In 2007-2008, we worked with Sant Corporation, a Cincinnati-based provider of sales automation solutions, to redesign their website. The successful relaunch helped boost pageviews and increase leads for Sant Suite, their popular proposal, presentation, and RFP software.
In June of 2010, Sant merged with another player in the sales enablement space, Massachusetts-based, Kadient Inc. While the two companies continued to operate under their separate brand names, they approached the Creative Department to help them create a new unified brand.
It began with a name.
Sant and Kadient engaged Minneapolis-based, Strategic Name Development to create a name that was unique and ownable — a name that could allow them to easily establish an online presence for their combined service offering. After a few rounds of name generation, the marketing teams at Sant and Kadient selected Qvidian from a pool of nearly 100 names.
While Strategic Name Development had solid reasoning for what Qvidian meant – we knew from past experience that a name doesn’t mean anything until people actually interact with the product or service.
Look at the iPad, for example. When announced, the name was ridiculed in the blogosphere for sounding like a feminine hygiene product. But now, a year later, Apple is having the last laugh. They sold nearly 15 million iPads in 2010 – more than doubling the closest analyst estimate – and nobody thinks about the name anymore because the product is so revolutionary.
So, when we started down the brand positioning path with this new name, we chose to focus NOT on what the word meant, but instead on what the brand could ultimately represent.
We began by asking a few questions.
READ Part 2: Finding the Sweet Spot»
