Welcome to Devise

What’s in a name? If you ask a branding agency, quite a lot.

Blue Collar Agency was born in 2008 at the height of the Great Recession. The name established our commitment to the blue-collar values of honesty, hard work, and expert craftsmanship. It was a rejection of the Wall Street money-grubbing culture running rampant at the time. We wanted to be different, and we were.

It’s a chapter of our story we’re proud of, but it’s time to turn the page.

Enter Devise. Our new name and brand signal what we’ve become: a research-first agency that thrives at the intersection of technology and creativity. We have always prided ourselves on being adaptable; now, as ad tech and A.I. usher in new waves of change, it’s time to prove it. Devise is how we’ll plot our path forward.

As a word, devise has many meanings: to invent, formulate, conceive, dream up. This elegantly sums up how we approach our work. We analyze, ask hard questions, and peer beneath the surface of every assignment, so that when we put pen to paper, that first stroke is not just an artful flourish, but a calculated and precise mark. It’s insightful imagination, driven by data and free of subjectivity.

Research First

We love rebrands. Doing one for ourselves is particularly exciting — but it’s important to make sure we’re doing it for the right reasons. That’s why we applied the same process we use with our clients, starting with stakeholder interviews. This always enlightening, occasionally humbling process was imperative to capturing the external perspective of our business. Crucially, it reassured us we were making the right choice: a new brand was needed.

When we started the search for a name, we knew we needed something that would allow us to own the story behind it. With Blue Collar, there were certain associations people made with the name that didn’t always align with who we were or the types of clients we served. The meaning behind Devise is ambiguous enough to allow us to fully craft our identity around it. It makes it easier to speak to the breadth of industries we serve in both B2B and B2C environments.

Rest assured, while “work first” has vanished from our header, its spirit remains alive. We dive into data, talk openly and candidly about our capabilities, and create relentlessly. We’re the same dedicated, fun-loving, scrappy-when-we-need-to-be people who push our egos aside and let the work shine on its own.

Welcome to Devise. We invite you to look around our new site and get (re)acquainted with our work.