What’s in a name?

Naming companies is a strange business. It was 25 years ago that we chose the name Systematic Marketing and it can’t be described as a very scientific process. Of course back then we didn’t have domain names to worry us and so I don’t think anyone had thought of combining a colour with an animal.

When we started the Company it was registered with a name our accountant chose – Anduss if you are interested (whether that was thought about; our names were Russell and Andy; or just happenstance I don’t know).

We needed a real name and deliberated long and hard, but couldn’t come up with anything we liked.

In the end we decided that a particular day was the day. We sat in a café opposite the London office of Companies House with the change of name forms. We then wrote down a long list of words that described what we were offering and kept combining them until we found a shortlist of the ones that we thought explained it.

Systematic Marketing was the winner. We went straight over to Companies house and lodged the forms before we could change our minds. So, not necessarily the most scientific approach.

We have thought about changing it recently, especially when people think we are an agency rather than software developers specialising in marketing systems, but you do get attached these things.

And our first domain name back in the early 1990s was to be systmktg as that was the maximum length allowed.