For years, the name was doing the talking, and it kept saying the wrong thing. Carolyn Walker and her partner David ran an agency called Response — a name that, to search consultants and prospects, screamed direct response, DRTV, performance marketing. None of which was the work. So they did what brand strategists do for clients every day, only this time for themselves: they dug down to who they were at the core, came up out the other side as StayGold, and then, because a manifesto was practically begging for it, they wrote a song.
The name that kept saying the wrong thing
Walker wasn’t a founder. She was hired as a freelancer, became managing partner, then bought the original owner out in 2009. Response had started life closer to a print broker, and the business had long since outgrown the word on the door.
“Neither one of us were attached to the brand,” Walker says of herself and David, who became partners in 2014. “We didn’t think it represented who we had become.” Five years ago a democratic, whole-agency renaming process stalled out with options nobody loved. The can got kicked. Then last April, in a planning session, they finally committed.
Turning fog into focus
This time the process wasn’t a vote — it was a conviction. Walker kept asking one question: who are we when our work is at its best? The answer became the brand. “Sharp strategy, creative soul,” she says. “We turn fog into focus, and focus into momentum.”
David landed on the name itself, and it clicked instantly. Stay implies motion, not stasis — staying true to who you are. Gold sets the bar. “It’s the standard we’re trying to set and keep,” Walker says. The brand launched internally in December to a team that went all in, each person taking a piece to bring to life.
Why a song
The manifesto, Walker says, was “screaming for a song.” Her reasoning is pure brand strategy: music is one of the fastest paths to emotion, and one of the least-owned brand assets going. So she took it to people she trusted.
Tim Warren and Eric Donnelly of the band The Alternate Routes had written for Walker before — including a song for Newtown Kindness, formed after Sandy Hook, that ended up in the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Olympics. The shorthand ran deep. “We could almost finish each other’s sentences,” Warren says.
Two weeks, zero changes
There was no brief — just an hour outside a deli, the manifesto, and a deadline. Two weeks later the song came back. “We have had zero changes,” Walker says. “They nailed it right out of the gate.”
Warren sees the project as a signpost for where creativity is heading. “A process like writing a song for yourself and for your company — it needs to evoke real emotion,” he says. “It’s not something someone else can do for you. They need to do it with you.” The song lives on Spotify under The Alternate Routes’ new project, The Endless Conversation.
The pencil scratch
The rebrand didn’t stop at a full song. StayGold also built a sonic logo — and listen closely and you’ll hear a pencil scratch. That’s the point. “Our brand is very human,” Walker says. In an AI world, she argues, the machine only takes you so far; it’s the human layer on top that gets you what she calls “speed to genius.” Team member Chris, who studied music before becoming a video editor, shaped the sound so that, in Walker’s words, video and sound “dance together.”
What indies should take from it
Walker’s advice to peers eyeing a rebrand is to open the aperture. “So many agencies go into a rebrand with a narrowed view of what that means,” she says. Music or sonic branding may or may not fit — but consider the whole scope of how a brand shows up, down to the little things.
Warren’s take is simpler, and it doubles as the reason any of this worked. “You can lean into the humanity,” he says. “This is a creative process that involves real people talking about themselves.” A name, a motto, a mission statement, a commitment level — all of it, in one tune.
Learn more
StayGold
Carolyn Walker — connect on LinkedIn
The Alternate Routes
The Endless Conversation — on Spotify
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