The word different has played a pretty important part in my life. At my old company, Dowell//Stubbs, our tagline was A Different Point of View. It spoke to one of the fundamental elements of branding– that of being different.
Today we are launching a new company. A company that takes that concept a huge step further.
UP THERE, EVERYWHERE is in itself new and very different. The business model is different. In fact there’s nothing quite like it anywhere. We have no fancy offices. We have no formal employees. But we do have a hugely talented and experienced pool of people who work together 24/7. So we are certainly different.
Helping our clients find difference is key to what we do as well of course. Helping them differentiate their brands and organisations. Helping their brands define themselves so their positioning makes them ‘different’ in their marketplaces. Helping them stand out from the crowd. Offering truly global integrated marketing and creative services, whether it’s in social media campaigns, advertising, public relations or on websites.
Our name is pretty different as well and many people ask where it came from. Well it began life in a small restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden. We’d been discussing the scope and business model of this new company and using the table cloth to scribble notes and ideas on (it was paper – luckily we don’t eat in fancy restaurants too often). But we needed the right name.
We knew we were going to work in a completely different way – no offices, no employees. We knew we were going to be international from the moment we launched and we knew we were going to be using digital media and cloud based services. Like a cloud we knew that we would be literally ‘UP there.’ Like a cloud we knew that we would also pretty quickly be ‘Everywhere’.
The original concept for UP THERE, EVERYWHERE was scribbled on a napkin over dinner.
I remember scribbling it on the napkin in marker-pen in bright colours. UP There, Everywhere. A colleague then leaned over and scribbled in an asterisk – our symbol. It was different. Over the course of the next couple of weeks we bounced it off friends and colleagues and realised pretty quickly it was a very special name. It was quirky and certainly not normal. It got people to ask questions.
The word ‘UP’ in itself is an extremely positive word, a word we felt represented the new company and its energy. After a couple of weeks of digging and probing we knew we’d found a special name.
So welcome to UP THERE, EVERYWHERE. Are we different? From our name, to our people, to what we do and how we do it, you’ll find out that we are.
Are you UP* for it?