One Year of Devise — How We Got Here

There’s a curious phenomenon we see again and again during rebranding projects: the first name we come up with often ends up being the last one standing. This isn’t always the case, and even a favorite name can come tumbling down after a legal review process, but it did hold true for our agency rebrand. Devise was on the list of names before the proper brainstorming began, and through round after round of debate, it remained at the top.

Really, this isn’t that surprising. Any naming search follows a lengthy investigation process where we get to know a brand, its audience, its voice, and its vision. With the legwork done, the right name can surface almost automatically. And while we certainly already knew ourselves pretty well, that didn’t stop us from performing the same in-depth research we would do for a client. We sent out surveys, interviewed stakeholders, and performed a competitive analysis. After all of that, Devise was the clear winner.

Now that it’s been a full year with our new name (and we’ve finally stopped erroneously referring to ourselves as Blue Collar) we thought it would be fun to take a look back at the process and reveal what went on behind the scenes, including some other names that ultimately didn’t make the cut.

The Devise debate

On the whole, devise is a pretty innocuous word. Its most common synonyms include develop, plan, formulate, invent, and dream up — all words that describe what we do. Dig into the etymology, however, and you can trace its lineage through Old English and Old French to the Latin verb dividere, which means “to divide.” And other synonyms, while technically neutral, can carry a negative connotation: to contrive, scheme, or fabricate.

This triggered a healthy internal debate around whether ‘Devise’ was indeed the best choice for our agency. In the end, it became clear that our hesitations were probably overblown. Whatever its etymology, the modern definition of the English word devise isn’t about division, and it is no more associated with a negative synonym than the word plan is.

What was clear, however, is that we wanted to make sure we were ready to own the conversation around our use of Devise as a name; it was critical to know how we defined it and be ready to tell that story. You can see an example of that in our logo, which breaks the name onto two lines to draw attention to the first syllable, Dev, connecting the name to development.

What could have been

While Devise was the early frontrunner, a naming search is never that easy. We auditioned a long list of names before finally solidifying our choice, a few of which we’ll examine here to reveal why they didn’t make the cut.

Adjective

Adjectives are attributes that modify nouns. They take a thing and turn it into a more interesting, unique, or attention-grabbing thing (see what I did there?). The horse becomes the tired, burdened horse. (You didn’t care about the horse at first, but now you’re wondering why it’s tired and burdened.) Adjectives are storytelling words, and since storytelling is basically what we do, the name made sense. On the downside, the word’s a bit of a mouthful and legally clearing it would have been near impossible.

Chrysalis/Cocoon

These options evoke the idea of development and evolution. Chrysalis is an objectively cool word, but it’s a bit long. What really killed it, though, was when we tried to imagine a logo — things got way too complicated way too fast.

Duality

A pretty straightforward take on our hybrid right-brain/left-brain approach. It wasn’t a bad choice, but it didn’t stand out from the crowd and some potential trademark conflicts may have made it difficult to secure.

Fathom

As a noun, fathom implies depth. As a verb, to fathom means to understand or make sense of. Both create a nice image for a creative agency that dives deep into research to understand the ocean in which its clients swim, but Fathom as a name failed to float to the surface and also had some trademark concerns.

Massive

A weighty name intended to describe our big ideas but which too easily came across as self-aggrandizing. Also, it probably would have been a trademark nightmare.

Seaplane

Believe it or not, this was the runner-up to Devise. A seaplane operates seamlessly in two different mediums (air and water), a choice metaphor for how we work in both the structured arena of research and data and the chaotic, messy realm of creativity. But despite how much we liked it, the name soon fell apart. Seaplanes are bulky and slow, not an image we want representing us. And as for working across two mediums, well, any airplane does that — if it’s not air and water, it’s air and land.

Tiny Monster

This one was pretty much dead on arrival. We loved how it played to our small-but-fierce creative energy, but it left out the more staid — but equally important — strategic side of the business.

A beautiful mess

We hope you enjoyed this look behind the curtain. Rebranding is an electrifying, challenging, and messy process. While we’ve done it countless times for clients, applying our process to our own brand was a new challenge. It also gave us this opportunity to share a deeper look into the naming process, something that is usually not made public.

You can see more of our branding projects on our Work page (hint: click “By Type” and then “Branding” to filter the results).