Aardvark Design Inc. started working with clients before it even had a name. When President Michael Sever hung a shingle in 1993, he had a mission – grabbing a piece of the just-burgeoning interactive media market – and a few clients, but no moniker.
“Our name, interestingly, was chosen by one of our early customers,” Sever said in a recent interview.
The media and advertising design company had been toying with a few names – Aardvark was one of them and a client liked it. “So that client wrote a check to Aardvark and said, ‘We’ve picked a name.’ ”
Back then, Sever was just a year out of school and had worked briefly in the media department at the now-defunct Blazing Graphics.
Back in the early 1990s, creating interactive content didn’t include the Internet, which wasn’t yet in widespread, user-friendly operation. Black & Decker, for example, came to Aardvark for help with its catalogs.
“They came in and said they have salesmen who go out with 25 catalogs – the SpaceMaker, the under-cabinet designs, etc. – and they said, ‘We have these catalog lines and what we envision is making them electronic and putting them on a laptop,’ ” Sever recalled. “So it sounds horribly antiquated, even though it’s only 15 years ago. But those were the types of projects that we would be developing.”
Aardvark also designed in-store kiosks for Kmart and interactive annual reports for various firms. “Then, of course, all that kind of paused and we had the World Wide Web that kicked in after about two years,” Sever said. “So we were well-poised to kind of transition into that.”
Although it has been located in Warren for about a year now, the firm for more than a decade was based in Providence’s Jewelry District. Before moving to Warren, it had a two-year stint in downtown Providence. Because the firm’s work is digital and largely Web-based, the physical location isn’t as important as it once was, Sever said.
Much of the work that Aardvark takes on now – it usually has about 10 clients, ranging from Blount Fine Foods, to Bego USA to the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce – tends to be in “strengthening or sustaining an existing brand,” Sever said.
As was the case back when it was creating kiosks and computer-based catalogs, when Aardvark sets out on a job, the ultimate goal is to “create a relationship” between its clients and the customers. While that had once included just a simple “interface,” it now includes helping them create social media and Web sites.
“They had a retail image and a wholesale image,” he said. “So the objective that we had with them was to really try to shore up their identity and give them a brand that would give them legs for the future.”
That overhaul included the visuals – including a redesigned logo and packaging – but also a new approach to corporate communications.
Web services now make up about half of Aardvark’s workload. Social media – Facebook, LinkedIn and other Web sites – are becoming more and more important for Aardvark. In a way, those sites are an extension of the company’s core mission: creating a way for customers to interact with their clients.
“For us, it’s kind of a perfect storm. We’ve been waiting a long time for a lot of these opportunities, where we can really blend strategy, the Web and these new mediums that give us opportunities to stretch a new brand,” Sever said. “So it’s an exciting time for us.”
Sever has assigned one of his staffers with staying as current as possible on all new media and social-networking opportunities. And everyone in the office is required to maintain their Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.
“We can’t go out and talk about the strengths of these products and know how to leverage them without actually being part of them,” Sever said. “Where other organizations say, ‘You can’t do these things,’ they are part of the criteria to work here.”
And although the firm’s operations have changed over the years, its name is just as punchy as ever, Sever said. Aardvark “was just a peculiarly odd word that didn’t have rhyme or reason, other than that it was different,” he said. “That was back before all the good names had been mined.” •COMPANY PROFILE
Aardvark Design Inc.
OWNER: Michael Sever
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Communications design, including interactive media and advertising
LOCATION: 64 Church St., Warren
EMPLOYEES: 4
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1993
ANNUAL SALES: WND
