I’ve repeatedly been asked three questions since I embarked on my Eximo Marketing journey.
Those questions are:
- What the hell are you playing at?
- What coffee would you like?
- What does Eximo mean?
The answer to question 1 is long, complex and, ultimately, a bit of a mystery. There is a bit more background to why I started Eximo Marketing on this post I wrote for Digital DNA, so I won’t repeat it all here, but I’m still trying to work out what the hell I’m doing and I’ll keep you posted as that becomes clear.
Question 2 is relatively easy – a flat white or a Cortado. Strong milky coffee is where it’s at for me at the moment.
So, now we’ve established that, I’ll spend a bit of time on question 3. Eximo.
How to Name a Company
I think I spent more time naming my company than I did naming my child. In many ways naming a child is easy: pick something you like and forget what everyone else thinks! It’s your kid, they’ll probably grow into the name anyway and if they don’t like it that much, they can change it when they grow up then put you in a care home and forget you ever existed.
But naming a company? Wow, that’s challenge. The government has rules you have to abide by, you can’t go wild and call it something daft because you want people to give you money for your services and, worst of all, you have to pay to register it. So it’s worth getting right.
There are a few schools of thought with company names. Broadly they are use your name, use your service, find a word that matches the company or make something up.
Andi Jarvis Ltd had little appeal to me. While the URL would make me feel self-important, I wanted something more about what I did and less about me. AndiJarvis.com will have to wait. For now.
The Ronseal approach to naming a company didn’t work for me either. The Strategy Guy or Effective Marketing Strategy Ltd all felt a little bit like the bastard love child of Alan Partridge and David Brent for me. So they went out of the window too.
Step forward Steven Neill, the man with the best hair at Positive Brand Etiquette. While discussing a different business opportunity, the Eximo name was discussed. Steve spent hours researching the name and the brand and found some gold in it.
Eximo’s Etymology
Eximo is derived from the Latin eximius. You could follow the family tree of eximius all the way down to the English words excellent and extract. And it’s these English words that fit what happens at Eximo.
What I do focuses on extracting information about companies to find out what sets them apart and then using that to build a strategy that will help them be excellent. Great, innit?
I say it x-ee-moe, but I’m not going to get hung up about it if you want to try it differently. I’ve never been great with a Latin accent, so you won’t hear me complaining. And, as a caveat, no I didn’t go to the type of school where Latin was taught. So if you disagree with the etymology of excellent and extract, please send an email, written in entirely Latin, explaining where Steve and I got it wrong.
The Pretty Bit
Having a name is only half the battle, Eximo Marketing needed a suitable logo too. Step forward Conor O’Neill, of Us & Them, who came up with the logo device. It may look like a simple typographical device (and what beautiful typography!) but there’s a few nice touches in the logo that you might see, but not know!
The dot on the ‘i’ for example, has rolled to the left. Those keen followers of my recent presentations, will know that when nothing goes right, go left, is an often used line and – watch this space – is about to be launched as something else too.
The X now has head, which makes it look a little like a person. Perhaps it’s a person doing some 1970s disco dancing, but it still looks like a person. That’s an important feature too. Marketing is a people discipline. It’s also about data and research and analysis and stats and lots of other boring stuff, but it has to keep people at the heart of it, so bringing that into the logo is a lovely touch.
Hopefully that clears it all up. A Latin name, that sort of describes the Eximo Marketing services and, importantly, had an available URL. Or it might have been a word my daughter used to say when she was learning how to talk and the memory of it still melts my heart. You decide.
Gratias tibi for reading.
Andi