What’s In a Name? The Birth of a New Brand
I’m hovering over the body of our laboring team as it heaves “Hee hee! Ho ho!” Everyone is yelling “You’re doing great! Nice work! There you go! Push!” After hours and hours of labor — maybe even weeks — out pops a new brand. “She’s beautiful! She’s perfect! Look at those eyes — just like her father’s. I think we’ll call her… Rebrand?”
Okay, this is a little odd and you’re probably left with lots of questions. If it takes two to tango, who’s the father? Who’s the mother? Who’s pushing? Who’s cheering her on? Is it our team or is it the client?
The collective family unit can take on many shapes, but in this example, it takes the client and our team to create the perfect little brand.
This is one of my favorite types of assignments at Human Design. A complete brand overhaul or the creation of an entirely new brand is what drives me. I have a background in creative writing, so whenever I receive an assignment to rename and rebrand a client’s company or create a new identity for them altogether, I get pretty pumped.
When it comes to this type of work, I feel like every creative has their own approach. Some call it process, I call it sorcery. It’s experiment + mystery; the perfect mix of intentional and unexpected, emotional yet professional, and ethereal yet tangible.
There are a lot of words these days that often help define what might be included in a branding engagement.
Brand DNA, brand identity, brand personality, parent brand, visual identity, and so on…
Design agencies have used these concepts time and time again, but they’re all pointing to one particular theme:
Brands are living, breathing organisms with the ability to evolve, just like we do.
If I tackle an assignment with this theme in mind, it’s a lot easier for me to empathize. If I’m able to put myself in the shoes of a client and their brand, I can more effectively help “deliver” what I believe to be an honest representation of a potential new identity.
Below are some steps I take to arrive at the perfect new brand for our clients, with a little nurturing along the way.
Step 1: Get Friendly
My goal is to become completely immersed in the company. I want to embody the business, be the business — basically just get all up in it. I do this by asking the client for a complete water hose of information — any work already done that could aid in the creation of this new brand: competitive analyses, market research, surveys or customer feedback, and anything else.
If they have an abundance of information, I take every last bit of it, blast Spotify on my headphones, and dive in.
Step 1, Plan B:
If the client has nothing — no current brand guidelines, no research, no customer feedback, or not even a brand — that’s okay, and sometimes even better. If this is the case, I take matters into my own hands. I usually start by asking if they have an email list. I think customer surveys are a great way to see how people feel about a brand and the work or service they provide. Getting into the minds of the customers literally makes me feel like Miss Cleo (call me now for your free readin’). You can show the client insights into what their customers think, which opens doors that they may not have known existed.
Step 2: Ask Questions
Once I have all the information I can get and I’ve completed all the research, I ask myself the following questions:
- Who is this brand?
- Who do they want to be?
- Is who they want to be who they should be?
- Who else is doing this?
- How can this brand differentiate?
Obviously there are more questions that often come up during the process, but these are the few that I feel are most important in capturing the essence of the brand. A lot of the information sent by the client should help me answer these questions on my own, which eliminates the need for them to do all the dirty work. Any further research usually helps me arrive at the answers I need to start digging a bit deeper.
Other questions that may come up throughout the process are noted in my “Personal Notes” document and referred back to once I’m able to effectively answer them.
Step 3: Make Sense of It All
Once I’ve outlined my questions, it’s time to start answering. I don’t simply answer the questions in my head, which may have happened somewhere in Step 2, but I actually write the answers down. By physically typing or writing down the answers to these questions, later I’m able to present everything to the client so they feel confident that I understand their brand, where they want to go, and how they should grow.
Now back to making sense of it all… I’ll put some answers to these questions below for fun:
Q: Who is this brand?
A: Martha Stewart
Q: Who do they want to be?
A: Julia Child
Q: Is who they want to be who they should be?
A: Probably not, because Julia Child is dead and her brand is outdated
Q: Who else is doing this?
A: So many others — Rachel Ray, Giada De Laurentiis, Bobby Flay, the list goes on
Q: How can this brand differentiate?
A: Continue to use Martha’s scandal for positive PR
The last question is what I’ve found to be one of the hardest to answer. New businesses are started every minute, so in my opinion, being able to differentiate is the most challenging quality that contributes to the success of any business. In the case of Martha Stewart, I would continue to use her jail time scandal as an excuse to create more brand exposure and “street cred.” You don’t see Bobby Flay in that type of ideal position.
Step 4: Vomit Lots of Words
Lots and lots and lots of words.
I know the client needs:
- A new name
- A new tagline
- A new logo
Since I’m by no means a designer, this particular example will focus on a new name and tagline. I won’t be arriving at the actual name or tagline in this post, but I’ll outline the process I take to get there. I start with a complete and total brain dump of word vomit (that sounds really gross, but it’s the best way I have to explain it). I literally try and think of every word associated with this particular brand. If it’s Martha Stewart, my brain dump might look something like this:
I start by thinking of these words off the top of my head, and as many as humanly possible, no matter how odd or off they may seem at first. I also have a bunch of really awesome “word tool” sites that help me along the way…
For my word list (this is an obvious one): http://www.thesaurus.com/
For letter combinations: http://www.morewords.com/
For rhyming and unscrambling words: http://www.yougowords.com/
For creating new words: http://www.prefixsuffix.com/rootchart.php
For word association: https://www.niftyword.com/
Once I have all the words in front of me, I start playing around with combinations. Sometimes I put two seemingly unrelated words together and sometimes I try and create new words. If I’ve already understood the brand at this point, sometimes the new name is obvious. Other times, not so much. I continue to use the tools above until I arrive at three to five name options that I feel capture the essence of this new baby brand.
Sometimes the tagline comes to me even before the new name. I find that if I know what a brand wants to be (and what it should be) inside and out, creating a tagline first is a lot more efficient.
Step 5: Push, Pull, and Deliver
This is probably the most important part of really “selling” a brand — not just to the client, but to our team. I want to be just as proud of a new name and tagline as the client and I want it to be thoughtful every step of the way.
Since I’ve taken so many steps to arrive at one short name with one short tagline, I want to outline the process in an easily digestible way. The client doesn’t need to know every last detail about how I arrived at a particular name and tagline, because that’s why they hired us (and it’s boring to hear)… but they do need to know that I’ve done the research, I’ve walked weeks in the brand’s shoes, and there is a reason behind why I chose the new brand name (or few names I’m presenting).
I put together a thoughtful presentation that outlines the questions I asked in Step 2, along with the answers. Then I describe the brand as much as possible and present all of the insights that I pulled from the research. This helps the client understand the thought behind a particular name and tagline. Sometimes I’ll present one name and tagline that I feel strongly about and other times, I feel strongly about three — so I’ll present all three.
When it comes to a rebranding engagement, sometimes presenting quality over quantity wins.
The new name isn’t always received well at first and a lot of times it’s back to the drawing board and that’s totally okay. If this is the case, my goal is to try and top the #1 name choice in the next review. If I spend a couple of weeks churning and I can’t top our #1 choice, then the new brand name is born. Since names can be as subjective as logos, it’s often even more of a challenge to really “sell” an idea simply by using my own words or the words in a presentation. Being able to explain why a certain name fits well for a brand is only the first chapter in a rebranding engagement.
Often clients want to see a logo concept with a particular name in order to truly understand the vision, and rightfully so. Other times, a color palette and a beautiful typeface can help paint the perfect picture of their new baby brand. However, the most important thing to remember, in my opinion, is that a good name with a solid explanation behind it can truly encapsulate the essence of a brand.
If after all of this digging, churning, and questioning, I can answer “what’s in a name?” then our delivery was a success and our new brand is alive and well.
