FutureMark To Change Name, Brand and Website towards UL
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Irenicus
Yet here in the rest of the world that is not Murica, we've never heard of it so no, it is not far more recognised whatsoever.
Denial
Again, I'm not talking about just gamers.. UL certifies compliance in multiple industries and they definitely have a strong presence in the EU, notably with safety equipment. I think if you polled every single person on the planet significantly more people would know what UL was compared to Futuremark. You might say that gamer branding is more important for 3DMark but UL is trying to push PCMark and 3DMark as the standard for technical marketing in the PC industry - so the UL brand is going to be more important than Futuremark when marketing towards various system builders and OEMs.
Anyway, I don't see why people are offended when I talk about something being popular in America. The original person I quoted asked what UL was about, simply googling it shows its a certification company used for a vast number of products, inside and outside of America. That was my point - if someone used like Firmenich, in an example, I wouldn't be like "Yet here in the rest of the world that's not Europe" I'd just google it and be like "oh ok they are a popular flavor company in the EU and have been around for over 100 years - never heard of them but perhaps they aren't as active here in the US or go by a different name"
Denial
Idk, I see their perspective - I get that there is a lot of american "grandstanding" or whatever you want to call it and that people are obviously turned off by that. Plus being that this is mostly a European forum I understand there will be more opposition to that outlook.. but in this particular case I was just making the point that UL is one of the largest certification companies in the world and is especially notable here in America where it uses the UL logo on every product it approves.
I don't really have an opinion on whether Futuremark is better than UL for branding because I don't really know where UL intends to push the software. From what I understand they want it to be used to certify desktops/laptops/phones under categories so customers can easily see "UL Gold" on the side of a computer and roughly know the performance of what they are buying. If that's the case they are working with vendors/oems on certification and I believe those people along with a general non-gaming customer, will know the UL brand better than they know Futuremark.
Fox2232
@Denial : Maybe you just hit nail on the head. UL may have got them to become well known across the world. (Look at all the people here who either did not know UL or did not even recognize logo - Me Included.)
Futuremark will suffer a bit for a while as in IT community/gamers community people know it more than UL. (Since this is target audience it matters than millions of people who know UL and can't care less about FM.)
But in long run, even FM can gain as UL is kind of higher instance.
chispy
I do not see a problem here with the new name , it has happened in the past. Mad Onion was a fantastic name for the start of this company named Futuremark and currently named UL , still the same benchmarks 3DMarks and PCMarks and that's not changing anytime soon 🙂
sykozis
People are more likely to recognize the product name than the company name. 3DMark and PCMark will still exist as products. People that have used the software and are familiar with it, will continue to use it like they have for the last 2 decades. It won't be any different this time than it was when it changed from MadOnion to Futuremark....
Killian38
ehh. About all I can say.....
fry178
@Fox2232
the ratio in the gamer community might be better, but the total number will be lower than compared to UL.
if 99% of all gamers (about 1.2B) would know FM, its still way less than how many ppl in manufacturing countries like china/japan would know UL.
just the fact that china has a population around 1.4B , and i guarantee most of their workers will know about UL but not about FM....
Fox2232
Does it really matter? How many of people who bought FM give a damn about UL?
And from other side, how many of UL following people will buy FM because UL got it?
UL got additional coverage which is as important as non-existent as it will not bring large crowd of clients. (If there is to be gain, then there much be economical cross section between group of UL and group of FM.)
Then there is our Western world where UL and similar companies play important role, but end customer does not even have to care. because we have all those regulations and as long as you buy from legitimate shop (or good brands), they will be selling products which passed QC.
It's almost as if General Motors bought some popular chewing gum brand. (hyperbole)
Kaarme
That's what I said on the first page. If you want to broaden your company's product portfolio to an area that's already full of competition, it can be much easier to buy an existing operator with a strong presence there than try to start from scratch, assuming you have the dough.
fry178
My point was, just because "couple of gamers" dont know UL, doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't know them either.
Even that i grew up in Germany (GS) i knew about UL at least 2 decades before the first MO/FM benchmark was released, as almost all electronics in Europe would also be sold in the US (and the other way around) and would carry GS and UL stamps, not even talking about wires sold in bulk...
sykozis
Futuremark was nothing but a company name. When most people buy software, they buy based on the product name and not the company name. Hell, I know people who have sat in front of computers for over 30 years that still don't know the name of the company that develops Windows, Office or Internet Explorer.... That's how little the name of a company actually matters. If people want the product, they don't worry what the name of the company is. They care that they recognize the product itself.
