Identity/biometrics/technology marketing and writing services
When I established the Bredemarket Yelp account, I sadly had to inform two inquirers that my services (what I do) did not include resume writing services.
But I just discovered that if you are near Upland, California, you can obtain resume writing services for free.
Today (March 29) and every Tuesday at 4:00 pm, the Upland Library hosts a resume writing workshop, “Resume Runners.” And unlike Bredemarket’s services, Upland Library services are free.
Companies must choose how their marketing will address their competitors. Some choose to ignore the competition, while others publicly target them. And some companies do both simultaneously.
Trellix, the company that emerged from the combination of McAfee Enterprise and FireEye, chose the to target its competitors. Trellix’s website contains two pages that target two specific competitors.
For its part, CrowdStrike offers comparisons against both SentinelOne and “McAfee,” while SentinelOne offers comparisons against both CrowdStrike and “McAfee.” Apparently these firms need to update their pages to reflect the new company name (and possibly new features) of Trellix.
Obviously the endpoint protection industry demands these types of comparisons to sway buyers to choose one product over another.
But competitor targeting is also used by upcoming firms to displace established ones. I’ve previously talked about (then) Apple Computer’s famous “Welcome, IBM. Seriously” ad “welcoming” IBM to the personal computer industry. This was part of Steve Jobs’ multi-year effort to grow Apple by targeting and displacing IBM. But while IBM was the clear target, Apple also targeted everyone else, as Bill Murphy, Jr. noted:
Added benefit: There were actually other personal computer companies that were just as successful as Apple at the time, like Commodore, Tandy, and Osborne. The Apple ad ignored them.
From https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/37-years-ago-steve-jobs-ran-apples-most-amazing-ad-heres-story-its-almost-been-forgotten.html
By framing the circa 1981 computer industry as a battle between the Apple and IBM, Jobs captured the world’s attention. Not only by positioning Apple as David in a battle against Goliath, but by positioning Apple as one of only two companies that mattered. This marketing would reach its peak three years later, in 1984.
After 1984, the computer world changed dramatically (as it always does), with other companies creating what were then called “clones,” as well as the massive changes at both IBM and “Apple Computer” (now Apple).
Eventually, small spunky outfits challenged Apple itself, with Fortnite in particular targeting Apple’s requirement that Fortnite exclusively use Apple payments.
The decision on whether or not to publicly acknowledge and target competitors varies depending upon a company’s culture and its market position.
I need to step up my act regarding marketing, both for Bredemarket and my clients. In both cases, it’s critical that the word gets out quickly to potential clients.
For example, I drafted this post on Monday, but am not getting around to posting it until Wednesday. That’s two days of views lost right there!
I’m not the only one who needs to generate marketing material quickly.
I ran across a local company (which I will not name) that issued a press release in December 2021. In part, the press release mentioned the local company’s new dedication to the marketing function. The press release, in part, stated the following:
The Company has hired an international marketing firm…to support the Company’s efforts to increase revenue growth and brand recognition in the coming year. The firm focuses on working with companies to develop comprehensive marketing strategies that identify competitive delineation, drive-focused campaigns, and develop sales leads designed to materialize revenue. We expect their work to incorporate a website redesign, brand refresh, new strategic messaging and content, as well as focused video and digital campaigns that target markets such as [REDACTED]. We believe that a natural result of a formal marketing program, with a regular cadence of activity, will translate into market recognition of [REDACTED] as a highly-competitive brand that stands apart from the competition.
This sounds like an intelligent plan, or probably set of plans, that will address the firm’s strategic messaging, content, branding, and website, and a regular cadence of activity will keep the company visible. I certainly can’t argue with that.
Well, now we’re three months into the implementation of this comprehensive marketing strategy. As an outsider posing as a potential customer for the firm’s products and services, what can I observe?
In short, as far as outside customers are concerned, the firm has not improved its marketing at all.
What happened? Did the international marketing firm concentrate on creating a stellar plan for the company’s content? If so, when will the content be available? Mid 2022? Late 2022? 2023?
