Nov 11, 2009
I was a brain surgeon once
Passion and a sense of humor are key aspects of good brand. People remember you if you can make them smile, they will only be passionate about your product if you are. But so many companies hide how excited they are about their own products because they are trying to brand themselves “Serious, mission critical, trust.. Bla, Bla Bla”.
At NxN we sold trust. The products adoption relied 100% on the artist’s ability to trust the system with their assets. If we got the sale but not the trust our life expectancy in a game studio was measured in months.
NxN’s Alienbrain product was originally called MediaStation, Alienbrain was the internal code name for an R&D project that never saw the light of day (unfortunately).
At a corporate retreat in a deserted summer castle in the German Alps (think “The Shining” hotel and you are there) the 15 outward facing people in the company (sales, marketing, field engineers & product managers) got together to talk about many things, one of them re-branding the product.
Alienbrain was suggested and it immediately resonated, everyone got excited, marketing ideas, slogans, booth designs, logos… it all flowed so easily from the name. One of the ideas that floated around the table was to re-title the sales people to “brain washers” and the field engineers to “brain surgeons”.. as a field engineer I LOVED this idea.
By the time I was back home in England head office had decided that as Alienbrain was a product name and we would soon be a 2 product company the brain titles would lock us into calling the 2nd product brain-something, the re-titling was off the table. Alienbrain was/is a great name and it worked in the real world. Years later as we launched other products and the marketing team tried to move the brand trust from Alienbrain to NxN, all attempts failed.
For all the money we spent building the NxN brand the customer reaction even in the new product markets was always “NxN? Oh! The Alienbrain people!”
Could the re-titling have hurt? Would it have helped? I don’t know if it would have done either but it would have been fun.
Ahh, those were the days. The one thing I’d add is that we also knew our game customers would like the name, and they did! However, as soon as we ventured into other markets, such as serious games for military use, “Alienbrain” no longer worked. If you recall, most of those companies preferred “NXN”.
My belief is that they were mirroring our lack of commitment to Alienbrain as an identity. By the time we were talking to those tangential markets the efforts to make NxN the primary identity had already begun, in part because we believed that NxN (mathematical equation) would resonate with the “serious” engineers in the other markets.
An automotive electrical design engineer once told me he liked the product but could not use it because his production pipeline was scrutinized by the government and needed to instill confidence at every level. On the surface the name lost us a big client but I believe the product would not have withstood the rigors of protocol and redundancy engineering required in that industry anyway.
It would be interesting to hear from Avid what their customer demographic is now. I believe they are predominantly serious games, visualization and simulation now and the name has survived.
You came actually up with the name Alienbrain in the first place? You mentioned its use as a code name in R&D. Really? I can’t remember. I thought someone in sales/marketing suggested it…
Anyway, I always thought it is a cool name. I still do. Maybe too cool for some people.
I am sure I did not think up the name, Katja also remembers it as coming from R&D.. I checked with her coz at my age misremembering is a common ailment.
The myth was that the engineers came up with the name in one of their late night sessions…
“It would be interesting to hear from Avid what their customer demographic is now. I believe they are predominantly serious games, visualization and simulation now and the name has survived.”
That’s about right: it’s the same mix of mostly games plus a few others. The — Alienbrain branded — website has an almost correct list. [N.B. I don't know anything about VFX].
Alienbrain is definitely the name people remember. When calling customers I say “Hi, this is Nic from Alienbrain” and they know who I am, even the receptionists. That’s helpful. ;-)