SmartyStreets: New Name, Same Awesome

Posted on August 31, 2011 by jonathan-oliver

Qualified Address is now SmartyStreets. But, by now, you’ve probably guessed that. With any kind of name change or re-branding there are bound to be questions.

What’s Wrong With The Old Name?
Qualified Address was a pretty good name, and it has served us well for years. But as we have grown and our culture has evolved, we have come to realize that the name Qualified Address no longer adequately conveys who we are or where we are going as a company.

Frankly speaking, Qualified Address was a little too…well…boring. And that’s not who we are. When we come into work everyday, we bring our “A-Game”. When we talk or interact with you, our customers, we want you to feel the excitement about what we do. We don’t mind talking about our flair or the fact that we won’t put cover pages on our TPS reports.  Address verification is what we do.

Why “SmartyStreets”?
First and foremost, we wanted something unique and memorable (not to mention “Google-able”). We wanted something that conveys what we do as a company, while still allowing our personality to show through. SmartyStreets is all of that and then some, all wrapped up in one neat little package.

Here’s the fun part. Now that you’ve seen the name SmartyStreets, we’d like you to try and forget it. Seriously! Just try to not remember the name. That’s how we came to pick SmartyStreets in the first place. No matter how hard we tried, we kept coming back to it because we couldn’t get it out of our heads. SmartyStreets. SmartyStreets. SmartyStreets. See? It’s stuck.

The other reason that we went with SmartyStreets is that it plays well with the concept of “street smarts,” which means having a lot of actual experience. In our case, we have a lot of experience related to streets and addresses. So what better name than something that conveys the level of expertise we have about streets and addresses in general?

New Name, Same Awesome
For us, this name change represents business as usual. And by “business as usual” we mean our continuing to deliver all of the awesome in new, interesting, and fun (un-boring) ways. We hope you enjoy it too. Tell us what you think. We want to hear all of your feedback.

Really.

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  • IE

    I like the service and they way it “looks up/verifies” addresses. The new name might be pop-culture oriented but it’s lacking formality for the company. My suggestion is that the name should say what it is that you do (keeping it simple). For example, ‘Address Look up’ or ‘Address Verification’…if this helps, think it over.

  • Mike

    Just an FYI, you spelled your own new “unique and memorable” name wrong in the first sentence of your blog about said change. Might want to correct that. :-)

  • http://jonathanoliver.com Jonathan Oliver

    The irony! That’s actually really funny. I’ve corrected the post. +1 to you for that catch.

  • http://jonathanoliver.com Jonathan Oliver

    Thanks for the comment. The “pop culture” aspect of the name not intentional, but rather a side effect of the name. When we were brainstorming for names, SmartyStreets came up again and again, and over the course of months, we kept coming back to it when comparing it candidates.

    On the formality side, I can definitely see your point. The name is a bit more “trendy” than Qualified Address. At the same time, one thing that we’re trying to make sure we do is to step back from all of the formalities that prevent us from helping our customers. Instead, we want to be real, approachable, and genuinely concerned about our customers needs–where we recognize that our customers are people too and not just another number toward some arbitrary and artificial goal.