A new year has arrived and we at CollegeMobile are excited for the turn of the calendar into 2013! New Years not only represents a changing of our calendars but also a chance to set new goals, dreams, aspirations and establish renewed motivation to accomplish all of the wonders that the new year can bring. Not only are we all personally motivated for this new year but our company as a whole will be experiencing a BIG change in 2013!
Allow me to explain: When I first sat down for my interview with our CEO, Chad Jones, I boldly said, “When you hire me, will you allow me to lead the rebrand of the company?” Chad, being good-natured, laughed and said a rebrand was exactly the thing he had in mind and would be delighted if I would lead us to a new name and company identity (phew!). I had been involved in rebrands in the past and was excited to take on the challenge of finding the perfect fit and new identity for CollegeMobile. I believed in the product and the people and knew that we could find a name and identity that would help to showcase the work we did.
Now don’t get me wrong, the name “CollegeMobile” has served us very well, but we have experienced such change in the past three years that we knew it was a great time to change our identity. If I rewind to three years ago when the company was first started: Chad had been involved in the iUsask project at the University of Saskatchewan which launched one of the first university mobile apps for students. After a huge amount of media coverage, Chad began to get calls from universities and colleges across North America looking for a similar app for their students. Chad recognized the business opportunity and launched CollegeMobile, as our company solely served the needs of universities and colleges.
Over the first year, our development team’s quality work and specialized skills became known to not only the higher education market, but was starting to spread to the financial, healthcare, business and retail markets. Customers were demanding apps and businesses needed a way to deliver quality apps to them: that is where they called us. While our name had served us well in the education market, we now had to work extra hard to show businesses that we weren’t college kids, as many thought that our name suggested. As our business continues to grow and change, we need a name and identity that will grow and change with us.
2013 will be the year that we embark on the journey to find out new identity. I want to reassure you that our product offering, commitment to quality, and innovation will still remain, but now we will have a name to match our exceptional product!
Over the course of the next year, we will tell you how we came to decide on our new name and identity! Stay tuned for New Year, New Us: Part 2, where I will tell you how we began this crazy process of our rebrand!