When I was a product manager twenty years ago, my company used a “waterfall” product development method in which the marketing requirements document, engineering requirements document, design documents, test documents, and other documents were developed sequentially. While some companies still use the waterfall method today, others don’t because it takes so long to do anything.
These days, product developers are moving to agile methods to release products. And marketers are moving to agile methods also.
Back in 2016, David Edelman, Jason Heller, and Steven Spittaels of McKinsey explained why marketing needs to be agile.
An international bank recently decided it wanted to see how customers would respond to a new email offer. They pulled together a mailing list, cleaned it up, iterated on copy and design, and checked with legal several times to get the needed approvals. Eight weeks later, they were ready to go.
In a world where people decide whether to abandon a web page after three seconds and Quicken Loans gives an answer to online mortgage applicants in less than ten minutes, eight weeks for an email test pushes a company to the boundaries of irrelevance.
From https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/agile-marketing-a-step-by-step-guide
The McKinsey authors then described how an agile marketing team organizes itself, sets goals, tests, and iterates.
The scrum master leads review sessions to go over test findings and decide how to scale the tests that yield promising results, adapt to feedback, and kill off those that aren’t working—all within a compressed timeframe.
From https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/agile-marketing-a-step-by-step-guide
While agile processes something result in things being wrong, the same agile processes can quickly correct the problem.
And waterfall methods can result in things being wrong also, especially when it takes so long to develop something that the initial assumptions have radically changed.
It took John DeLorean eight years to change his car concept into something coming off the production line. By that time, the automotive environment had changed.
Despite promising early sales the queue of willing buyers had dried up by the end of year – the chill wind of recession had struck the US automotive sector, and stockpiles of unsold cars started to mount up, both in Dunmurry and dockside in the USA. The worst winter in 50 years also played its part.
From https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/de-lorean/dmc-12/the-cars-delorean-dmc-12/
This didn’t help DeLorean’s constant financing issues, and after DeLorean was caught (or entrapped by the FBI) in a $24 million cocaine deal, the DeLorean automobile was relegated to a movie prop.
If Agile processes had existed at the time, could they have reduced the 8-year gap from concept to the assembly line? Perhaps.
And if you can speed up production of a car, you can speed up production of marketing content and start putting your messaging on your Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube accounts, as well as your website immediately so that your customers can get your message.
Don’t wait two days, or eight years, for things to be just right.
During the lunch hour of Thursday, March 17, AmPac Business Capital hosted a webinar to help small businesses make the most of Google features. (Note: if you missed this one-hour session, there will be a four-week session offered in May.)
Today’s session was led by Israel Serna, a speaker and trainer for Grow with Google. Serna offered a number of tips to attendees, some of which I had already implemented, and some of which I had not.
One that I hadn’t implemented was to create a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page for Bredemarket. However, Serna pointed out that both potential customers and Google itself search for FAQ pages as a quick way to answer questions. And others, such as StrategyBeam, agree with Serna on the importance of a FAQ page.
Before the AmPac Business Capital session, I had answers to questions on the Bredemarket website, but they were scattered all over the place. I decided that a FAQ page would offer a convenient one-stop shop for question answering.
So I created a FAQ page.
Now when I created this page, I am absolutely certain that the FAQ page covers EVERY single question that a potential Bredemarket client would think to ask.
Well, you know what Ed’s buddy Johnny would say to THAT assertion.
Seriously, I need YOUR help.
If you could take a look at the Bredemarket FAQ page at https://bredemarket.com/faq/, I would appreciate it.
Let me know if you like the answers to the questions that are asked.
Let me know if any questions are missing.
If anything is missing or needs to be improved, contact me. My contact information is in the FAQ. (Twice.)
One of Bredemarket’s clients is a consulting firm that advises other companies on the use of a particular enterprise content management system. Among other things, this consulting firm can help its client companies configure the outbound information the companies’ systems provide.
Which leads us to our word for today, omnichannel.
