When You Make The Call To Change Your Company Name...
As a tech startup, we seem to be making a million decisions a day.. Some decisions are easier than others, like one coffee or 3. Some are more challenging like for example - branding and the name..
I would love to say we had $50,000 to do multiple focus groups and consult with several key PR and branding companies to test various ideas, but did I mention we are a tech startup? When we created Chirpy, we searched for words that were available on all the .com's and then tried to figure out how we would go with a trademark. We've been down this road before with our earlier company ULetters and know how tough it can be to get it all done and trademarked, so we (aka my mother) made the call to name the company Chirpy Oldies. For the record - I was never a fan of the word oldies but as the dutiful cofounder, I chose to market it the best I could and go from there.
Over the next 2 months, we began some trickle facebook marketing to gather some KPI's - this is highly recommended by the way. Total cost was about $400. We then had the good fortune to have a nice branding company call us and offer free advice. They loved our bird that we use as our logo, in fact they loved everything about our company - except, you guessed it - the word Oldies. Let's be frank, the owner of the PR company told me in no uncertain words that the word Oldies would make him run a mile away.. We had just signed our first huge national partner and were about to begin a national launch and PR campaign, oh nooooooo! This was not a how many coffees are we having today decision...
I called our one and only board member for advice.. I felt we needed to make the change now before we started our PR - but realised there was a financial and personal cost involved in this. We agreed we should look at it, so I made the call to my co founder (aka my mother), and told her we needed to seriously look at changing the name. This was my strategy - I knew we needed to change the name but didn't want to just come out and say it, so I pitched it as "let's do some research on further names". That weekend the 3 of us went online and searched for, and bought likely about 20 domain names (as any tech startup typically knows, you often end up with about 50-100 domain names - I mean, you just never know right!), then at 6am Sunday, Carol (my mother) texted me - which was really annoying because that was 3am my time, telling me of the new name idea.
We talked about it, discussed it and liked it. We had a board meeting (sounds official, but think 3 people sharing chips and having coffee) and made the tough call to spend our very much in short supply funding and development team hours to change the name..
When you make that call, it sounds so simple.. Let's just change the name. Easy right? How hard can it be? Answer: VERY! That decision led to a plethora (super big word) of decisions and actions - not to mention a ton of stress and work. It's not just the company name, it's the domain name, it's the email addresses, it's the business cards, it's the linkedin details, its the logo, its the branding, it's the polo shirts that were in mid design, it's the landing page redirections. It's changing all the automated emails that include the old company name, its changing all the words on the web site, and on and on and on and on....
Despite all that work - the tech team did a miracle and pulled it off (I owe all of them a lifetime supply of red bull). We totally rebranded, edited, redesigned, and did it all within 72 hours.... Do we regret it? Not at all - I wouldn't have minded getting some more sleep - but hey - we're a tech startup and that's what we do right?
Overall, the change cost us a week. That's it. And now we have a name and branding that we love, our partners love, and our members love.
If you are out there and frustrated with your name and branding but are afraid to make the change. Don't be. It's never too late or too hard to make the right decision.
By Shaun Mahoney, Co Founder of Chirpy Plus
If you want more details, or want to write about Chirpy or would like a funny photograph or are ever on the Sunshine Coast and want a coffee - hit me up! We live and breathe on coffee...