StartUps, don’t worry, it can be pain free to change the name of your company!

A couple of days ago, the European leader in Data Management, TagCommander announced its change of name to Commanders Act. Based in Paris, the company has over 400 clients in 17 countries. Michael Froment, CoFounder and CEO shares with XAnge his experience of changing a company name.

Changing to give a bigger picture

TagCommander has been developing a SaaS solution which allows brands to take back the control over their tags lifecycle to improve their marketing performance. Tag Management is today an excellent way to leverage customer data and its activity goes much beyond optimizing the lifecycle of tags.

A decision that comes from the client

The decision to change the brand was initiated during a business seminar with top management about the future of the company. We realized that some of our customers didn’t perceive us as a data actor because our brand name anchored us too much on the tag side. We knew then, something had to change.

Being called TagCommander was restrictive for the image whose business is not just tag management but data altogether — even if it often starts with tag management. We wanted to address this message to our clients, the market and our team.

Brand name is not just window dressing. It’s a change of vision for your teams

Branding is more than a logo and tagline of a company. It is the company’s promise, the company’s DNA. It is what people see and understand about a company ~ the company’s image, reputation, and what they stand for. It is built over a period of time, with the company’s employees working together as ambassadors of the brand strategy. Brand management requires a long-term commitment and willingness to invest in understanding customer behavior, perception, and needs and in understanding market trends, pressures, and attitudes. It also requires a conscious effort to manage all aspects of the brand through all company communications and activities.

A change of brand could be stressful for employees who have joined a certain company and can feel lost. We needed to reassure our teams. For that, we worked on a booklet with a set of guidelines around the brand including its vision, missions, values and positioning.

Involving your team in the process

So that the employees felt involved in this change, Commanders Act top management set up a game with a trip for two to New York to win. During a couple of weeks, the employees could come up with ideas for a new name. “We received up to 210 proposals with some great names” explains Michael Froment. At the end, none of them were chosen because the domain names were already taken or the trademark already registered.

Even if no one won the trip, we felt it was a good federating moment for the team.

I would have liked it to be faster

When changing the name of your company, it takes a lot of time. It took us a year from the brainstorming to choosing the name and then applying the new brand identity to all of our documents. Two external people played a major part in its development and implementation: an artistic director worked on the graphic layout, a key element for the teams and an external consultant, who had worked on rebranding in the past, checked that the name would be valid at an international level.

Ensuring the link with the new branding

We are starting off from scratch with the new name as well as being in the continuity by keeping the word “Commander” that emphasizes our branding as well as adding a contribution to growth through measurable actions. We wish to be seen as a direct contributor to performance throughout the use of data.

Next steps: Brand awareness

The rebranding activity itself was not so complex. The main difficult part was to aggregate our team around a new vision. Now we are entering into another difficult task which is to regain a brand awareness with our new brand name !

In 2017, Commanders Act’s ambition is to become a major Data Management Platform (DMP) player with a focus on brands collaborating together rather than competing. Efficiency and performance are the key words in our strategy.