#142: Creative Elements is now Creator Science! Here’s why I’m rebranding.

March 28, 2023

#142: Creative Elements is now Creator Science! Here’s why I’m rebranding.
Play Episode

On the 3-year anniversary of Creative Elements, we’re changing the name. In this episode, I explain why.

Hello my friend! I have some BIG news to share with you today. This podcast has a new name! This show is no longer named Creative Elements. Moving forward, this show will be named Creator Science. Don’t worry, there’s nothing YOU need to do – it’s the same RSS feed that you’re already subscribed to. You’ll just see it pop up under the name “Creator Science” instead of Creative Elements and you’ll notice some slight differences in the new artwork.

Rebrands are really hard. But I have two mantras for 2023:

1.) Simplification

2.) Ripping off the band-aid

I’m on a mission to simplify my business and any time I can do that, even if it’s scary, difficult, or painful, I’m going to rip off the band-aid and make that change.

So in this episode, I’m going to talk about why I’m renaming the podcast to Creator Science.


Links for more:

My conversation with Arvid Kahl

My essay on rebranding my newsletter


Full transcript and show notes

***

CONNECT

📬 Subscribe to the newsletter

📹 Subscribe to our YouTube

🤝 Connect on LinkedIn

🐦 Connect on Twitter

📸 Connect on Instagram

🎵 Connect on TikTok

🙏 Make a guest or mailbag request

📝 Check out our curated Playlists

***

SPONSORS

💼 View all sponsors and offers

***

SAY THANKS

📞 Leave me a voicemail

💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts

🟢 Leave a rating on Spotify

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Jay Clouse  00:14

Hello, my friend. I have some big news to share with you today. This is months in the making. This podcast has a new name. The show is no longer named Creative Elements. Moving forward, this show will be named Creator Science. That is such an important point and rebranding is really hard. So I'm going to repeat it a couple of times. This podcast is now called Creator Science. The name of this podcast is now Creator Science. It is not Creative Elements, the name of this podcast is now Creator Science. I know I sound silly repeating this over and over again. But man, socialising new names is so hard. If you're wondering about the emphasis, its Creator Science, not Creator Science, Creator Science. Emphasis on Creator, not the Science. Okay, don't worry, I'm just about done repeating the name Creator Science. But you may be wondering what that means for you. Well, don't worry, there's actually nothing that you need to do. It's the same RSS feed that you've already subscribed to, you'll just see it pop up under the new name Creator Science instead of Creative Elements. And you'll notice some slight differences in the new artwork. I call them out but I want you to look at it and see if you can do kind of the the old highlights magazine, what's different about this one from the other one. Now, I won't lie to you. As you can probably tell from the first 60 seconds of just repeating the name Creator Science. This is a big scary change that came after a lot of consideration and required quite a bit of behind the scenes work to make it happen. If you've listened to my episode that I did recently on Arvid Kahl's podcast, The Bootstrapped Founder, we actually talked about this, and I talked about how I thought it was smarter for me to rename the podcast, but how difficult that would be. Now don't get me wrong. I like the name Creative Elements. I've had it since I launched this podcast in March of 2020. And there's nothing inherently wrong with the name, I even trademarked it. But after months and months of consideration, I know that this is the right move. In fact, I've known that for a long time. And the only reason that I didn't do it sooner is because of the amount of work involved. Logistical work, coordination work and the work to actually socialize the new name Creator Science to you. Rebrands are really hard. But I have two mantras for 2023. The first is simplification, and the second is ripping off the band aid. I'm on a mission to simplify my business. And anytime I can do that, even if it's scary, even if it's difficult, even if it's painful, I'm going to rip off the band aid and make that change. So that's the big news. And the rest of this episode, I'm going to talk about why I'm renaming the podcast to Creator Science, some of the challenges that will still persist with that Rename, and things that I think will generally help you if you ever want to make a brand name change as well otherwise known as a rebrand. We'll get to all of that, right after this.

