What's up with the crows?

A rebrand is incredibly nuanced. You want to keep the essence of what you have built, with enough newness to create possibility and excitement. When I set out to rebrand my marketing company, it felt like the sky was the limit. After all, my business name was literally just my name for more than a decade. So where do we go from here? Here's the story. I started by thinking about what inspires me, and I immediately thought of dance. Then came the possible dance-related names: Tempo Creative. Cakewalk Strategy. Downbeat Marketing (ok, that isn't great... but there are no bad ideas when you're brainstorming). Tempo won the preliminaries so off I was to think about a new logo. And then I got stuck. What visual goes with the word tempo? An arrow? A metronome? A racing car? Yuck.

Back to the digital drawing board. Instead of starting with the name, I started to think about striking visuals, and I immediately thought of birds. I have always been attracted to them, and have many iterations of birds around the house – artwork, decorative pillows, drawer pulls, etc. And oh, the logo possibilities! Something about the silhouette of a bird is both simple and mysterious. Love it. But are birds good at marketing? The term "bird brain" seems like that would be a hard no. Google, can you help? Why, yes, she can! This passage from welcomewildlife.com on "The World's Smartest Birds" got me pretty excited: Crows are second only to humans in intelligence. Crows can make and customize tools, reason, understand causality, count up to five and remember human faces... Ok, I can definitely count higher than five. But the point is, some birds are really smart. We may be on to something. Let's see what else we can learn about crows... A crow symbolizes power, intelligence, creativity, courage, determination, flexibility, enchantment, broad-mindedness, playfulness, and mystery. Now I'm sold. In my opinion, all of those adjectives are exactly what good marketing should be! "Crow Creative" felt good but we needed another short word for rhythm's sake. Red Crow Creative? Oops, no. Turns out seeing a red crow means you want to get your freedom back through fighting and violence. A wee bit harsh. Two crows....? Yes. If you look it up, you'll find that two crows signal an arrival of good news.

This crow just had an amazing idea for a client.

So here we are. And the good news is, this marketing stuff isn't just for the birds. We can help you make sense of it once and for all. #twocrows #marketing #branding