In marketing, “omnichannel” refers to “the process of driving customer engagement across all channels with seamless, targeted messaging.”
Across ALL marketing channels. That’s what omnichannel talks about.
Here’s what Erin O’Connor says:
Omnichannel marketing lets marketers create seamless, integrated customer experiences spanning both online and offline channels to connect with customers as they move through the buying cycle. Omnichannel marketing focuses on the life cycle of the customer. For example, when a customer is in the acquisition phase, the marketer will send a different type of message compared to a loyal customer
Omnichannel marketing is …a holistic approach in the sense that it’s looking at all of the potential touchpoints customers can use to communicate with brands, both online and offline.
From https://business.adobe.com/glossary/omnichannel-marketing.html
An omnichannel marketing strategy may encompass a number of marketing tools, including email, white paper downloads, videos, mobile SMS responses, automated call centers, and anything else that marketers use to communicate with clients.
One of the key benefits of an omnichannel marketing strategy is, or should be, consistency. If your emails say that your product is supported on Windows 11, your data sheets had better not say that your product is only supported up to Windows 10. This is a definite problem; see my checklist item 2 in this post.
(Incidentally, I recently ran across a company that is still talking about NIST FRVT results from several years ago. Since the NIST FRVT tests are ongoing, any reference to old results is outdated because of all the new algorithms that have been submitted and that have better performance.)
So factual consistency is important. Omnichannel marketing also allows for visual consistency (well, not in the automated call center) in which all of the company’s content looks like it came from the same company.
Obviously there are a number of benefits from omnichannel marketing, including easier management and consistency of marketing messages. But all of this raises a question:
Is omnichannel marketing truly OMNIchannel? Or does omnichannel marketing leave some things out?
Before you point me to the definition of “omni” and say that omnichannel marketing by definition can’t exclude anything, read on.
If you’re a marketer, I hope you’re sitting down.
The world does not revolve around marketing.
(My college roommates who were physics majors made sure to remind me of this.)
Thus, anything that isn’t marketing is automatically excluded from omnichannel marketing. And there are a number of things that companies do that aren’t marketing per se.
I recently held a discussion with a product marketer which got me thinking. We were talking about the things product marketers do, which include content creation (case studies/testimonials, white papers, social media content, and the like) and other product-related tasks such as competitive analysis of other products.
But then the product marketer mentioned something else.
What about having the product marketer author product technical documentation, such as user guides?
(By the way, I’ve written technical documentation in the past; see the “Benefiting from my experience and expertise” section of the Bredemarket “Who I Am” page.)
Now technical documentation is (usually) not the place for overt marketing messaging, but at the same time technical documentation authorship benefits the product marketer and the company by immersing the product marketer into the details of the product, thus increasing the marketer’s product understanding.
I’ll grant you need a different writing style when writing technical documentation; after all, there are no earthshaking benefits from clicking on the “Save As” button.
But you need different writing styles for the different types of marketing output anyway. The mechanics of writing a tweet differ from the mechanics of filming a video. So a marketer who isn’t experienced in technical documentation can adjust to the new style.
However, finding marketers slash technical documentation writers in the wild is unusual. Every company that I’ve worked with since 1991 has built some type of wall between the marketing function and the technical documentation function. But oddly enough, one of my former employers (MorphoTrak) moved managers around between the different functions. One manager in particular headed up the technical documentation group, then headed up the proposals group (where I worked for her), then headed up a multi-functional marketing team (where I worked for her again), then specialized in product marketing.
And now the product marketer (not the one from MorphoTrak, but the one I had been talking to) got the hamster in my brain to start generating ideas.
If omnichannel marketing is limited, and your omnichannel efforts should include activities outside of marketing such as technical documentation, what else should be included in your omnichannel efforts?
OK, the subtitle gave it away. (But I refused to write the subtitle “This marketer wrote a user guide. You won’t believe what he did next!”)
