Brief
The Dunhill Medical Trust was born out of a £250,000 bequest left in charitable trust in 1950 by Herbert E Dunhill, brother of Alfred Dunhill, for medical research into tuberculosis, the cause of his ill-health throughout much of his life.
By 2024, with £170m assets under management and a mission to fund academic and clinical research to support medical and community innovators in improving health in later life, the organisation was looking for a new brand name to support it's next stage of growth.
After a search for a brand naming partner, Nucleus was selecetd to work with the CEO to find the right name.
Solution
After a period of discovery to understand how the Trust funds remarkable science and radical social change needed to help everyone age well, we set about identifying naming themes which would add more meaning than the founder's surname and its distant associations with unhealthy living.
Using AI as our co-pilot we explored hundreds of naming concepts emphasising differnt attributes, before screening the top 100 for trade mark and domain availability, linguistics, possible negative or unintended meanings, cultural associations and pronouncability.
We then focused on neologisms that could establish clear differentiation from other more descriptive brands within the medical research sector, shortlisting 20 viable names. Working with the CEO and leadership team we reduced this to five with one strong recommendation for a further presentation to the Trustees.
Our recommended name was ‘Vivensa’ – based on the Latin word ‘vivens’, the present active participle of ‘vivo’ (live, be alive) – with the suffix ‘Foundation’ to replace 'Trust', which we did not think suggested the active financial role the organisation now plays in funding medical research and social change.
At the Annual General Meeting of Trustees in September 2024, the name change was unanimously agreed for implementation in April 2025.
We then helped organise the trade mark applications and domain name registrations for Vivensa and Vivensa Foundation to secure all the brand IP.
Results
The new name was revealed in April 2025 at the Annual Symposium at the Wellcome Collection in London.
Susan Kay, Chief Executive, commented:
“After 37 years as The Dunhill Medical Trust, with Nucleus' help, we have changed our name and will now be known as the Vivensa Foundation. Having refined our focus and made substantial changes to the way we go about our work in recent years, we wanted a new name that better reflects our work as both a funder and as an impact-intentional investor.
With our new name, the Vivensa Foundation, and a refreshed 2025-2030 strategic framework, we are stepping into the future with purpose. We are committed to learning from our past while pushing forward — ensuring that every decision we make best serves our mission and the communities we support.
This is just the beginning of our new chapter.”
If you have a brand naming project on your mind, please call us for a chat or send us a message.