Edition 11 - A rose by another other name and all that.

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Last week was our 6th birthday at 11:FS, and I stood up at our weekly town hall and told people the process we went through back in 2016 to name the company in the first place.

I thought you would find this helpful, and there are a few morals there that I think you will like. Enjoy.

A rose by any other name.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

It's a very popular adage from William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. Juliet seems to argue that it does not matter that Romeo is from her family's rival house of Montague. The reference states that the names of things do not affect what they are.?

I cannot think of 11:FS, the company we formed in 2016 to change the fabric of financial services, could be the same without being called 11:FS. It would be blasphemous after six years.

What is in a name? What makes a good one? How do you name something? How do you name something?

How do you name a thing?

I'd never named a thing. Although, to be honest, my wife picked the names for both our kids. I'm super happy with them (Josh and Ivy for info!), but I couldn't claim that I named them, although I was involved!?

The same goes for 11:FS; while I was involved, I didn't have the final say, but thankfully we had a namer extraordinaire in the shape of Jason Bates to help who is one of the other founders of 11:FS.?

Jason has the odd claim to fame that he named Starling, Mondo and Monzo (I think that might be some sort of Guinness world record thing that I might look into for him!) before this, so really, we put our creative selves in his hands, and this is what he thinks makes a good name for something.

His criteria for a great name:

• Distinctiveness - Does it stand out from the crowd with the presence of a 'proper noun'?
• Fit - Does it fit with us and embody what we provide, who we are as a group?
• Brevity - Is it short enough to be recalled and used without needing a short nickname?
• Easy to spell and say - can customers write it down, search for us easily?
• Likability - Is it enjoyable to display and use?
• Extendability - can we use it visually in presentations with different creative executions?
• Legal - Can it be trademarked?
• Boardroom discussion - can the CEO refer to us without rolling their eyes?

With these things in mind, we got to grips with something challenging. What did we want to be when we grew up? What were the brand promises implied when people utter that word.

For us, these are:?

1. Experts
2. Different/Unique
3. Innovators
4. Trusted Advisors
5. Thought leaders
6. Bring Clarity
7. Simple
8. Technologists
9. Design matters a lot.?
10. Move paradigms
11. Confidence
12. "Household" names
13. Grownup

While we might have a little way to go on 12 and 13 (okay particular 13!), then we have made a good level of an inroad into the rest of them in the first six years, which probably speaks to why we have had the level of success that we have had.?

The Process

With this course set, we entered into the feeding frenzy of a joint naming session using a Google Doc. It is always a laugh if you haven't done it.

In a matter of days, we had 111 names in a document. We should have known then, shouldn't we? With some of my most random favourites being; Alt Shift, The Black Catalysts (which I'm sure would be a great band name!), Banking Avengers (because we are children!), Rebel, Future Financial Services (because I wanted people to tell people they were working with FFS) and lastly and most randomly The Eggs of Columbus.

The Eggs of Columbus are, as Wikipedia says, refers to a brilliant idea or discovery that seems simple or easy after the fact. While this would be funny, it's probably a little highbrow for what we were aiming for.

Anyways after a range of voting, we got to a shortlist. I can remember the meeting that the small team was in where we read through them one at a time out loud:?

• Red Team
• FSR - Financials Services Rethought
• The Cavalry
• Eleven
• FS+?
• Bank Fresh
• Outside the Box
• Think Outside
• Sparkline

We read through them about 15 times, and purely by luck, Eleven and FS+ were sitting next to one another. We instantly liked the sound of that together and quickly became ElevenFS.

The apparent alignment with the 1980 rockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap" made the in-joke fun with jokes about taking the financial services industry beyond just the normal range of what good was but all the way up to Eleven aplenty.

We were even happier when we decided to make the Eleven into 11. Smug, as we knew, we just hacked being towards the top of every alphabetical listing ever.

Giving something meaning.

What is clear to me after six years of long days, weekends and loads of gaffs and laughs is that what you call something is not that important.?

Who would have thought something named after an 80s rockumentary joke and an attempt to hack alphabetical lists would achieve so much?

Something gains meaning for what it represents to others, not what it means to you. Reputation, therefore, is more important than the cleanness of your brand logo or the name, for that matter.?

What 11:FS stands for today is all the things we set out for it to do, and that is because of all the people who have worked with, for and alongside us on that journey from April 2016 all the way to today and beyond.

Meaning is given through a shared belief and common goal. Through purpose, hard work and determination and primarily through loyalty.

So that was that, and we were called 11:FS. We had a brand, but we had no money, no customers, no products, and no one had ever heard of us. It was the beginning of a fantastic journey and one that we are only scratching the surface of the success that we will create.

The story that Ross Methven, who is one of the other 11:FS co-founders, reminded me of the other day, about how we bought the 11FS.com domain from someone in China via google translate because I speak no Mandarin and they spoke no English is a whole different story.

Thanks for reading. Like, share and subscribe and don't forget if you want to chat, let me know.

See you next week.

Dx