 

Jay Clouse  02:56

Okay, we're back. Let's talk about why we're making this change. And let's address the elephant in the room. If you subscribe to my newsletter, you know that it is also named Creator Science. In fact, at this point, my entire business is operating under the name Creator Science. So let me start with a quick story. This time last year, my newsletter was named Creative Companion. I had fewer than 10,000 subscribers and a much smaller audience in general. But the work itself was still just about the same. I was trying to help people succeed as creators. Then in April, I asked my Twitter audience what words they would associate with me in my work, this is April 2022. I was hoping to hear words like creator and creator economy. But instead I got a lot of qualitative words like friendly, generous, transparent. Those are really kind and positive. But it really became clear to me that I was not succeeding and being known as someone who helps creators. And this was really frustrating. One thing that I've learned about organic growth and word of mouth is that you really need to be the first person to mind for specific ideas, specific phrases, or specific solutions. You'll get tagged in a ton of existing conversations, your work will get shared more, and you'll generally just have more inbound attention on your work. And I was clearly not the first to mind when people were trying to become a creator. So I decided to make a change. I wanted my newsletter to be one of the first to mind when people were recommending newsletters for creators. So I thought that I could better become associated with creators if I put the word creator right inside of the name of the newsletter itself. After some brainstorming and a rebranding project, I launched the rebrand of my newsletter under the name Creator Science. That rebrand launched in August of 2022. And I am not kidding you, the difference it has made in my entire business, not just my newsletter, the difference it has made in my entire business has been night and day. That brings us to today and I'm feeling some of the same limitations of this podcast being named Creative Elements that I saw in my newsletter being named Creative Companion. So it's time for a change, let's talk about some of the reasons that I'm making this change. I have six of them, six specific reasons why I'm making this name change. Reason number one is simplification. I talked about this being one of my mantras for the year. Something I think about a lot is how to be a more effective advocate for my own work. One debate that comes up a lot for creators is whether you should create behind your personal name Jay Clouse, or behind some sort of project or brand name like Creator Science. I've thought about this a lot. And I've tried both, really, but I've always really admired creators who are introduced and known as this person, the creator of this project, where really the project is a thing you know, and the project is so awesome, and so well known that it shines brightly on the individual and their name, you know, an example would be Hrishikesh Hirway, the creator of Song Exploder, what I think is one of the best podcasts of all time and incredible Netflix series, he can be introduced as Hrishikesh Hirway, the creator of Song Exploder. And that's badass because Song Exploder is badass. So, personally, I like to go with a project name, I want to be known as Jay Clouse, the founder of Creator Science. Instead of Jay Clouse, a writer, a podcast or YouTuber, yada, yada, yada. I'm embracing the fact I'm an entrepreneur. I'm embracing the fact that I'm a business owner. I'm building a media company under the Creator Science brand. For a long time, I've introduced as Jay Clouse, the writer of Creator Science, who also has a podcast called Creative Elements and it's other projects and it's other projects. And it's just too much. People struggle to attribute multiple things, multiple projects to you. I want to be Jay Clouse, the guy behind Creator Science, just that simple. Creator Science has a newsletter, a podcast, a YouTube channel, but it's all under the same name. I want the name of the project, the project itself to be the thing that I direct attention to. That brings us to reason number two that I'm making this change in that is discoverability. It's no secret that discoverability and podcasting is so bad that it's nearly non existent. Email isn't much better. But we are pretty discoverable as people. We show up all over the place online and in real life. So for a long time, I've tried to leverage my natural discoverability as a public loudmouth, to allow people to discover my podcast and my newsletter. But there's a catch, you can really only direct the attention that you receive towards one destination. I truly, truly believe this. Meaning that, if I'm writing a newsletter called Creator Science and have a podcast called Creative Elements, if somebody comes across me on Twitter, I'm really only going to be effective at