What’s in a name? A great deal, according to officials at First Federal and SCBT, which merged in February 2013. The combined company’s new name, South State Bank, was announced in February of this year and will be adopted by SCBT banks on June 30. First Federal will roll out the South State Bank brand next month.

In the year between the finalized merger and the South State Bank announcement, personnel from the newly combined bank pursued a long and deliberate process to choose just the right moniker.

“The great thing about this [renaming] is that both banks were exploring a name change independently,” said Kellee McGahey, First Federal’s director of corporate communications. “SCBT had several banks and was hopeful they could do one brand. Over time, multiple brands get unruly.”

McGahey said that, during the merger process, officials at First Federal and at SCBT asked each other what name change process they were using and what it would take to find a uniting brand. Right after the merger was final, McGahey and Missy Power, SCBT’s director of marketing, were charged with facilitating the process of choosing a name that, in her words, would denote a “bright and strong future with a nod to the past, respecting the banks’ history.”

The name also had to be simple, memorable and distinctive. Most importantly, it would need the ability to be trademarked.

“First Federal is a pretty common bank name,” McGahey said. 

The two women locked themselves in a room for a day and explored words, such as “first,” “trust” and “south.” By the end of the day, according to McGahey, the women had a laundry list of 357 names.

“From that point we brought in bankers and employees and narrowed the list to five names,” she said. “We partnered with Addison Whitney, a branding firm.”

The women blind-tested the short list of names with 500 customers across the combined First Federal-SCBT footprint. The list of names shrank to two. Those two were tested with an additional 1,000 customers, who were asked what traits defined their impressions and expectations of their bank.

“That was important as we went into the logo process,” McGahey said, noting that the new bank entity had 70 possible logos designed.

“We wanted to make sure that, visually and with our name, we were distinguishing ourselves,” she explained.

In October, the marketing officials presented one logo and one name to the bank’s board, which approved them. Since the trademarking process was ongoing, the bank kept the news from employees.

Finally, on Presidents Day of this year, all employees of the combined bank were bused to Colonial Arena in Columbia, South Carolina – the new bank’s headquarters – for the big reveal.

“It was a huge day, with five brands coming under one umbrella,” McGahey said.

Mark Tyler, regional president for First Federal in the Wilmington area, where First Federal is the eighth largest bank in terms of local deposits, said the involvement of customers in the name-change process has meant that customers are as excited about it as First Federal’s employees are.

“At the end of the day, people bank with people,” he said. “It will be a new name, but the same familiar faces. That’s obviously what community banking is all about, and we are operating on a community bank model, with local decision making.”