If anything, proposal writing is closer to marketing than technical documentation is to marketing. While proposal writing is often considered a sales function (though some would disagree), there are obvious overlaps between the benefits that you espouse in a proposal and the benefits that you espouse in a case study.
Including standard proposal text/template creation as part of your omnichannel efforts also helps to ensure consistency in your product messaging. Again, if your data sheet says one thing, and your user guide says the same thing, then your proposal had better say the same thing also. (Unless you’re proposing something that won’t be implemented for another one or two years, in which case the proposal will discuss things that won’t appear in the present data sheets and user guides, but in future versions.)
Now those of you who are familiar with what Bredemarket does can appreciate why I love this idea.
I’ve positioned Bredemarket as a two-headed (but not two-faced) marketing and writing service provider: for example, with separate descriptions of my status as a biometric content marketing expert and a biometric proposal writing expert. And that pretty much mirrors how I work. With one exception, most of my clients only use me for either my proposal services or my content marketing services.
What if companies entrusted Bredemarket with their total solution, both inside and outside of traditional marketing?
Of course there are complications in implementing this.
Now most companies are ill-fitted to have one person, or even one department, handle all the omnichannel marketing (case studies, white papers, data sheets, tweets, LinkedIn posts, competitive intelligence, etc.) AND all the omnichannel non-marketing (technical documentation, proposals, and all the other stuff that my hamster brain didn’t realize yet).
So how do you get multiple departments to communicate the same messaging? It’s a difficult task, especially since most department members are so focused on their own work that they don’t have the bandwidth to worry about what another department is doing. (“I don’t care about the data sheet error. I just write the manuals.”)
There are several ways to achieve this: central ownership of the messaging for all departments, outside quality audits, and peer-to-peer interdepartmental review come to mind.
But you’re not going to solve the problem of inconsistent messaging between your departments unless you realize that the problem exists…and that “omnichannel marketing” won’t solve it.
Whether you are an identity firm creating case studies, an Inland Empire West firm creating testimonials, or some other type of firm, creation of the content is only half the battle.
You still have to get the content into the hands of your end customers. “If you build it, they will come” is movie fiction.
Here are six ways to get your created content to a place where your end customers can see it and use it. Perhaps you can use one or more of these methods to distribute your important content.
Unless you have some bizarre reason to obfuscate the content by choosing an innocuous title such as “About THAT Reuters article,” you need to start by choosing the appropriate title that will induce your target audience to read your content.
For example, I want to be recognized as a biometric content marketing expert, so I created a page with that very title.
And continuously publicized it (including in this post).
As a result, that page is now the first non-sponsored search term on several services, even for similar searches. I surveyed three search engines; here are incognito search results from two of these search engines for the words “biometric marketing expert” (without the word “content”).
I intentionally saved the third set of search results to display here, since DuckDuckGo not only hit on my post, but on my collection of all posts tagged with “biometric content marketing expert.”
As another example, to date I have written over a dozen posts about case studies, all of which can be accessed via the link https://bredemarket.com/tag/case-study/.
Of course, I could step up my tagging work.
I have never bothered to create a tag “testimonial,” so I still have to do that, starting with this post. (I’ll slowly work my way back through the other posts so that testimonial seekers can find that content also.)
Remember the post “About THAT Reuters article” that I referenced earlier? As I said, I had a specific reason for choosing that vanilla title.
I could have entitled the post “Former IDEMIA employee weighs in on Advent’s possible sale of the company.” That would have got some clicks, to be sure.
But it would have misled the reader, because the reader would have gotten the idea that I have some expertise in corporate acquisitions, and an abillity to predict them.
From https://bredemarket.com/2022/02/08/about-that-reuters-article/
But despite the boring title, this post is one of my most popular posts of 2022. Why? Because even though the title is obfuscating, the content of the post itself can’t help but use some words such as Advent, IDEMIA, IPO, Reuters, and Thales. And people found the post because it included words which interested them.
(So much for obfuscation.)
