Building a Brand for a U.S. Start-Up that is now global
In 2016, a young entrepreneur came up with an idea for a high-potential business. After spending several years at one of the world’s leading consulting firms, he identified a major unmet need: timely market information to support critical decision-making.
Whenever he needed to survey companies about satisfaction levels, revenue, payment habits, and other insights tied to vendors or clients—in order to make recommendations to those who hired his firm—he found that available survey tools existed, but they were rigid, limited, and required extensive analysis afterward.
After thoroughly assessing the pain points of existing solutions, he set out to create an easy-to-use, flexible, and fast survey system tailored for consulting firms, investment bankers, law firms and others; in other words, for professionals who needed reliable information to support decisions such as buying or selling a company or evaluating other strategic opportunities.
He contacted Norte Marketing to create the brand for this new venture.
The Process: How the Brand Was Born
Norte Marketing followed a structured process:
- Gained a deep understanding of the business, its purpose, and its value proposition (creative brief) and the target audience.
- Researched the category to identify existing players (desk research).
- Developed a brand name that would be:
- Differentiated
- Disruptive
- Memorable
- Easy to pronounce
- Registrable
- Available as a .com
After several brainstorming sessions and rounds of analysis, we arrived at a brand that met every requirement. We focused on the essence of the business: inquiry—asking, discovering, consulting.
A simple idea led to a powerful solution:
Name Proposal: Inquiry
But we now had to turn this generic word into a distinctive brand.
- Inc.: refers to an incorporated company
- Query: a request for information or data—an inquiry into a database to extract, modify, or manage information.
IncQuery = Inquiry = To Find Out
A descriptive yet suggestive and highly memorable brand—unlike anything else in the custom-survey landscape.
Visual Identity: A Strong Wordmark
The name IncQuery is powerful on its own, fully communicating the essence of the business.
- A bold typeface was selected to evoke confidence and solidity.
- The brand was defined as a pure wordmark, highlighting its strength.
- A two-tone blue color palette was chosen to subconsciously communicate the brand’s roots and a sense of calm and reliability.
Creating Products to enhance the Custom Survey Solution
IncQuery’s self-managed custom survey service was immediately well received in the U.S. market, and the company grew rapidly. As it expanded, new complementary needs were identified—tools that would make the solution even more valuable and intuitive.
IncQuery asked Norte Marketing to create sub-brands.
After analyzing the master brand and its positioning, Norte Marketing developed sub-brands that lived up to its standards. We aimed to design a unique naming system that would strengthen the overall offering.
Request:
Branding concept for solutions that make it easier to leverage the data provided by IncQuery. A system was created based on the “Q” in IncQuery.
For the tool they wanted to launch, which allows clients to have data integrity and ensures that the data included in surveys is always accurate and useful, Qsponse was created, reflecting this concept. The “Q” is a fragment of the word “response.”
Qsponse: the best ally for accurate data; clients can trust that it will always be accurate and useful. This system, linked to the IncQuery brand, allows for the creation of distinctive brands for additional tools.
Today
Eleven years after its founding, IncQuery is a global brand. The result of a brilliant idea, executed with excellence, supported by a brand created by Norte Marketing.
To learn more about IncQuery, visit incquery.com.
To learn more about Norte Marketing can do for you, contact us …and make an IncQuery.