Catamaran: 300 Names. One that stuck.

After 10 years of success, the leadership team at Confidant arrived at their all-staff retreat with a big announcement: the agency would be splitting into two independent companies. The creative and PR sides of the business had never quite found the collaborative rhythm they'd hoped for, and separating them felt like the right move for both teams.

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The PR wing would need a new name and visual identity — but that came with a real challenge. The people who worked there had a strong sense of identity tied to the Confidant brand. Any new name couldn't just be a fresh start; it needed to feel like a continuation.

We partnered with the PR leadership team to build out a naming criteria framework, with finding a meaningful throughline from "Confidant" as a central requirement. From there, we generated over 300 name candidates, applied the criteria to narrow the field, and put the strongest contenders through a preliminary trademark review before presenting 15 finalists to the team.

After weeks of discussion, debate, and a few changed minds, they landed on Catamaran. The metaphor resonated deeply: the dual-hulled design spoke to their philosophy of working side by side with clients, and the image of an ancient technology still thriving today captured their practical, no-nonsense approach to communications.

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