To help clarify, the below text explains why the name was chosen.
XCURRENCY
The Power of a Name: Branding Behind XC
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A brand is not just a logo, and it’s not just a name. A brand is the entire message being presented to the public by a company, in order to draw and retain potential customers. It consists of the company’s logo, their name, the look and feel of their website and social media outlets, their communication to the target audience through announcements and public relations, and the voice that carries out that communication, whether conveyed verbally or by written word.
The brand is communicated to the public by means of a brand strategy. The content that the company chooses to communicate, both verbally and visually, is a part of the brand strategy, as well as when, where, and how it is communicated. The brand strategy also takes into account the channels through which the communication will be made, along with who the target audience will be for each given channel.
Also important in branding, is brand equity. This is a direct result of how consistently the company can portray their brand. Consistent branding on all fronts leads to consistent perceptions from customers about what the brand represents. This consistency helps build brand equity, which in turn adds value to the brand.
With all these factors to take into consideration, building a brand for a new project can be a challenging task. There will be individuals already familiar with the product or service, and they’ll each have varying perceptions pertaining to what the product or service means to them individually, but the branding team still has to develop a focused approach to convey a concise message to the general target audience, in order to reach the broadest base they can. Therefore, the most advantageous place to gain market share, along with brand equity, typically lies outside the core group who is already familiar with the given product or service. This broader base is where the branding team must focus their efforts if they’re to help grow the product or service into all it can be.
How does all of this pertain to XC, you might ask? One of the critical components to branding, especially with a new project, is the name that’s being branded. The process of choosing the name XC, and deciding what XC should stand for, has been a topic of great debate for the core group that already knows about XC. A more detailed look into how the name came to be, and how a broad target audience was involved in selecting the name, shows how the branding team strived to make the first steps toward bringing XC to a larger audience.
Initially, thoughts for the name were to focus on the anonymous functions of XC. This is currently one of XC’s core competencies and it seemed a good place to start. However, some quick studies with people from various areas of XC’s target market soon showed that ordinary people outside of XC’s currently small world weren’t very intrigued by the anonymous approach. In fact, for some, the anonymous approach seemed off-putting. For others, it just didn’t arouse their curiosity enough to get them to want to know more about XC and what XC offers.
This revelation led to a second approach, partly inspired by XC’s current core group. Instead of focusing upon the anonymous functions of XC, it was decided that the focus would be upon the platform that XC offers, and the privacy being afforded by this platform. It was back to the target audience to get further input, and it didn’t take long for another piece of the puzzle to quickly unfold. When taking the privacy approach, the majority of people were once again not intrigued, but this time, almost to the point of boredom.
Frustrated with these results, it was back to the drawing board. Several renditions and variations of the name were tried, and each met with varying levels of success or failure, but none received the response that XC demands. It wasn’t until we went through many renditions, that one name came up that met with an overwhelming amount of positive reception when presented to members from the target audience. Upon presenting it to them, responses ranged from thinking it sounded “cool”, to wanting to know more about what it meant, to wondering how and where they could read up further on it. That name was XCurrency. People instantly knew it was related to a way of storing or moving value, and the stand-alone “X” left just enough unknown to keep them intrigued and to keep them asking questions.
Upon further study, it became obvious that XCurrency was a natural choice from the beginning. After all, XC is a form of currency, and that will be its core function for at least as far as we can see into the future. XC is capable of other functions as well, such as encrypted messaging, anonymous tranfers of funds, etc., but its core function still remains as a currency. As such, XCurrency meets the branding requirements in the fact that it successfully sets expectations in people’s minds when they see it. It also arouses enough curiosity to cause people to take action, as they want to learn more. That is the goal of a name, and with that action, we can then provide them with the necessary education to let them know the true benefits of XC and all that it offers, which we as a community already know and are anxious to share.
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Yes this is an extremely long post, sorry about that. However as early adopters those of you who support the coin need to know that we are working to take this to a much broader audience than Bitcointalk. Let's not limit our success by thinking inside a box.
