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Randy Bray and his partners were talking in circles, but thinking about simplicity.

Dave Schwartz and his partners wanted to convey strength and direction.

Bray and Schwartz are key players in young businesses that will rely on effective branding to deliver all the elements of “who we are and what we do” to their clients.

And those elements can be complex, including a name, logo and slogan that decode what amounts to a company’s DNA.

Bray is a principal with Three-Sixty Group, a commercial real estate development and investment company that debuted in early May.

Three-Sixty brings a lot to the table, so much so that Bray and partners Roger Langpaul and Tim Walpole each could have created separate companies featuring their expertise.

“We’re the real estate version of the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker,” Bray said.

That translates to Bray’s 30 years of banking experience, Langpaul’s 20 years as a real estate investment adviser and Walpole’s decade-long career as a project manager. Their paths converged at Ladco Development Inc.

“We’ve worked on a lot of projects, but they weren’t ours,” Bray said. Forming a new company allowed them to bring “new, fresh ideas to how we structure things” on their own projects.

The trio were on the brink of formalizing their business relationship and realized they were missing something.

“It came time to start filing agreements and we didn’t have a name,” Bray said.

As a former banking CEO with a specialty in marketing, Bray had helped build, create and brand new departments as well as new companies.

Those days, he also took a banker’s stereotypical no-nonsense approach.

“I can hear myself so many times saying, ‘Let’s call it what it is,'” he said.

The literal approach would have been difficult for the new business.

Bray wanted a name that reflected his group’s ability to touch all aspects of a real estate transaction.

Over the course of two weeks, Bray, Langpaul and Walpole kicked around a variety of names, but they always returned to the concept of a circle or wheel and the idea that they had the expertise to handle a land deal from start to finish or that they could touch any point on the development curve.

They did not lose sight of the fact that they were setting out in a Web world, either, and checked the availability of Internet domain names with the words “three-sixty.”

“We liked the vibe it created for us,” Bray said, adding that the partners thought the term was “edgy” and “hip.”

“I really do think that the three-sixty name gives us a strength in and of itself,” he said.

A name is one thing; a design that reflects the brand is another.

Three-Sixty Group worked with graphic designer Toni Sarcone to develop a logo and work out the visual elements of their brand.

“One of the first things I told her was, ‘You need to know who we are,'” Bray said.

“They expressed to me the different places the logo would be seen, and an important factor was that it could be on a large design board in front of a development,” Sarcone said. “It was important that the design be clean enough and clear enough that a person would drive by and know it was one of their projects.”

The first meeting occurred on a Friday, and over the next four days Sarcone created four designs before borrowing elements of each for a logo that features a clean, serif-free typeface for the company name and slogan, “Three-Sixty Group, integrated real estate solutions,” as well as a spoked wheel that also suggests the geometry of a construction blueprint.

“The font had some nice curvature that reflected the circular design that we used,” Sarcone said.

Her clients came away satisfied.

“To me and to us, it was straightforward. It was simple,” Bray said. “It was uncomplicated, and that’s the way we like to do projects.”

A brand blueprint for Bearence Management Group

In 2005, Dave Schwartz, Dennis Johnson and Joe Teeling left senior positions with Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc. subsidiaries to form an insurance brokerage affiliated with Cedar Rapids-based TrueNorth Cos. LLC.

Three years later, they set out with a new partner, Dan Seemuth, under a new identity and a plan to define risk management on their own terms.

They came up with a name that lacks a definition, at least in a dictionary, but that conveys an identity that has stuck with clients, vendors and, more important, employees.

“I think it was important that we distinguished the brand,” Schwartz said. “We think the move to Bearence accomplished that.

“We’re kind of proud in what we’ve accomplished in that we researched the name thoroughly. We disclosed the name to internal people first so that they would understand the whys and wherefores of why we did this.

“The brand circulation went off without a hitch.”

Schwartz credits Flynn Wright Inc.’s proprietary “brand blueprint” process for smoothing the transition.

The Flynn Wright brand blueprint is based on research about a company, its business model, industry and competition, said Andy Flynn, president and CEO of the design, marketing and advertising firm.

“We need to determine where they are in the marketplace,” Flynn said. “And we’re learning, too. We need to understand their world.”

Bearence Management Group launched in April, but the search for a brand started last fall in meetings with Flynn Wright and Bearence partners and internal staff.

“This is a very exhaustive process; it’s a very comprehensive process,” Flynn said. “But it’s a very defining process.”

The research results in an “extensive document with a lot of things going on that ought to be their blueprint for their brand and the moves they are going to make from a marketing standpoint,” Flynn said.

Among other things, the blueprint includes brand attributes, company standards and the personality of the brand.

“We have to help clients define themselves in their mind; they know they are special, they know they are good, but we are trying to help from a marketing standpoint,” Flynn said.

For Bearence, that resulted in a name that can continue to define the company as it evolves and a simple logo that suggests upward-reaching pillars, reflecting Bearence’s desire

to have an identity that suggests strength and direction.

Flynn said it is of little importance that the company picked a name that suggests several things, but for now lacks a literal meaning.

“This is how I feel about names: Bearence Management Group is the company’s name, and it’s going to be their responsibility in time through all the branding efforts to bring some meaning to the name,” Flynn said. “Where you come from and where you end up is no different than all the names out there that become synonymous with something you deliver.”

Just consider Google Inc. eleven years ago, it was a name resulting from a misspelling, and it has achieved its own meaning. Enough said.