Often you don’t land exactly at the content, but instead land at another page that directs you to the content. Because I subscribe to Jay Clouse’s “Creative Companion” newsletter, I get to read his articles before the general LinkedIn public sees them. Unless there’s an editorial change, this week’s LinkedIn article will include the following:
…the majority of my subscriber growth today doesn’t come through my front door, it comes from the dozens of side doors that I’ve created.
Jay Clouse Sunday 3/13/2022 email, “How to grow an email newsletter.”
(UPDATE 3/16: You can read the LinkedIn version of Jay’s post here.)
I don’t necessarily count on my readers immediately landing at the “correct” page. If I write compellingly enough, they could arrive at that page from somewhere else.
For example, I have a page called “Bredemarket and proposal services” that talks about…(drumroll)…Bredemarket’s proposal services. But there are over three dozen pages on the Bredemarket website that link to that page.
So if someone is REALLY interested in a topic, and if the content link uses text that is something better than “such responses,” the person will get to the desired content and I can help the person.
Which reminds me, I need to include my call to action. Normally I stick this at the end of a post, but let’s put it in the middle of the post just for fun. If I can help your company create content or give you some ideas on how to distribute the content:
I could probably do better at this one, but I do perform SOME email marketing.
For example, after I wrote my post about Alaska HB389 and its foreign ownership clause, I took the time to email it to some of my contacts whose companies are directly affected by the bill. I’ve also emailed people when I want to promote some of my various Bredemarket services.
After a year and a half in business, I have discovered that my hundreds of contacts do NOT religiously read the Bredemarket blog daily (although I do have hundreds of subscribers: click the link at the bottom of this post if you would like to join the blog subscription list). So there are times when I use email to highlight items of interest to a particular person.
But only if they’re interested. No need for Microsoft Power BI contacts to learn what happens if a driver’s license production company is only 94% U.S. owned. They probably don’t care.
I am a little better at social media content distribution than I am at email marketing. But again, it’s important to distribute the content to the correct social media channel.
Over the weekend, I wrote two nearly identical posts that were targeted to two separate markets.
The post that was targeted to local Inland Empire West companies was reshared in my LinkedIn group Bredemarket Local Firm Services.
The post that was targeted to identity/biometric companies was reshared in my LinkedIn group Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.
So the content of interest to the locals was shared on the local page, and the content of interest to the identity companies was shared on the identity page.
And that applies to ALL of the methods listed above. Emailing content to the right people. Linking from related content. Using the right words, tags, and titles.
All of these techniques, plus all of the other techniques that this post failed to mention, serve the purpose of getting the created content into the hands of the people who can benefit from it.
If I can help you with this, or with creating the content in the first place…oh, I already included the call to action between Methods 4 and 5. No need to be redundantly repetitive.
I was checking on Bredemarket’s appearance in various searches (have I told you that I am a biometric proposal writing expert?), and I ran across something having to do with proposals and identity that was outside of my usual definition of “identity.”
This article talked about writing a proposal to help a company establish its corporate identity.
(Yes, I know a corporation is a person, but this is something different. I can’t capture IBM’s face, and Wendy’s face is not necessarily a unique biometric identifier.)
In the article, Ruben described how to help a company establish its corporate identity. After suggesting that you ensure that you understand the company, Ruben focused on the company’s needs.
Identify the Needs – having described the company, the next step is to explain why your idea for a logo or marketing campaign is suitable for their goals. There may be many “needs” you need to address. For example, it might be a good idea to describe why rebranding can make a company look more modern and approachable.
From there, you would naturally describe how you would meet the company’s needs, and why you are qualified to meet the company’s needs.
If all goes well, the company will contract with you, then you will come up with a plan to optimize the company’s corporate identity. The company will implement the plan, the company’s revenue will increase, and you will be a hero.
But corporate identity goes beyond the logo, the website, and the marketing materials.
There’s an important step that a company needs to take before making decisions on outward-facing marketing.
The company has to decide who it is.
There are a multitude of ways to do this, ranging from a detailed business plan to a brief mission statement or statement of purpose. Regardless of the avenue you take, you need to know what you want to do.
