Since we launched the new katchr® brand back in July, there are two questions I have been regularly asked.
1. How has the rebrand been for you? and
2. Why did you rebrand the business?
So I thought it might be useful to share my thoughts on these two questions.
Firstly – how has the rebrand been? Well it has been a necessary evil. And delivered very little in tangible benefits. Yet!
Many people say they don’t believe in, or agree with rebrands. I have to confess I generally agree with those sentiments. As a fully paid up techy, the idea that customers, or for that matter employees, gain from a new logo and a glossy website is pretty much marketing nonsense to me.
So that leads on to the second question – why do it?
Exen Legal Solutions was founded as a general legal software and consultancy business. In the early days, whilst always working towards the development of the SmartEye management information suite, we were still finding our direction and tried lots of different things just to pay the bills. Our marketing, such as it was, lacked any focus, and we had multiple brands to promote – Exen, Exen Legal, xnls (an ill judged early effort at a simple domain name) and SmartEye. There was much confusion over what we did and what we were called.
Once our business had consolidated into a single product and a single focus – BI and reporting for law firms – it became clear that our whole marketing message needed that same focus. We needed to consolidate around a single name and the obvious one for most – SmartEye – was simply not practical from an IP or brand identity point of view. There are dozens of SmartEye products and companies out there as well as a number of confusingly similarly named suppliers to law firms, so the only realistic answer was to adopt a completely new name.
And why katchr? Well that’s another story – maybe I’ll divulge over a pint next time you see me….
See also the official news release here (from the PR people!)