It Must Be Brilliant
Breaking Out. And Fitting In
How do you create a name that instantly both defines and defies its category? A name that says: No ordinary energy company. And: Not a niche player. One that communicates an unmistakably major force.
That was more or less the brief from the client, along with:
- A request for a five letter word starting at the beginning of the alphabet
- An unstated preference for a natural language word
- An implicit ban on using “en” for energy in the name
Never mind that domain speculators already own most of the pronounceable letter combinations.
No Time Like Now
To top it off, we had to meet an improbable deadline. Code-named Mergeco, this energy powerhouse was to be formed from the pending union of three major utilities: Enersource, Horizon Utilities and Power Stream. Once the approval came through, everything had to be ready to go.
Deadlines required that the Ove team develop the name and the brand strategy simultaneously, not sequentially…and that we present name options well before the strategy was baked.
This amplified all the usual challenges of naming: availability, target definition, emotionality, conceptual trickiness and consensus-building.
Painting Pictures
We are able to pull off the improbable in part becuase of our experience naming energy giants like Emera and Terasen. Equally important was our exerpience with helping major enterprises de-institutionalize their brands and become forward-looking and human-centred. This gave us an insitinctual feel for the name profile – what it might look like, feel like and express. And what might actually be available.
To help the client acclimatize to name options, and see the potential in each, we painted inspiring storey-pictures for the names on the short list.
BTW: Alectra comes from the Greek meaning shining, bright, radiant.
The Team
Naming, Naming Strategy & Slogan Exploration: Harry Cornelius, Sideren
Design Partner: Ove Brand Design
