Is there a more modern version of "Acme", as a common, generic company name?

Question

Yes, Acme is an actual company name used by many real companies - bricks, bikes, food, real estate, etc.

But more relevant to this point, it has also been used for ages for fictional purposes - not just as a company making all kinds of dangerous stuff in Road Runner cartoons, but also as a fictional company in training materials, documentation, marketing, etc. And for that purpose, it's also quite long in the tooth. Even to me (not a boomer but definitely not "young"), it seems quaint if not archaic.

We need a fictional company name for marketing to college students in STEM fields. I'm wondering if there's a newer, kinda pop-culture fictional company name that serves a similar purpose as "Acme" used to? I'm not aware of any but I'm not remotely in that demographic.

I thought of "Skynet" but even that reference is 30 years old.

Answer 1

Sure!

There's always one. This site is a great list, but here are a few:

• Umbrella Corporation (Resident Evil)
• Innovative Online Industries (Ready Player One)
• Wayne Industries (DC)
• Oscorp, Stark Industries (Marvel)
• Union Aerospace Corporation [UAC] (Doom)
• Spaceley's Sprockets/Cogswell's Cogs (The Jetsons)
• Cyberdyne Systems Corporation (The Terminator)
• Zorin Industries (James Bond)
• Momcorp (Futurama)
• Omni Consumer products [OCP] (RoboCop)

And these are just for starters. Pick your niche group. I've actually heard people use Umbrella Corporation this way, so that specifically meets your requirements (and is why I put it first).

PS: My initial reading of your question was that it was for a class, which would be unlikely to get you sued for using any of these names. If you are actually doing marketing, Laurel very aptly pointed out that they are likely coming with copyright and/or trademark issues that may make using them expensive or impossible. If so, you may want to go with more generic names that have a general connotation but no specific usage (like "Global Consolidated Conglomerates Incorporated")

Answer 2

The reason for Acme's use is two fold: First the name has a meaning of "peak or pinnacle of achievement" which is good for any standard, but also happens to be perfect for the obsolete search algorithm of "phone books." Back in the day before the internet was accessible to the general public on their phones, the phone book (specifically the Yellow Pages, so named because, well, the pages were yellow) were arranged alphabetically by service provided, then alphabetically again by business name. Acme was a popular name for a company because not only did it have a meaning of superiority, but given the AC letter combination, it was almost always going to be the first company listed in a phone book. Didn't matter if you were Acme Plumbing, Acme Grocery, or Acme Road Runner Hunting Equipment. You would likely be the first company that people saw when they flipped open the book to look for whatever you were offering.

Acme isn't the only name used for this, nor does it have to be an AC letter combination. Disney shorts had their own "order anything" company in the form of Ajax, which had similar meaning and similar front page of the phonebook. It did differ in that it was never presented as a single company like Looney Tune's Acme morphed into being, as Mickey's various start ups of the short would often be named Ajax as well. If you want this "front of the phone book style" the "Ace [insert industry jargon here] Company/Corp/Inc" would fit the bill and have the double benefit of not being the silly Acme Company as people know it today. Generally, the meaning of the word was less important than the name and some real life companies were named for Phone Book search optimization. I had a family friend that ran the very successful "Apple Plumbing" and of course my phone comes from "Apple Computers" and what does Apple have to do with clogged sinks and computers? Nothing but being on the first page of the phonebook for those services.

A "modern" gag take would be a company named solely to comply with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so that when you google its industry, it pops up as on the first page (more so than the phone book, it's common knowledge that if you're not in the top five results for a google search, you're not gonna be seen at all).

The Looney Tunes cartoon Acme Corp was actually mocking both this trend and the "Sears Magazine" which was THE shopping for specialized products product for almost 100 years of American industry. You could buy a prefabbed house from Sears Magazine (some assembly required, batteries not included) and cars! While the higher-end stuff did cease in the 1890s following an economic recession, the Sears Magazine still went with and the company opened physical department stores across the nation with a selection of their at times 523 page magazine's popular offerings. The cartoon ACME (which the animators gave said was an acronym for American Corporation Makes Everything... because half the memorable gag of Acme products was "Acme" was not the most apt adjective for their shoddy work) was spoofing the sheer variety of Sears and similar products. Today, the closest thing we have to Sears Magazine would be Amazon; however, they don't have much in the way of the Amazon logo slapped on all of their available products.

A modern trend to the ACME [product] would be the Apple computer naming conventions of a lowercase "i" prefixed to the product (iPhone, iPad, iMac) so perhaps the modern Coyote has an app on his aPhone brand phone to swipe right on road runners he wishes to eat?

Answer 3

James Bond is a big fan of Universal Exports.

First used in Fleming’s novels, Universal Exports operates as the cover for MI6. M is referred to as the “managing director” and Bond is a field agent. Although Fleming changed Universal Exports to “Transworld Consortium” in his novel The Man With The Golden Gun, this change was never reflected on in the films.

