What’s in a name?
For Springfield-based Enactus, it started with 4,500 names, whittled down to 450, then 40 and finally three finalists. All in a span of a year and a half. Gulp.
It’s no wonder the marketing team felt like they collapsed at the starting line when they unveiled the Enactus brand at the World Cup in October 2012. So much history changed so quickly that evening on a convention center stage in Washington, D.C.
Since 1975, the global organization was known as Students in Free Enterprise, the acronym SIFE or some mixture of the two. The tides began to turn in the mid-1990s as the company organically moved from a small, regional organization to a global entity serving business students in nearly 2,000 schools across 47 countries. “Students in” had linguistic difficulties, and “free enterprise” was clearly an American concept without global appeal.
More than a year ago, SIFE rolled out its rebranded image stemming from the strategic mission of “enabling progress through entrepreneurial action” on a worldwide level. But it didn’t get there overnight.
I sat down recently with Enactus Chief Marketing Director Mat Burton to get the skinny on the deep dive he led to come away with the Enactus name and the market reaction in the months since it launched.
A May 2011 board meeting got the ball rolling and, with approval in hand, a first step was engaging a global branding agency. Out of a half-dozen in the marketplace, the rebranding team selected Landor Associates. With its 25 offices in 19 countries, the Landor team generated some 4,500 names, assigned 450 to a top-level legal screening with a trademark litmus test and turned over 34 to Burton and crew.
“This became as much a legal exercise as it was a creative exercise,” Burton says.
Another 250 names were suggested by SIFE members, 12 of which went through legal searches before advancing five more. So, 39 names were brought to three for a deep trademark search by country.
What were the three finalists?
“Can’t tell you that,” Burton quickly replies.
He couldn’t even tell his team – only a half-dozen staff members knew – some of whom had critical roles in the development process. Burton recommends being very informative about the process but holding certain content tightly.
“Everybody has their own tastes,” he says. “You want standards to drive creative.”
While engaging students, corporate donors, faculty advisers and alumni, as well as executives not involved with the organization, Burton says they realized what got SIFE to that point wasn’t going to be what moves it forward.
“We ought to have a name that works harder,” he says of the research outcomes.
So they got to work on name ideation, which simplified consists of three selections:
- Direct (such as Feeding America) or indirect (Goodwill) names.
- Abstract (Apple), suggestive (Goodwill) or descriptive (American Kidney Foundation).
- Real (Apple, as an abstract example; or Goodwill, suggestive) or coined (Hulu, abstract; Surfrider, suggestive; AmeriCares, descriptive).
“It’s a map,” Burton suggests. “Ask: Where on this do we want to be?” The process led Burton’s team to a coined word with big meaning behind it: entrepreneurial action by us.
Enactus passed the functional and strategic filters: the organization could own it, it worked globally, it didn’t have a place and it continues to tell the story.
But even with solid strategy, settling on the new name wasn’t that easy. Consultants told Burton, “None of the names will sound good to you.” They were right.
“It was highly uncomfortable,” he admits.
The group selected Enactus four months before its announcement, and the team kept it under wraps while obtaining trademarks in 40 countries, redesigning the website and social platforms, and creating logo identity and promotions.
Remember, this is a group that educates and fosters student development for the corporate world, with donors six figures and up such as Unilever, Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola. A hiccup in this process would be a major hit on the integrity of the organization. Other brands surely have backpedaled from branding changes, and on the front of Burton’s mind were simple logo alterations by Gap, Tropicana and the University of California system that flopped in the public space. That was his worst nightmare.
Looking back on the process – Enactus completed conversion of its 1,600 schools in nearly 40 countries in August – Burton says the keys were seeking input early on, explaining the strategy to constituents and thinking through the announcement and rollout. It also helped that partners Landor and the trademark attorneys completed more than half of the work pro bono so costs were held under $1 million.
“It has not been perfect,” he notes. “We could have probably still worked harder to communicate with people.”
Burton also would have paced himself for what ended up being a two-and-a-half-year project. “You get tired,” he says. “It’s easy to underestimate how long a period of time it’s going to dominate your attention and take your energy. And it’s such an emotionally charged experience.”
He especially cautions against thinking the announcement is the end goal.
“It feels like it’s the finish line, but it’s really the starting line. The problem is how much energy it took to get to the starting line.
“You just want to be really careful,” he says, “the finish line is not the launch.”
That said, the Enactus name is on its second lap.
Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.