directing them towards one of those things. I can't direct them towards both. And by trying to direct them towards both. I think you probably lose most people. However, if I'm a public loudmouth, and I am Jay Clouse, a creator of Creator Science, and there's a one link in my bio, there's one thing I'm talking about it is Creator Science, people are gonna say what is that, they're gonna go to the website, they're gonna look deeper, they're going to see that there's a podcast, they are gonna see if there's a YouTube channel, they're going to see it all. It's a lot easier to direct people towards one destination. That's social media, that's passive, that's one example. But this happens to me, probably daily. Yesterday, I did a live summit with Teachable, and they asked me to introduce myself, which happens all the time, people sometimes don't even do the work of introducing you themselves. They say, hey, tell us a little bit about you, introduce yourself. And even in that sense, I have a hard time introducing myself, because what do I focus on? Do I tell people that hey, I'm Jay, I'm the creator of a newsletter called Creator Science. I also have a podcast called Creative Elements. No, I want to talk about the the mission of the work, I want to talk about the mission of the work and then follow that up with the name of the project. So if they connected with the mission, they can go to the name of the project to learn more, I want to say things like, hey, my name is Jay, you know, my business is pretty meta. I am a content creator, who studies content creators to help people become better content creators, but I do it really analytically. My business is called Creator Science. I have a newsletter, I have a podcast, I have YouTube channel, you can learn more at creatorscience.com. That's the type of intro that I want to do. I don't want to do and by the way, I always have this podcast that has one and a half million downloads. That's true. That is all true. But it confuses people and detracts and distracts from their ability to follow up on what you just said that resonated and go to that project. So that really leads into reason number three that I'm doing this rebrand and that is consolidation. Consolidation is a way to simplify. Consolidation simplifies your business and simplifies your life. Consolidating the brand means that I'm consolidating my marketing. I just need to make people aware of the Creator Science brand. From there, they'll find the newsletter, they'll find the podcast, we'll find the YouTube channel. I just need to make people aware that I have this project called Creator Science. They'll remember that they'll attach it to me. And then if they care about that, if that resonates with them, they'll go deeper. They'll go to the website, they'll see okay, I can subscribe this newsletter, oh, there's a podcast, oh, and a YouTube channel. That's so much better than proliferating the number of names of projects you have in their mind and getting them lost in the links of your own platform. By consolidating my marketing, that I should be able to see more efficient cross pollination of platforms. It'll be easier for me to introduce newsletter subscribers, people who subscribe to the Creator Science newsletter to the Creator Science podcast. It'll be easier for me to introduce podcast listeners, listeners of Creator Science, to the newsletter called Creator Science. It's all the same mission. It's all under one brand. All of this is for the purpose of helping you become a smarter creator. Why do I need a different name? I think a lot about Dan Runcie, who's become a friend of mine. Dan has this amazing business called Trapital. He's been on the podcast. Dan is the founder of Trapital. Trapital is a great newsletter, has a great podcast, he's on YouTube now. All you need to know is Dan is the guy behind Trapital. And once you discover one of those platforms, you're going to discover the others. It's all the same mission under one brand, you can choose to engage with that brand through whichever medium you would prefer. So that was the first three reasons I'm doing this rebrand. The first is simplification. The second is discoverability. The third is consolidation, which arguably is kind of the same as simplification, but I like to make it separate. As you can tell, I'm getting really animated about this because I think it's really important. It's something that I wish I would have done earlier, I really wish that I would have started with consolidation. You know, practically speaking, the name Creative Elements predates the name Creator Science, so I can't beat myself up about it. I just got to do what is right and moving forward in that is consolidation. I have three more reasons why I'm making this change. And then I'm going to give you some of the things that are still challenging, things that went into the rebrand, things that are going to still be challenging, even after the rebrand. All that is coming up after a quick break for our sponsors.

