In a complete overhaul of its branding to position itself for the future, Vancouver’s Absolute Software has renamed itself, and is phasing out the name of its flagship and top-selling brand.
The new Absolute logo
Vancouver’s Absolute Software, which is best known for its Computrace endpoint security solution, has massively reshaped its brand and its image. They have changed the name of the company to Absolute. They are also phasing out the Computrace brand, which they believed both reflected the past rather than the present, and tended to compete with the Absolute brand the company now wants to emphasize.
“This is a complete overhaul of Absolute,” said Stephen Midgley, Absolute’s vice president of global marketing.
Midgley said the changes reflect the evolution of Absolute’s business, which has been around for 20 years.
“Historically, we have been strong in the device recovery business, mainly in the education space,” he said. “But the last couple years has seen a shift from devices to data. The value of devices has gone down, but the value of the data on them has gone up. That resulted in the need for a messaging change.”
The old Absolute Software logo — R.I.P.
The changes begin with the company name, which is now Absolute, rather than Absolute Software. The new Absolute corporate wordmark becomes the sole logo for the company, and will be used on all their collateral.
“Absolute is a very powerful name on its own,” Midgley said. “So we have dropped the word ‘Software’ from our name for go-to-market purposes.”
The second change will see the Computrace brand gradually phased out and replaced by Absolute Data & Device Security (DDS), and the reasons for this are rather more complex.
“Persistence® technology is part of our value proposition and historically, it had been buried in the product discussion,” Midgley said. “We wanted to tie it with Absolute, to make of it more of a corporate story, and less of a product story.”
That requires de-emphasizing the Computrace brand, even though it is the company’s flagship product and provides the bulk of its revenue.
“We felt it was somewhat dated and was a reflection of where we had been and not where we are going,” Midgley said. “Through focus group work, DDS was chosen. We think that reflects where we are going.”
Midgley also said the Computrace brand was detracting from their attempt to strengthen the Absolute brand.
Stephen Midgley, Absolute’s vice president of global marketing
“We found that the Computrace name was competing with Absolute,” he indicated. “Our field marketing team and customers would talk about Absolute, but our channel was talking about Computrace. We needed to change the name.”
Midgley said that the plan is to migrate the Computrace brand to DDS over the next six to eight months.
“The migration plan is to manage that brand transformation, with the Computrace brand eventually disappearing.”
The corporate branding change was immediate however.
“It was an overnight change,” Midgley said. “We literally went to bed as Absolute Software and woke up as Absolute.”
