So… what’s in a name?

I have a new-found respect for those well-known brands who have made bold decisions to change their name (and/or branding).

We’re on the verge of launching our new brand, and it’s very exciting. But it’s also mildly terrifying, edge-of-the-seat type stuff. Our decision to “go public” and invite the views of our key stakeholders, has led to some amazing insights, some frank opinions, and even some (friendly) old faces coming out of the woodwork!

Ripping apart our offer, stripping us back to the core DNA of what we stand for, has become par for the course

Over the last few months, we’ve been through a bit of an emotional roller-coaster as we’ve been put through our paces by our talented friends at Nice and Serious. Ripping apart our offer, stripping us back to the core DNA of what we stand for, has become par for the course. Those guys aren’t butchers though — We’re doing it in your best interests, they said. Trust us, they said.

It would have been easy to take some quick unilateral decisions on what felt right, based on gut instinct. But that would have denied us the insight and buy-in of our brilliantly loyal and supportive membership. Why would an organisation with over 12,000 members not make use of this fantastic resource? Doing it any other way felt un-democratic at best… rude, at worst.

So we took the hard route. We asked each and every ‘project admin’ in our network. We sent round a survey with two final options for the logo and two final options for our new tagline and description. But that’s jumping ahead a bit.

Through this process, we had to ask some tough questions: Are we a network? a hub? a platform? We held phone interviews, set up a workshop with a sample of our customers and community members — and had to leave the room. We highlighted our strengths, brainstormed ‘long lists’ of potential names, sent them back to the drawing board and discussed colour palettes: all part of the journey to get to that stage.

The Project Dirt rebranding survey that was sent to over +2,000 project admins.

It would be fair to say the results of our survey were split. But, whilst interesting, the results weren’t what it was all about. Hearing people’s opinions through the comments were just as useful, if not more so, and as Mozilla said in their inclusive rebranding process — this was about encouraging people to feel part of the journey and to help guide our decision, not to make it for us.

Not everyone will like it immediately, but that would be a tall order for a brand that's been part of many thousands of people's lives for almost ten years.

Where did we end up? You can find out soon when we launch our new brand. We hope you will love it. Not everyone will like it immediately, but that would be a tall order for a brand that’s been part of many thousands of people’s lives for almost ten years. What we can say is that we’re happy and that we believe it will set us up for better visibility and strong growth in the next part of our journey, which in turn will lead us to have an even bigger social impact. Please join us for that — we’re sure it will be fun.