 

Jay Clouse  12:05

And we are back time for three more reasons why I'm making the rebrand. Reason number four is just like my newsletter rebrand. I think this will tie me a lot closer to the term creator. And the idea of the creator economy. I'm telling you, night and day difference. That's what happened when I made the switch for the newsletter people just took me more seriously. You know, the internet has all of this back and forth traffic where like a bunch of ships passing in the night. And as people zoom past your profile, the comments that you make on social media, the posts that you are putting up there that second degree connections are engaging with, and they see your name, they see your headline, they want to make a very quick judgment as to whether you are someone they should pay attention to. And I think people actually, by default, want to not pay attention to you. And so having the word creator, literally the brand, I think has been such a difference maker for people who care about the creator economy, they care about the idea of creators, they very quickly see that oh, this guy writes a newsletter called Creator Science interesting. In the name itself, you know, it's not just, it's not just any rebrand will work. I think that the brand creator science itself is very good, because it has this natural, almost oxymoron, this tension between creativity and science. And also it has, you know the word in their Creative Science, but people make an assumption about what the newsletter is about, or what the brand is about whether they're right or wrong. The idea of hmm, this is analytical. This is scientific assessing rigor to it. I think that's interesting and makes a quick, positive first impression. And that has made people pay attention. And by people paying attention quickly, that has opened up a whole lot of doors. For me, it's led to speaking opportunities, consulting opportunities, a whole lot of new relationships. I don't even know if my membership would be as successful as it is, if it was not under the Creator Science brand. You know, I do play off of the science motif by calling the membership itself the lab. But yeah, I really think that the brand itself has really given me more credibility in the creator economy. And with the topic of creators. That brings us to reason number five, why I'm making this change. And that is that I believe the creator opportunity is bigger than the creative opportunity. What do I mean by that? This sounds really small. I know it does. But people who identify as creatives usually aren't the same people who identify as creators. Identity is a really, really tricky thing. And these are broad strokes. But creatives tend to be more focused on artistry. A large percentage of people who identify as creatives if not the majority, also work in house at companies and organizations. There's nothing wrong with that. Creators more specifically refers to content creators, people who are making content online often with a purpose of building an audience, often with the purpose of building a business. So these two identity markers, creatives versus creators, I thought it was one in the same people for a while. But the more I get to know my audience, the people who really appreciate my content, it's very different. There's a course of overlap. It's, it's a venn diagram, there's some overlap, where people in the middle consider themselves both creatives, but do content creation, or people who are creators that also identify as creatives. But broadly, it seems different. And so by putting creative in the name creative elements, I believe I was subtly making a good first impression with the wrong audience. While making a bad first impression with the right audience, I think people who saw the word creative and that was good for them, thought it was going to be more about artistry and more about the craft of being creative. And of course, we have some of that. But really, we get into the nitty gritty of building a content business. You know, this is a business entrepreneurship show. In fact, I changed the category of the show from careers to entrepreneurship, because I don't think the name of the show was making the right first impression for the right audience. Not to mention, there are a lot of fantastic podcasts for creatives shows, like design matters. With Debbie Millman and Creative Pep Talk, I love those shows. But if you listen to those shows, you know that the focus of the shows is a little bit different than what we do here. You know, it's not about the business of content creation, it is more about artistry and craft, and there's so much space for that. And that's so good. But how was competing with those juggernauts of a show with the wrong audience? You know, Conan show Creative Elements, I think was putting me in competition with those two shows, of which I wasn't actually competing. So a show for content creators, I believe is differentiated in a space that I can lead in. I also believe that the creator economy is just getting started, I think we're at the leading edge of a growing trend. So the sooner that I'll align the podcast with that movement, the better off the show, it's going to be, we have reached a reason number six as to why I'm making this name change. And that is that I think creator science more accurately describes the content. Everyone on the show is a creator, I meet the host, I am a creator, these conversations get really nerdy, they get specific, dare I say they even get scientific, the original vision of the show I'm talking about there's a whole lot. But at the time that I created the name creative elements, I was reading the book tribe of mentors, and I was blown away by how Tim took his podcast guests the relationships that he had, he sent them a templated list of questions. And he compiled their answers into a book. And I thought to myself, is there a way that I could do a podcast and be along the way, creating a book as well. And so I thought that by making the show creative elements in focusing each conversation, at least in part, around an element of that guests style or personality or a belief that they had, I could then draw trends, compile those elements into a book, just based on the work that I'd already done in the podcast. I think that could still be true, I think I could still do that. But that format, didn't seem to leave a lot of space for me to do solo episodes. I think creator science doesn't have the same rigidity to the format. And it gives me more flexibility to do so episodes like this, where I talk about behind the scenes of what I'm doing as a creator, and why things that I'm learning. The podcast focuses on creator science, whether there's a guest or not. And you may have noticed anyway, that the elements part of the show has really gone away. It's still there in the intro of the episodes a lot of times, but it was kind of a weird, awkward part of episode prep with a guest. Most of the time, they didn't read the prep that I had sent about, like, Hey, by the way, a large part of our conversation will focus on an element of your style or personality that's helped you be successful. So before we started recording, we were workshopping what their element would be, it wasn't a great beginning experience for the guests. And it wasn't clear to new listeners, that the thing in brackets in the title if you've been listening for more than a year, you probably saw back in the day, when I was interviewing guests, I would put the name of their element in brackets in the title of the episode. But there's no way for you to know that's what that was, it was actually kind of a confusing element of the title that I think might have deterred people from clicking play in the first place. So I got rid of the brackets. Not that long ago, a few months ago. We didn't spend that much time talking about specific elements in the episode anyway. So greater science overall just has much better alignment. So those are the six reasons that I'm renaming the show once again, to recap, reason number one is simplification. Reason number two discoverability Reason number three, consolidation. Reason number four, tying my business closer to the term creator. Reason number five, I think the cream ppportunity is bigger than the creative opportunity. And reason number six, I think the new name creator science, more accurately describes the content. So that's why I'm changing the name. But that doesn't mean that the process has been easy. I'm not kidding, I've been working on this change for months, months, there were so many considerations and small details that go into a rebrand like this. Things like, let me just give you a short list of some of the things that I had to work through to make this happen. Setting up a new website URL, the website is currently creativeelements.fm or was currently creativeelements.fm, I had to move that over and creator science already had a website. So I had to make this into a subdomain on the Creator Science website podcast at creator science.com. That took some figuring out because that meant that I had to redirect all of the old website links that exist on the internet that I can't control, I wanted to get those links to still point to the correct link on the new creator Science Podcast website that took some doing, I had to change the artwork for the show, I had to get new design made, I literally had to update that artwork in the podcast player. But the hardest part of that was just getting new artwork made. And I thought about this a lot, because part of me wanted to do totally new like radically different artwork. And I'll probably get there at some point. But because socializing a new name, a rebrand is so tough.

