Over the last few months, I’ve been working hard behind the scenes on create a new brand for my agency.
Today, I can FINALLY reveal it to the world!
Introducing… Yatter.
In this short article I share why I wanted to create a new agency brand… and I’ve roped in the guy who helped make it happen, Daniel from Vie Design Co. to share some of his thoughts.
Firstly, why did I decide to create a new agency brand?
Years ago, when I first launched my company, I operated under the name, Blue Cliff Media.
Although I liked it at the time, I slowly fell out of love with it. It felt very corporate and I quickly began to dislike it.
A couple of years later, I scrapped the name and decided to operate under my own personal brand.
And that has been great…
We’ve grown a lot, have built a great team and currently manage over $3m in client ad spend every year.
But last year I made a tough realisation: what got us to here isn’t going to get us to the next step.
Which is to scale and acquire other companies.
The problem with operating as a personal brand is:
- You become tied to the work. The clients want YOU not your team
- The company isn’t worth much (if anything) because it’s directly tied to you
- It’s much harder for you as the owner to “let go” as all output is tied to your identity
So in December I hired a branding agency, Vie Design Co, and over the last few months I’ve been working closely with Daniel at Vie to create a new brand that I love.
It’s been a long, tiring process. But we’ve made it… and I’m so glad I can share it with the world now.
A brand isn’t just a logo and some colours, it encompasses everything. How you work, who you are, how you act, the experience that you give to your customers. Everything.
It feels like a breath of fresh air.
The brief
My brief was pretty simple.
Almost every time I speak to a new client, I hear the same story: they’ve been screwed over by previous agencies.
Typically they’ve:
- Worked with someone who had no idea what they were doing (typically someone who’s bought a “how to run an agency” $997 course)
- Worked with a big agency who paid them no attention
This infuriates me. The marketing world is filled with crooks.
And so I wanted a brand that stood out from the crowd.
I wanted something that is fun and exciting but also has a serious side (ie, getting results).
I get a lot of inspiration from the SaaS and Startup world, so I wanted to steer in that direction instead of the typically-fluffy marketing world.
Where did “Yatter” come from?
As part of the process with Vie Design, we spent a fair amount of time on the name.
I left a lot of the heavy lifting to them, but would occasionally send big mind dumps of what was going through my head.
The process of rebranding (especially the name) was all encompassing. I couldn’t NOT think about it. I’d be lying in bed and potential names would come to mind. You can see at one point I was loving the word paradormirmejor.org “ad”, lol.
Daniel from Vie worked with my thoughts but worked through his own process, before presenting name ideas to me. It took about 2-3 cycles before we landed on the name, Yatter. Here’s what Daniel had to say about coming up with the name:
Yatter came from hours of hard work and brainstorming! In literal terms in means to talk incessantly. But for me it connected perfectly to what Gavins business is all about. For me social media is very much a digital conversation starting tool. As a business Yatter’s goal is to get more customers through your door, communication is very much at the heart of everything they do. The word itself also carries the perfect casual connotation which fits perfectly with the archetypes we’ve worked to form.
With the name I did have some set criteria:
- Is it taken?
- Is it simple?
- Does it sound good?
- Is it sensible?
- Is it broad?
Let’s quickly run through them:
Is it taken? – Nope! The domain Yatter.com has been taken, so we’ve gone for weareyatter.com instead.
Is it simple? – Sure is! Doesn’t get much simpler. I didn’t want something that I’d have to spell out or elaborate on when speaking to people.
Does it sound good? – This was key for me. I wanted something that was nice to say. I think it sounds nice!
Is it sensible? – It sure is. I didn’t want to go too left-field, calling it something like “Orange Donkey Digital” (which seems to be the thing to do these days!)
Is it broad? – In the future I want to acquire other companies so I wanted something broad that can stand the test of time. I didn’t want something with “leads” or “ads” in it.
All in all – I absolutely love the name.
It was a painful process to go through – but I’m delighted now we’re out the other end!
What was the process?
I’m going to pass over to Daniel to explain this:
My entire brand development process, developed over the last 24 months is called The Unfair Advantage™. It gives focused and driven entrepreneurs like Gavin a brand that he can get behind as a business. As part of my process we have a series of focused strategy workshops which uncover brand fundamentals. Archetype, traits and tone of voice. The style itself came out of a dedicated style workshop and mood boarding session.
And when I asked Daniel what he wanted to achieve with the brand, here’s what he had to say:
Gavin has an ambitious growth plan for Yatter. It was important for Gavin and myself to develop a brand that stood on its own. Had an identity backed by core values and showcased where he’s already led the business, plus what it stands for. We needed a brand and identity that Gavin could feel proud of as it grows, something that everyone involved would be able to get behind.
Now what?
The rebrand for me isn’t just a change of name, colours and visual “stuff”. It’s more than that.
It’s a complete identity shift in what we do and how we do it.
Quite frankly, the marketing industry is a mess. There are far too many people out there selling services they can’t fulfil… which has created an obscene level of mistrust.
We want to make the marketing world a better place and the only way to do that is through education, providing excellent customer service and getting results.
The rebrand has given us an opportunity to do that.
I can’t wait to share the journey with you.
If you haven’t already seen, every month I’m going to be writing a report on how the agency is growing and progressing. I’ve written two so far (January and February). If you’d like to follow on the journey, be sure to subscribe here.
Thanks for reading!
Gavin
