June 8, 2009. The name Cisco has been derived from the city name San Francisco. The story goes, while the founders were on their way to register the company, they saw the Golden Gate Bridge framed in the sunlight. The same can be noticed in the logo of the company also. They believed that the brand and the logo would be synonymous with the company’s vision of creating products that would be attractive and lovable not only by people but also the places they lived in. It has always been consistent in making it to the list of “one of the best companies to work for”.
AMAZON
One of the most popular brands and a big competitor in today’s e-commerce sector: Amazon. Jeff Bezos gave birth to Amazon in 1994. The company was formerly incorporated as "Cadabra" before it went online as Amazon. The brand name and its logo convey a lot of meanings. It was named by the founder on the most voluminous river on earth, the Amazon River. Another story suggests that he wanted to ensure that the company got listed at the top on every alphabetical order. His vision was to create a company as big as the river itself, the biggest in the world. The logo contains an arrow from the letter A to letter Z, suggesting that everything is available on the site from a to z. Also, the shape of the arrow conveys a smile to the lookers. In 1999, bezos was named Time Person of the year.
One of the most popular and best social networking platforms: Facebook. It was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, his fellow roommates and batch mates. The name originated from the colloquial name of the books that are given to the newly enrolled students, at the start of the academic year by the US university administration. The whole idea is to help students interact and know each other well. The main reason why facebook logo is Blue is because; Mark is red-green colour blind. The only colour best visible to him is blue. Facebook filed for an IPO on February 1, 2012. The site which started from a Harvard room has now reached to each and every person across the globe. It has brought people closer by sharing pictures, videos and posts.
HOTMAIL
One of the earliest web mail service providers on the internet, “hotmail” was created by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith in California. It was commercially launched on July 4, 1996. The main idea behind this mail start-up was to access emails from any computer round the globe, or in technical terms, from any IP address. The term hotmail was chosen because Sabeer wanted a name that ended in ‘mail’. Finally he settled on hotmail as also contained all the letters HTML (hyper text mark-up language) in same pattern, which is an important tool used to write web pages. Initially the logo of HoTMaiL had selective casing, which also showcased the same to everyone. Hotmail was taken over by Microsoft, later being replaced as Outlook.com, having more than 500 million users a month.
ORACLE
One of the world’s most popular and leading software companies headquartered in California: ORACLE. It is known for its hardware systems and enterprise database management systems with employee strength of more than 110,000 people. Larry Ellison, Ed Oates and Bob Miner were working on a consulting project for CIA, whose code name was ORACLE. It was mainly designed to use the SQL database language from IBM at that point in time. After the project got completed they decided not to relinquish what they started but to carry forward the business commercially and so they changed the name of the company. Rest as they is history. Larry Ellison makes it to the list of one of the most influential people on earth. The logo of oracle is one of the prominent ones in the software arena which incorporates a hand-drawn typeface.
The world’s most visited website, “One of the best companies to work for”, the search engine giant where 2 million searches are performed every minute: GOOGLE. The story goes that the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were actually going for the name ‘Googol’ which refers to the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes. But the cheque that the investors gave to the founders had a spelling mistake; the company decided to stay with the name “Google”. In 1999, the founders tried selling Google for $ 1Mn, but the company turned down the offer. The Google logo consists of all the primary colors except for ‘l’ signifying that it does not follow the rules. The first doodle came in 1998 in the honor of the Burning Man Festival. The company came out with the IPO on August 19, 2004.
INTEL
One of the world’s largest semiconductor chipmaker and highest valued in terms of revenue, the leading processors in computers round the globe: INTEL. The company was given birth on July 18, 1968 by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce. Intel is an acronym for “INTegrated ELectronics”. It is the pioneer of the x86 series of microprocessors which are one of the major components in the modern computers. It stands tall today with employee strength of more than 100,000 people and 200 facilities worldwide. One of the jewels in the portfolio of the Intel acquisition is the computer security provider, McAfee which it bought for over $7 Billion. The 1991 marketing and branding campaign ‘Intel inside’ took the company by storm and made it a household name. The company got listed on October 13, 1971, and since then the company never looked back.