 

Jay Clouse  21:25

I thought I would take baby steps transition, change the name, keep the artwork very similar. So you get used to, this is still a same show new name. After a few months, maybe I'll change the artwork entirely. But for right now, very similar artwork, I then had to change that artwork on the new website, I had to change in all of the marketing materials that I had years, you'd be surprised just how many places your artwork shows up that now you're going to have to go back and change and I didn't keep perfect records of where all these things were. So there's, there's some discovery, candidly, that's going to happen after this episode where I'm still finding things that oh, I need to change that. And that's okay. But for the most part, you know, I tried to update all the places online that I talked about creative elements to say creator science, update the description of the podcast, I'd update all the places online that I have the artwork as I said, I needed to coordinate with the HubSpot Podcast Network, the the network that this show is on the audio destination for business professionals, they have materials as well, not only do they have the artwork on their website and materials, they actually create scripts to cross promote across other shows on the network and handles know, hey, the name is changing. So make sure in the scripts that you're providing to new hosts about the show that has the new name in it and not the old name. There are so many episodes already published almost 150 episodes that have shownotes descriptions, all of them with creative elements in them, I got to update all of that. There's a ton of automated email copy in my business. You know, one of the things that I did to grow the show is when people subscribed to the Creator Science newsletter, I told them about my podcast, which I called creative elements and directed them to creative elements of the artwork there. So there's a bunch of email copy that I have to update. That's just a short list. Truth be told, I'm still tracking down all the areas that I need to make this update and it's not all perfect. There are some things that I just won't be able to fix easily. Like all the times that I say creative elements in past episodes, they're probably 100 episodes of the show, that literally, the first thing you hear is me saying, Hello, my friend, welcome back to another episode of creative elements. I can't really edit that. I mean, sure I could, I could edit that as possible. Maybe someday I'll think that is worthwhile. You know, it would it would involve me changing the audio file stitching on a new intro, we would have to fix it with the intro music, we will be creating entirely new audio files and uploading them. I just don't think that's worth it. All those episodes also have custom artwork with an old name on them. You know, you look at an old episode, you see the guest and it says creative elements on it. I don't know how to change all of that. That's just not part of the the artists my sister is not part of a process to have that easily changed or saved. It's not really worth it. I have a custom animation for the YouTube channel that's baked into our episodes where between the intro and the interview we did this animation it has artwork from different episodes also just says the words creative elements. So that's going to be confusing for people watching his past videos. That's okay. It's a little messy. It's frustrating for a detail oriented guy like me, but I'm doing whatever I can to make all the changes that I can see whenever I can. Because I know this is the right move to make for the future listeners of the show. I know that it will attract more listeners. It'll impact more people. It's the right move these tiny little detail things that I know of and I noticed but most people won't notice This, I'm gonna be okay with them, I'm gonna change what I can do, don't get me wrong, I'm gonna change what I can. But things that I can't change are things that are way more work than they're worth for the back catalogue. I'm going to make do it's going to be okay. You know. And that's just the nature of it. That's the nature of rebrands. They're messy. They're hard. They are full of details that you don't expect until you start to get into it. But you know, if it's the right move is the right move. I hope this has been insightful for you and your projects. Like I said, rebranding is really tough. And it's not just the act of rebranding alone that makes it worth it, it really depends almost entirely on having a good new brand. And it's worth spending extra time to make sure that is true. So two things I want to point out to you one that episode with Arvid Kahl that I pointed out, I'd recommend listening to that, because we talk a lot about what makes a good brand. That episode was on this feed, you can find it. It was published on January 10, called what's underneath brand building for creators, I will link to it in the show notes. It's worth listening to I think it will give you a nice addition to what we're talking about here. And the other thing that I'll share with you is I wrote an essay last August when I launched the rebrand for the newsletter. And that whole essay really dives into the specific details as to how I went about rebranding that project. So I think that will help you a lot. I'll link to that in the show notes as well. It'll help you get through the process of rebranding, if that's something you ever decide that you want to do. Otherwise, we'll be back next week with our first new episode of creator science, the podcast right here in your favorite podcast player. And while I have you could you leave a rating review of the show on Apple podcasts or Spotify. It really goes a long way in getting the words creator science in some reviews on Apple podcasts would really help with this rebrand. I'll say it again if you could review the show on Apple podcasts and put the name Creator Science in your review somewhere that would help a lot to not confuse people coming across the show for the first time. All right, thank you. Thank you for listening. I will talk to you next week.