Take an example from the 1980s. Perhaps some of you may remember Mita, famous for the advertising slogan “all we make are great copiers.”
There was a reason that Mita used that slogan:
If you are sixth in unit sales in the office copier industry and you are one of the few manufacturers that does not have a diversified product line, then the thing to do in your advertising is disparage diversification.
From https://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/02/business/advertising-mita-copier-campaign-has-a-single-theme.html
In this case, the advertising slogan helped shape the entire strategy of the company, resulting in a corporate identity that was very successful.
In fact, it was too successful. Because if you already make great copiers, what else do you need to do? Not much, I guess.
But early in the 1990s, it started making mistakes: relocating factories in expensive Hong Kong, letting management become bloated and backsliding on technology. At the same time, Fuji-Xerox, Ricoh and Konica stepped up their presence. Among other things, Mita failed to embrace digital technologies.
From https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-aug-13-fi-12663-story.html
See Kodak.
Mita eventually went bankrupt and was acquired by Kyocera, who immediately decided to work on Mita’s corporate identity. The company was rebranded as Kyocera Mita Corporation in 2000, and was re-rebranded as Kyocera Document Solutions in 2012. Mita schmeeta.
In today’s business world, digitalization is proceeding at an unprecedented pace and the volume of documents is growing exponentially.
From https://www.kyoceradocumentsolutions.com/company/greeting.html
In this business environment, we believe that our mission is to support our customers to effectively manage their information, and turn that information into knowledge, in order to address their challenges with a sense of speed.
You can see how the corporate identity has evolved over the decades, and how a company that once concentrated on taking pieces of paper and making identical pieces of paper now aspires to transform document information into knowledge to address challenges.
As I’ve noted, establishment of a marketing corporate identity is only part of an overall strategic plan to guide the future direction of a company.
Taking Bredemarket as an example, the corporate identity established by my logo is only a part of the plan guiding Bredemarket.
The pencil symbolizes writing, and long experience in writing, but it does not say WHAT Bredemarket writes. That has been established, revised, and expanded, partially through the annual goals that I set.
As long as I don’t blow it and get too restrictive (Bredemarket: all we write are fingerprint RFP responses), I should be fine.
The market is closed.
Bredemarket just took care of some final items, and is now on vacation/holiday.
Well, until Monday. Proposal work is proposal work.
But until then, I hope those who celebrate Christmas have a happy one, and those who don’t have a happy weekend.
Another Friday, another all-day event.
FTR FST (“future fest”), sponsored by 4th Sector Innovations, SwoopIn, and several other organizations, will be held on Friday, November 12 in downtown Ontario, California. While I’m primarily going for the “professional development” part, FTR FST also features creative expression (including food trucks, which appropriately fall into the “creative expression” category), collaboration, and a tech showcase.
The professional development schedule includes the following sessions, among others:
Biomimicry is the practice of learning from and emulating life’s genius to create more efficient, elegant, and sustainable designs. It’s a problem-solving method, a sustainability ethos, an innovation approach, a change movement, and a new way of viewing and valuing nature. In practice it’s dedicated to reconnecting people with nature, and aligning human systems with biological systems.
As such, our aim is to connect a spectrum of innovation where human and biological system designs interact together seamlessly. Our team offers education and consulting to apply biological insights to systematic sustainability challenges. Our collaborative partnerships and services support interdisciplinary dialogue across industry sectors and regions, while reconnecting all of us to the local ecosystem that supports us.
OK, at this point some of you are saying to yourselves, “THAT kind of conference.”
But frankly, there’s just as much value in approaching problems from a futuristic sustainability view as there is in approaching problems from a more traditional program management process (or Shipley process, or whatever), or even from a more old school sustainability view as espoused by Broguiere’s and the late Huell Howser.
See, it all ties together. After all, the new school 4th Sector Innovations is less than a mile from the decidedly old school Graber Olive House (featured in one of Howser’s “Louie, take a look at this!” TV shows.)
