What’s in a name?

In this case, our name?

We’re not far off celebrating our first birthday and wow, what an amazing first year! To celebrate we’ve just given ourselves a whole new look and are close to launching our new website. As it all comes together, it feels like a good time to reflect on where our brand started.

When you first set up a business, deciding on the name is a big decision (like naming your child, it’s should ideally last their entire life and you’re responsible).

Does it really represent what you’re trying to do? Will customers get it and buy into it? Will it be something that future employees can feel part of? Can you look at it every single day and still like it years later? Is there enough meaning to it so that when someone asks, “where did the name come from?”, you don’t just shrug your shoulders and say, “dunno, I guess it was because the URL was free?”

For us, it had to be yes to all of these things, and it had to be something that represented us, our way of thinking and the purpose of our businesses. And like us, it had to be straight to the point, something that just says it as it is.

So, if we were going to ‘say it as it is’, what were we saying?

Business is changing rapidly, competition is increasing, and that means more choice for customers. It allows them to be less accepting and more demanding, especially when it comes to deciding who they want to buy from.

Yet we found that very few organisations genuinely respond to this challenge.

Given the complexity or scale of many offers within the B2B market, it’s hard to see where the true value lies. Or agree on it. Which means that the value is everywhere, but nowhere at the same time, because the same tactics or approaches are used simply because they worked before.

We saw that the opportunity was to do things differently, or properly, whichever way you want to describe it. Start with the challenge or opportunity and create the idea that solves it or capitalises on it. The most appropriate tactics will always follow. Do it the other way around and you’ll always bet trying to fit an idea into an HTML email!

Enter Differentiated…

Our purpose, summed up, was to change this phenomenon…

To help our customers to get their customers to understand what they do, what their value is and ultimately choose them over the competition.

How? By putting an end to the assumption that because it’s business, it has to be boring. To help those big businesses to do more things with originality, to inspire people, to stand-out…to be well, differentiated. So Differentiated was born…because making our customers ‘Differentiated’ is what we’re good at…it’s our thing and always will be (AND the URL was available).

Jenna Bell,
Client Strategy Director,
Differentiated