The question most of our customers will be asking is: why the name change? We thought we’d write this post to share our reasons for re-branding and the process we went through to reach our name and brand.
Setting the scene
It was the end of March 2008 and we’d just been to see a talk by Jonathan Sands of Elmwood. It was a creatively inspiring talk which showcased some of the company’s achievements. We’d had nagging doubts about our image for some time, and at this point, despite confidence in our capabilities, we realised that couldn’t get to where we wanted to be with our existing name and image.
We had been consistently improving our standard of work and adding some impressive names to our client base, but our image wasn’t giving us the springboard to promote that. Somehow Sterling Work didn’t fit anymore.
The problem with “Sterling Work”
Over time we realised that there were actually lots of things wrong with “Sterling Work”, but we’ll attempt to summarise:
- Spelling and Pronunciation – It was impractical, often being misspelled (‘Stirling’, ‘Sterling Works’) and it didn’t roll easily off the tongue. It didn’t sound very friendly or welcoming either.
- Visual – The varying lengths of the two words meant that it was difficult to work with.
- Associations – It had the wrong connotations (a bunch of nice chaps doing a good old fashioned ‘Sterling’ job). This wasn’t representative of us or the work we do, which in some ways made it creatively restricting.
Rules are good
We appreciated from the outset that finding a new name would not be easy. We had already completed naming programmes successfully for some of our clients, so we knew that we would need a prolific output of suggestions. But where to start? We had the vision for the type of image we wanted to create, so we imposed a set of rules on ourselves to help us stay on track and narrow things down a little:
1. Must be an English word or a combination of English words
2. Must not be more than 2 words long
3. Must not include more than 3 syllables (easy to pronounce)
4. Must be easy to spell (unambiguous spelling)
5. Must not sound too masculine or too feminine
6. Must not sound too creative (quirky) or too technical
7. Must sound friendly and approachable
Brainstorming begins
Rightly or wrongly, we decided that everyone should have an input throughout the naming process. We had to accept early on that with the variety of input of all five of us there would be mixed reactions and the chosen name might not be everyone’s ‘favourite’.
So we set up a Basecamp project and started a naming Writeboard – any name idea that loosely fitted the criteria went in at this early stage and we listed around 1021 (yes, we counted) names in total.
At group meetings we assessed every single name more strictly against our criteria and started shortlisting. We also had to account for domain name availability and avoid a clash with another agency of the same name. With all this to consider, the whole process involved a lot more meetings than anticipated, and these were usually filled with plenty of lively discussion and banter.
A tricky decision
This is one of the toughest things we have done. Inevitably it was more difficult to remain objective when re-branding ourselves (we’d never tried that before). However, the structure we had applied to the process paid off as the cream seemed to rise to the top during shortlisting.
And the winner is…
We unanimously chose Coolbox as the best option from our final shortlist. We all liked the positive associations of the name (sandwiches and the seaside) and we were confident that it would give us a good platform on which to build a brand.
Back to business
With the re-brand completed (phew!), it’s now all about what we can do for you. We hope you like the new look and we want to know what you think, so please send us your comments below.
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Fantastic rebranding job – love the site, love the name, love the tone of voice. An excellent job and I’ve no doubt will be the springboard to more success! Well done guys.
Thanks Neil, much appreciated and glad you like it!
Very cool rebranding “BEST EVER”
I like it! It’s really cool (no pun intended). I like the site too. I think I was on the site for 25 minutes. It is certainly a needed shift to reflect the progress you’ve made. I hope you get some more good feedback.
Fantastic site, and great re-branding. Shows a very professional team and the excellent work you guys do.
Love it!!! Great job on the brand, design, site. Looking forward to a few beers with a coolbox in the park now!!! Best of luck with it.
New site and brand looks awesome, love the slider on the home page! The site is now reflective of where you’re at as a company and shows the quality your clients can expect to receive. Well done!
Thanks to everyone for their comments so far. It has been great for us to see such a positive response to the re-brand. I thought I’d share a few more snippets of feedback:
“Looks really good – all the very best to you and the team under the new brand.”
“Congratulations on the name change and new look. Love the website. Look forward to continuing working with you…”
“Great work – you’ve certainly grown your business over the last few years.”
“love it!!!!”
“Just wanted to say that I thought this was great. I know so much more about what you do than I did previously – so I reckon it’ll be good for business too.”