I am often asked, "Why 30dps?" Or, "What is 30dps?" My short answer is always the same, i.e. "It's the speed of dreams!" I've had a multitude of varying responses to that, but my all time favorite was "Oh, that's right! I remember reading that somewhere!" Now I have no doubt that this well-meaning person actually did recall reading or hearing something about dreams, or the rate at which dreams float by in our sleep, but honestly, 30 dreams per second is not rooted in science; rather, its origins were quite unique.
We are often called upon by our clients to help them with branding. And occasionally, we are also asked to help with naming or renaming their company or product line. It is always an interesting and sometimes difficult process to come up with a new name, but none have been more challenging than when we decided that we needed to rebrand and rename ourselves. Our original name was a real mouthful, i.e. Learning Systems Consultants, Inc., and reflective of our roots in instructional technology. As the agency continued to evolve, and as digital marketing become our focus, the old name was simply more of a burden than a benefit to us. So we decided it was time to come up with something new, creative, descriptive, memorable, and hopefully, thought-provoking. Unfortunately, it proved to be a tall order.
A Painful Process
This was actually our second significant effort to rebrand ourselves. The first time we fairly quickly decided on a name we liked, but for some reason never actually made the change. Comically, a year later we couldn't even remember the name... so we concluded that it was certainly NOT our new name. A few years later, we decided to get "serious" about the renaming process, and the process was grueling. We took ourselves through much the same process we take our clients through, examining ourselves (our core beliefs, etc.), our target customers (our customer personas), our new service offerings, and our differentiators in the marketplace. Our structured process worked great, except that ultimately every name we really liked had already been taken (along with all associated domain names). We wanted something truly unique and creative, and it made our brains hurt as we blended words, wore out our thesaurus, and even began exploring other languages for inspiration. We kept coming up empty.
One Last Attempt
In an effort to finally force ourselves to work through this, I asked our creative director at the time, Therese, to meet me at the public library where we would have access to untold resources to help finally resolve our problem. We filled page after page with lists of prospective names, but nothing resonated. At some point in the discussion, I mentioned that I thought it would be interesting and beneficial to have a number in our name, because it was (especially in those days) pretty rare. And, we had earlier realized (in part because with the last name Thomas, I was always one of the last kids in every line) that having a name that was alphabetically near the top had it's advantages with any directory listing we might be in.
So, Therese began running through common industry terms that had numbers in them, including "300 dpi" (the resolution of print images) and "30 frames per second" (the speed of video). For some reason, when Therese said the latter, my ears heard something a bit different. I instantly shot back, "What did you say?" She repeated "thirty frames per second," to which I replied "I thought you said 'thirty DREAMS per second!'" Right there in the library, we both broke into a huge grin and made the very same sound... "Ooooooo!"
We Had Arrived
We instantly concluded that since we were a marketing agency that was in the business of helping our clients achieve their goals of competitive differentiation and financial success, that we were indeed in the dream business. We also concluded that any company that could help its clients achieve their dreams at 30 dreams per second would undoubtedly be a pretty cool company (and of course, we WERE pretty cool). We also concluded that 30dps was a much easier term to say, and that when asked "What is 30dps," we'd always respond with "Why, it's short for 30 dreams per second... which is, of course, the speed of dreams!"
And It's True
Our name is more than just a creative expression. Our commitment to helping our clients achieve their dreams (at the speed of dreams, of course) is heartfelt and real. If you'd like us to help you to find ways of addressing challenges you're facing, we're here for you. Whether it's the need to further refine your brand, drive an increase in website traffic, convert more visitors to leads, nurture more prospects through the process, or close more sales; we've got solutions to help you. As a leading inbound marketing firm serving clients in Colorado, Missouri, Washington, and others across the country, we'd love to help you with your content marketing, Hubspot integration, custom app development, or other digital marketing needs.
