Becoming Evenbase

In keeping with the tradition of this blog of sharing the thinking and insights from some of our marketing & brand activities, from football sponsorship to TV creative, let me share with you the reasoning and methodology on why we changed the name of our (newly-structured) company  from Jobsite Group to Evenbase.

Background

Since its conception in 1994 Jobsite has grown from a single brand (Jobsite.co.uk) to a network for UK based traditional classified advertising sites, some we built in house, and others we acquired.  But this was only one facet of what Jobsite did, and does: in 2003 we won the contract to build the technology running NHSjobs and other media partnerships followed (Northcliffe 2007, Johnston Press 2009).

At the same time, we accelerated the international expansion of OilCareers.com (now successfully operating in the USA, Canada, Australia and the Middle East) and our parent group A&N Media acquired the then only UK based but now global multi-poster & CV Search provider Broadbean.

Reasoning

As you can see, using the name Jobsite Group when representing all of these different and growing areas became often more than confusing. The more we worked on our strategy of transforming ourselves from a network of UK based traditional classified advertising sites to an international digital recruitment business, we quickly realised the limitations of our current name “Jobsite Group”:

• Whilst Jobsite is a powerful brand in the UK, it has hardly any traction in the international recruitment space
• It is limited to the job board market and undervalues the breadth of our current offerings from Recruitment Technology (NHS), Recruitment Software (Broadbean) and New Ventures. Jobsite Group is too restrictive as it only focuses on job boards when we are already covering more than that activity.

We therefore set out to create a new B2B entity. It is important to note that this brand will not replace any of the customer facing and customer interacting brands, but will act in a similar way to organisations such as A&N Media and Unilever, which have all of the individual brands within them..

Planning principles

As we are transforming from a job board business to a recruitment business, we require a brand that:

• Avoids the word “Jobsite” to minimise the confusion between our B2C job board offer and our wider strategy.
• Avoids being limited by geography, sector or topicality (eg: the terms UK, recruitment/HR, digital). For example: Using a name such as Digital Talent Acquisition Group presents us with a similar challenge – in the future everything will be digital and talent acquisition only covers the recruiters’ perspective, not the candidates.
• Avoids acronyms with no external context (eg: DTAg), that need to be spelt out or require additional explanation.

Instead we need a defined B2B entity that separates the group’s wider mission/ purpose from that of Jobsite.co.uk, provides a single proposition that covers both global unity and that can be flexed for local markets, creates clarity and purpose across the group, empowers rather than restricts the sub-brands and most importantly, offers a clean slate on which to inject meaning and credibility.

Methodology

Under the guidance of the social brand consultancy Headstream we went through a six stage process from internal workshops, creation of 70 initial names, reviewing for tone, meaning, intent & appeal, shortlisting for priority market language, url availability and trademark checks, before ultimately arriving at “Evenbase”

Outcome

Evenbase is a brand which focuses on our skills, knowledge and technology, alongside our heritage and authority in the recruitment market. This is expressed in the following positioning:

‘Evenbase – creating balance and equity through solid foundations’.

Evenbase fulfils another important requirement: it gives us the freedom to fill it with any meaning that we want to fill it with (similar to the likes of Diageo, Unilever, Apple).

For many of us that have grown up with Jobsite and nurtured it, creating a new group name is always strange. In the first instance every single one sounds odd, but having used it now several times in internal documents, I can report with confidence that it does work exceptionally well and that it hits all of our planning principles.

A name is only a name and that’s why it’s accompanied with a new structure, so that we can deliver our objectives and execute our strategy. Over the coming months you can witness the transformation into Evenbase, in words and actions. I am very excited about the next couple of years with the transformation on so many different dimensions. It will be one awesome ride.

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