The mountain summit is a symbol that’s rich with meaning today as we introduce the world to TerraCurrent, a new branding, marketing, and PR agency.
You don’t wake up one day and decide to climb a mountain. First, you dream of the possibility. You formulate a plan. And prepare for one of the biggest endurance tests of your life.
You also build a team. Nobody should try to climb a mountain alone.
Glenna Wiseman and Aimee Tuck had been dreaming about the agency that would become TerraCurrent for several years as Glenna’s company, Identity3, and Aimee’s company, Corbae Creative, partnered to support executives and marketing professionals, mostly in the solar industry. They constructed a name out of pieces that meant earth (Terra) and Current (flow, energy) to capture the mission of the firm.
Piece by piece, we were assembling a plan, all while growing companies and taking care of families.
Partnership leads to more partnership. Through a project sponsored by the US Dept. of Energy called the Orange Button Initiative, Glenna and Aimee started working with Matthew Hirsch, who ran a business called Hirsch Media.
Knowing loose partnerships come and go, the three of us started talking about combining our separate businesses into one. Together we do more.
We looked to the mountains and took one step forward.
Starting with Why
One of the first questions we asked ourselves was something we routinely ask clients. What does success look like?
The responses reflect our collective ambition, a desire to work with the best in the business, take on new challenges, increase the impact of our work, and have fun doing it. They also showed we were ready to give up full control of our healthy, small businesses in exchange for shared control of a healthier, bigger business with room to grow.
Whether you’ve been in business as long as Hirsch Media (7 years), Identity3 (8 years), or Corbae Creative (18 years), that’s quite a chasm to cross.
Next came a commitment to build our business the right way, holding ourselves accountable to TerraCurrent as we would for any of our clients.
Inspired by the work of Simon Sinek, we documented what TerraCurrent does:
Holistic branding, marketing, and public relations for clean energy, clean transportation, and corporate sustainability;
how we do it:
By blending creativity with science to help earth-friendly companies build sustainably and thrive;
and why:
Because a cohesive group can do more together to shape a world that works for all life.
These core statements helped guide us as we set down the roots of a branding tree—all the foundational pieces that focus our marketing and strengthen the TerraCurrent brand—and started developing the visual identity and key content we’re sharing with you today.
Working with the Best
Small business entrepreneurs learn to be resourceful behind the scenes, alternating between business development and sales, project management, accounting, and various other roles, often on a shoestring budget. From the start, we agreed that TerraCurrent would invest in the people, products, and processes that bring the most value to the business.
To lead us through business formation, we selected the law firm Wendel Rosen to work with Bill Acevedo and Donald Simon, who run the green business practice group. With Bill and Donald’s help, we have committed to operating TerraCurrent as a public benefit company, elevating social and environmental considerations as we go about our business.
For business management software, we chose Function Point, a purpose-built solution for agencies that brings together all our business planning, resource management and reporting onto a single platform.
When small businesses run into bookkeeping challenges or office network issues, it can easily become a distraction for the company owner. At TerraCurrent, we’re grateful to have an IT consulting firm and a CPA who do what they do best so we can stay focused on what we do best.
Above all, we are thankful for the companies and the people we work with who bought into what we’re building at TerraCurrent.
And special thanks to our graphic designer Rachel Brown and marketing and analytics pro Miles Styer, who’ve joined us from Corbae. Without Rachel and Miles, we wouldn’t have come close to pulling this off.
Together We Do More
The reason you see a mountain in the TerraCurrent logo is a story in itself. Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about the creative process that led Aimee to develop the logo and the rest of our brand identity.
We have come a long way in a short time. Life threw unexpected obstacles in our path. Of all the contingency plans, we hadn’t considered a global pandemic that would put the economy and much of our social lives on pause.
We’re still climbing.
Join us as we help earth-friendly companies build sustainably and thrive.