Oh nah nah, what’s my name?

Some little thoughts on naming.

People often ask me why Enid is called Enid, and not my own name? And why it’s registered as Enid Records Ltd but not a record label?

In truth, Enid was a name from a previous naming project that I had put to one side and often found myself thinking about. I’d formed an attachment. It sounded cute, short but inviting, and also DINE when spelt backwards.

I pulled it from my back pocket as I was contemplating what consulting might look like for me back in 2020. The insight being that it wouldn’t solely be a PR and comms thing; it wouldn’t be a design studio, nor would it be a so-called creative collective, and definitely not an agency. Instead, it would be all of those things, yet done more considerately, and centred around strategic growth as the goal for the partners we would work with. It would be about building brands, not for the sake of brand, but to create veritable businesses that resound.

Backronyms you may never have considered.

Knowing what it wouldn’t be, I also had some considerations to factor in:

1. Enid was not about me. It was never going to be Jordanne Young Consultancy. It was a chance to develop a new way of delivering creative growth strategies, and change the thinking around the siloed three-way of design studio — marketing agency — head of marketing structure that so many businesses seem to fall into bed with.
2. I wanted to move beyond the PR space I came up through, acknowledging that I had many more strings to my bow, but that comms and messaging would always be central to my approach. Not just the “PR Girl”.
3. The music thing. During a natty-wine nurtured chat with my partner Sash Kitulgoda, I started to find myself using music analogies to talk about brand marketing. Something along the lines of “You don’t release a hit record without an expert team of songwriters, musicians, mixers, publicists etc — so why do the same with your business? Why go generalist when you could have a tight team of specialists working through the equivalent of your beats, lyrics and performances?” And that’s how the dot fm came to be.

In my mind, Enid was to be an ever-growing collective of talented minds to solve client partners’ challenges, drawing on the chart-toppers in copywriting, styling, creative direction, digital product design, brand identity, editorial content strategy and all of the other underlying components that collaborate to produce a great hit record.

Ergo, Enid — designed to be an always-morphing acronym (or backronym!), spelling out a myriad of meaningful notes and maxims: Everyone needs infinite dreams, Every note is distinct, Each new idea defined.

It’s a nod to some of my own personal favourite acronyms from music, fashion and lifestyle.And so here we are, Enid.fm — a network of handpicked collaborators, specialising in the meeting point of comms, creative and commerce, to create a unique amplification studio.