It's a very non-descriptive name of a company that probably does something international with goods (exporting). They could be doing anything! They actually had their name printed on buildings and vehicles (including the well-known helicopter from For Your Eyes Only (with Blofeld going down the chimney)):

(YouTube)

While the origin of the name is quite old of-course, it's in the original novels by Fleming, some of the movies were released quite recently.

This shot is from Quantum of Solace (2008):

Considering how non-descriptive the name is and that the referenced site is actually a fansite, I doubt you'd get into any copyright trouble for using it either. It has the added benefit of being recognized in a wide range of demographics.

Answer 4

My own preference is TLC -- which stands for Three Letter Corporation (not to be confused with TLA, Three Letter Agency, which is a super-secret government operation).

Answer 5

One take I've seen on this is to use a well known company and then make a pun and go from there.

For instance, in William Hertling's sci-fi series about a Google-like company who inadvertently creates an AI from a simple e-mail autocomplete system, he started with Google's name. Google, from Googol in math, meaning a really big number (10¹⁰⁰).

So in his series, the company is called Avogadro Inc, named after Avogadro's number, the number of protons and neutrons in one gram of ordinary matter. There is a lot of potential for other math related company names as a stand in for Google.

FaceBook, Apple, Amazon and Google are commonly referred to as FANG. So you could make a play on FANG Inc which would be a clever wink to those in the know, and would clue them in to what you're going for

Also, in the world of software, there are a couple commonly used company names which might help.

• Contoso Corp
• NorthWind Traders
• Fabrikam
• ProseWare
• AdventureWorks

These are all very commonly used in Microsoft docs and training materials.

Answer 6

Since the word acme means the best, but is kind of dated. You can get the same effect as Acme Co. With a more modern, word for the best. Like Pinnacle Corp. Or Peak Technologies. Or Zenith (a real company that made televisions that is out of business.)

Answer 7

A lot of the existing answers suggest names I've never heard of before, and I think you'll have that issue with any audience. There will be a subset that gets it, but a decent amount who aren't "in" on the reference.

What I suggest is to use a name that's not a pop culture reference, but rather that the generic-ness is implied in the name itself. Milwrdfan has a good idea with "Widget Manufacturing." To add, you could go with any combination of:

• Stuff and Things, Inc.
• Miscellaneous Manufacturing
• NotACompany Co.
• WhatchaMaCallIt Assembly
• Random Engineering Foundation
• FooBar, LLC (if your audience is in software development)

Answer 8

The current trend in fiction is to depict parodies of specific existing companies and products (with parodies of Walmart being the Walmart of such parodies, I suppose). This is done by changing a letter or series of letters in the name (thus sidestepping a lot of potential trademark issues):

• McDonald's becomes WcDonald's
• Instagram becomes Outstagram
• Google becomes Boogle

For inspiration, a few hundred examples of this can be found on TV Tropes' Bland Name Product and many more (specific to anime) can be found on the Fictional Companies Wiki.

Answer 9

You can make your own.

Just take a word related to what the fictional company does and attach "-dyne" to the end. You automatically have a company name that sounds modern and on the bleeding edge of their industry. We see this is existing fiction already with names like Cyberdyne and Yoyodyne. You don't even need to ask what they do, the name tells you they are the leaders in their field.

Have a high-tech pizza company? "Pizzadyne". Automobile manufacturing? "Autodyne". Use a company name like "Aardvarkdyne", now they sound like they could use the help of some imaginative students in class. You can have fun with it.

Alternatively, you can also take a name and add "-corp" to the end. It sounds like a big corporation. Existing fiction gives use names like MomCorp from Futurama, the giant corporation run by Mom, or Oscorp from Spirderman, the business venture run by Norman Osborn. Why not give your students your own company? Let them work with "JimCorp". Again, you can have fun with this.

The names sound fictional, but at the same time you know exactly what they are.

Answer 10

It's quite possible that there are other "generic" names out there that would apply to any industry. But for airlines, the go-to is Oceanic

There are occasionally cases where companies take names from pop-culture references (like Brawndo), but Oceanic is fairly safe as if it were a real airline, it would have to overcome their horrific safety record set by so many movies & tv shows.

Another brand name that is widely used is Morley cigarettes.

Answer 11

I've thought that calling a company "Widget Manufacturing" would be a very generic name.

Answer 12

If you want to stick to a generic name that can still be a modern reference I would suggest E Corp. It appears in the American cybersecurity drama Mr Robot in which it is often referred to as "Evil Corp".

It fits the bill for generic name and the "E" itself could stand for a number of things, including but not limited to:

• Electronic Corporation
• Entertainment Corporation
• Engineering Corporation

By keeping the "E" unknown, it means the name can play whatever role you want it to.

Answer 13

Seinfeld is still current in our cultural consciousness, so: Vandelay Industries, Kramerica, Kruger industrial Smoothing, Van Nostrand