How Eika Bank carried out its name change
If you lose your keys on the way home from a night on the town, what you do? Are you one of those people who just looks under the lamp posts because there’s plenty of light there? Or are you one of those people who start looking in the least likely places because you think your keys are most likely to be somewhere like that? When we have to come up with a name that suits a customer perfectly, it’d be daft not to look close to home.
Healthy name, big figures
Apple founder Steve Jobs had done lots of work on apple farms, had just come back from one of these and was also following a strict fruit diet. And that was when he realised that Apple was a great name that suited every possible context. According to Walter Isaacson’s book about Steve Jobs, anyway. With retrospect, this seems to be quite a random start for what would gradually become the most valuable brand in the world.
The name Google is a result of the founders Playing with the word googol, which means a gigantic number (1 followed by 99 zeroes), and the logo was derived from Larry Page’s digital cutting and pasting. Based on these examples, some people are sure to ask whether there’s any point involving designers and people who devise names at all.
While others, including Mission, view this more as proof of how important it is to work on the basis of the company’s soul and the super-talented people who’ll decide on a lot of the company’s future. Who’s behind it all? Where do they come from? Where are they now? Where are they heading? Who will they be reaching out to? How will they get to where they’re heading? It’s all about the people, the history and the company itself.
From Terra to Eika
Banking association Terra needed to consider who they were and who they existed for.
Thorough research showed that the name Terra and its ties with other alliance banks was perceived very corporate. This was not in alignment with the close-knit relations to the local communities of the alliance banks. A new name was therefore introduced; "Eika" (oak tree) is a symbol with long traditions in Norwegian banks. It is a symbol that signals longevity, solidarity, customer focus and growth.
One thing which characterised all the banks in this association was that they involved savings banks. The oak tree was a symbol that most of them shared previously, and that some of them were still using. This tree represented security and tradition, symbolising going back to the roots. The association wanted to show the world that they had their feet firmly on the local Norwegian ground, not just on Latin terra, which means earth.
Sometimes customers themselves have the key
Lots of good new names emerged as part of the process, including Eika. Coincidences would have it that the Terra Group had used the name Eika internally since they were founded in year 2000 under the name Terra Group.
When the time came to change the name, Eika was one of the favourites, and when it became clear that there was a story behind it already, a local foundation, even a domain for the future, that was what we all ended up adopting. The customer already had the name that met all needs, even though it was hiding behind a curtain, so to speak. In this case, it was all a matter of rediscovering an old name and then using modern design to bring that name into the 21st century. If we’d only had our own creative hobby horses to ride, there’s no guarantee we’d ever have found the key to the name Eika.
