Once upon a time—every good story starts with once upon a time—there was the VPD. We sometimes called him the Value Pricing Dashboard. He lived next door to Talent, but she did not see him much. I am sure there was a reason why they lived in the same building. They did get together often to exchange ideas, but the connection was not noticeable, at least for a newcomer. Still, below the surface, they shared a lot of dreams, visions, and aspirations. For instance, one common or rather fundamental thought was that neither of them would do anything sinister with data. They believe that data belongs to the user and should never be used without consent. Another great example is value - both VPD and Talent saw value as a significant component of outcomes regardless of how you define them. Although Talent was surrounded by skills and competencies for most of her life, while VPD was constantly dealing with pricing and segmentation, they both agree that creating value or helping others with value creation is the key to their happiness.

At this point I should explain that on March 5, 2020, Ibbaka merged with TeamFit - a skill insights platform. The combined company kept the Ibbaka name, forming two business sides under Ibbaka Market and Ibbaka Talent. VPD, or the Value Pricing Dashboard, is the result of work on the Market side. Meanwhile, Ibbaka Talent presented the Role and Skill Coverage.

Our story begins in the last days of June. The whole team met in a video call—one of those strategy meetings aimed at solving something critical. This time, we set off to figure out branding. I did my best to prepare a few guidelines for approaching it. The night before the meeting, I went through all my branding and design books—I have a lot of them—selecting one that could give us a good grip on the complexity of the exercise we were about to start. I decided to rely on Marty Neumeier and his beautiful read, The brand gap. How to bridge the distance between business strategy and design. It is one of my favourites. 

Whatever we do with branding, the emphasis should be on the "gut feeling," which connects to intuition. From our days in kindergarten, we have been brainwashed—Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom is another excellent read on branding—to avoid using intuition and only trust science. However, it doesn't change the fact that we use intuition when making important decisions. The call ended positively with a clear to-do list for all of us. We knew we wanted a charismatic brand that could be any product, service or organization for which people believe there's no substitute. We wanted to be different, and to be different, we need to focus, focus and then focus a bit more. Once we gathered all the evidence, it was time to look at names. Brands are like people. We can't control the look of the brand. We can only influence the brand's character, and characters do change. Evolve but stay relevant. Apart from Marty Neumeier, Fabian Geyrhalter is another author worth looking at when attempting rebranding.

In the next call, we got to the challenging portion of our session - naming. While we knew it was not about our aspirations but our clients, we also wanted to delight and surprise them. There are a few tricks branding experts deploy at this point. First, a name can be made up, like Häagen-Dazs, or human, like Harry's. It can rely on the composite concept - Netflix (Flix over the net). Or fragment, like Ocado from Avocado. Lastly, we have associative names like Nike or Uber or acronyms, and VPD was an excellent example of this category. Marty Neumeier advises seeing the brand from the customer's perspective. Being different so they can see us. To earn trust and empower customers to meet their aspirations. In return, customers will create the brand. 

In branding, don't position products—position customers for success. Enable greatness in customers. Help them find the meaning in what they do. A product or a service becomes a symbol, and this symbol becomes a product. Even though it is all simple, it is not easy to accomplish.

It was Karen Chiang, our Managing Director and co-founder of Ibbaka, who introduced us to Valio and Talio. She said, well - it was easy for me - Ibbaka Valio connects to Value and Ibbaka Talio to Talent. Valio and Talio. This “io” speaks to innovation and outcomes, two levers of growth. And, growth is core to what we help our customers achieve. And that was it. Intuitive and that simple. We still sometimes refer to Valio as VPD, but it doesn't change the fact that Valio knows very well what to do and how to do it. It is the first and only comprehensive SaaS solution for End-to-End Customer Value Management. He knows he will get all the support from Talio. She is ready to get into the skills and competencies that the pricing world is waiting for. You can find out all the details in this Press Release.

And they lived happily ever after, but it is not the end of the story - it is the beginning. As I said, brands are like people. They change. They evolve in a constant iterative process - one may call it Design Thinking or simply life, for that matter. We are all delighted with the new addition to Ibbaka. Valio and Talio are playful, easy and pleasant to pronounce and spell, and they perfectly fit our vision - Working with market-leading organizations that want to sustain growth through business transformation. Our team helps guide strategic investments around value, differentiation and execution. 

Perhaps it is not a business-oriented piece announcing brand changes, but it's summer, and the ocean is 500m away. So I am going now for a long swim. I am sure Ibbaka Valio and Ibbaka Talio will go with me. After all, you're supposed to live and breathe the brand, right?