A maybe-too-honest perspective on our rebrand

The back story:

MaestroQA is the result of two failed companies built by our founding team (a story for another time).

The first was Adtrib – built to help advertisers understand what marketing channels should be attributed credit for online purchases.

The second was MaestroIQ – marketing automation software, named MaestroIQ because the platform would help our customers orchestrate marketing campaigns across multiple marketing channels.

Then came MaestroQA.

“We were Adtrib, then MaestroIQ, and when deciding on a name for the third company, we didn’t have the energy to get creative. We figured if we had success with the new idea, we would worry about the right name then.” – Vasu, Co-Founder

And...flash forward two years...we realized that we have hundreds of customers spread all over the world who use MaestroQA to impact their businesses, and the time had come to reassess our brand.

While the name “MaestroQA” seemed like an accident to us, it was aaaaactually guided by the “incremental, inexorable, gradual, and spontaneous” processes influencing all things (read this*), we just didn’t know it then.

Why we’re sticking with Maestro:

As we talked about our rebrand, it became clear to us that the name, Maestro, already represented our personal core values.

The biggest thing we’ve learned from living is that relationships are the most important part of the human experience (also key takeaway from this*).

Relationships are built through honest, human moments. One core component of these moments is authentic conversations, which come from truly listening to people, and learning from them (from this°) – hence the theme of our conference “The Art of Conversation.”

The biggest thing we’ve learned from building Maestro is that our customers, the conversations and relationships that we have with them, are the most important part of our company. They inspire the technology that we make. And we hope that that technology will make it easier for them to spread authentic human connection in the world, and to build more meaningful relationships with their customers.

As a maestro conducts musicians to play beautiful music (without making any sounds themselves), support managers coach agents to have authentic conversations with customers – sometimes they’re on the phones too, but through coaching, their impact on their customers’ experiences is magnified.

Some notes on our character design choices:

Why a magical maestro?

We fell in love with Pixar when we read a book by the founder of Pixar, centered around fostering creativity at a company level.  

The secret to how they’ve created so many different, creative and inspirational stories, is that they give employees extreme ownership over projects, and no one can veto another person’s ideas. (This is a dramatic oversimplification, we recommend reading this book* also).

They’re also inspiring in terms of technological innovation. I once sat for four hours in a Craigslist rideshare (true story), talking with a computer science engineer about the complicated math behind creating believable looking hair.

We admire the way that Pixar is run, and we try to replicate their company culture internally. On our website, and in our case studies, we’re trying to replicate their artful storytelling, and capture a bit of the magic and authenticity of human stories.  

So, we surrounded our maestro with stars.

Why a MaestroQA maestra?

Deciding what a character that represents a company should look like is a very weird challenge. You’re basically trying to capture company values in a single character.

Should it be a lovable old man with crazy hair? Should it be a little kid dressed up, taking him-or-herself very seriously? Should it be a gender neutral animal?

When reading about the history of conducting/modern conductors, we came across this article in the New York Times about why this profession is still dominated by men.

A well-known, male conductor says: “The essence of the conductor’s profession is strength, the essence of a woman is weakness.” 🤦🧐😂

So we went with a woman💪😍

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*For more fun reads, check out Shauntle’s 2019 reading list

°Vasu read that, but doesn’t have a full list because he doesn’t like reading