I seem to have strayed from my original topic…
Anyway, let’s refocus and return to some of the other professional development sessions at this Friday’s FTR FST.
After 3:00 pm, FTR FST transitions to less intensive sessions. Bring the kids! The complete schedule can be found here.
You can register for FTR FST here. Oh, and one new wrinkle: attendance at the professional development sessions is now FREE, thanks to the event sponsors.
FTR FST will be at 4th Sector Innovations, 404 N Euclid Avenue in Ontario.
The naming, or renaming, of a company is an important step in a company’s journey. While one should rightly concentrate on mission statements and processes and the like, the first impression many people will have of a company is its name.
So it’s important to get it right.
Sometimes the naming of a company is a relatively simple affair. For example, the company name “Bredemarket” is a combination of the beginning of my last name, Bredehoft, with the word market (derived from marketing).
Certainly the name is open to confusion (not that I was planning on doing business in East Sussex), but the name does communicate what the company is about.
I guess I could have called the company Bredewrite, but Bredemarket has grown on me.
Sometimes the naming of a company gets a little more involved.
When Oberthur was merged with the Morpho portion of Safran, the combined company needed a name (Oberthur was ruled out). So the company adopted the name “OT-Morpho,” indicating the heritage of the two parts of the company.
However, OT-Morpho was never intended to be the permanent name of the company. Everyone knew that the company would be renamed at some point in the future.
A few months later, as part of a razzle dazzle event, the new name of the company was revealed to an in-person audience in France and to people watching remotely all over the world (including myself).
If you don’t want to watch the entire video, the new name was…IDEMIA.
Some thought went into this name, as the accompanying press release noted.
In a world directly impacted by the exponential growth of connected objects, the increasing globalisation of exchanges, the digitalisation of the economy and the consumerisation of technology, IDEMIA stands as the new leader in trusted identities placing “Augmented Identity” at the heart of its actions. As an expression of this innovative strategy, the group has been renamed IDEMIA in reference to powerful terms: Identity, Idea and the Latin word idem, reflecting its mission to guarantee everyone a safer world thanks to its expertise in trusted identities.
However, some people didn’t like the new name at the time, and there was a big ruckus about how to pronounce the name. But at least some thought went into the name, and potential customers at least made the connection between IDEMIA and identity, if not to the other influences.
Some of IDEMIA’s corporate predecessors also had some stories behind their names.
So even if you don’t like these names, at least some thought went behind them.
And then there are other cases.
Anyvision was a company that had been around for a while, specializing in using artificial intelligence and vision to provide security solutions. But recently the company decided to expand its focus.
[T]he company’s evolution and vision for the future…is shaped, in part, by a new collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) CyLab Biometric Research Center. The CMU partnership will focus on early-stage research in object, body, and behavior recognition….
“Historically, the company has focused on security-related use cases for our watchlist alerting and touchless access control solutions….[W]e’re looking beyond the lens of security to include ways our solutions can positively impact an organization’s safety, productivity and customer experience.”
So with this expanded focus, Anyvision decided that its corporate name was too limiting. So the company announced that is was renaming itself.
The new name is…Oosto.
Now some of you may have noticed that the name “Oosto” does not convey the idea of object, body, or behavior recognition in English, Latin, Hebrew (Anyvision started in Israel), or any other known language. As far as I know. (And yes, I saw what The Names Dictionary says.)
So why Oosto? According to Chris Burt at Biometric Update:
The new name was chosen because it is short, easy to pronounce, and free from pre-existing associations….
Well, at least you don’t have to worry about how to say Oosto, unlike Eye DEM ee uh or Eye DEEM e uh or Ih dem EE uh or whatever.
And it’s short.
And it’s obviously extremely free from pre-existing associations.
Which unfortunately means that people have no idea what an “oosto” is.
But it will probably grow on us over time, just as people now use the word “IDEMIA” without a second thought.
Hopefully there isn’t a market in East Sussex named Oosto.
Bredemarket