"... she goes, ‘why did you pick that name?’ I said, ‘because you just got up out of your chair and walked 20 feet just to talk to us ...'"
After developing a business plan — one that the bank called the most thorough it had ever seen — the two sat down to name their agency.
“From the beginning, we absolutely did not want to be corporate,” Lee said. “We did not want it to be Lingle and Lee. We did not want it to be anything overly official.
“We liked quilt because quilts tell stories, but that was a little too simple for us. We liked squirrel, too, because we thought that we’re a little bit different; we’re resourceful, we’re creative, we’re coming out of left field on a lot of things. The two things, when we said them together, just made an incredible amount of sense for us. So, we’re the unpredictable guys that can put stories together. It sounded like a pub when we first threw it out there. We thought it was cool. We thought it explained us really well.”
Lingle said the name, like everything the agency does, is purposeful. The unusual name has garnered attention.
“It actually happened at a networking event at the Hamburg Casino a couple weeks ago,” Lingle said. “I’m walking back and a woman gets up and literally walks 20, 25 feet out of her way to come over to me and she saw my nametag and she said, ‘What’s The Quilted Squirrel?’ I said, ‘We’re a marketing agency.’ She said, like she was kind of offended by the name, ‘Why did you pick that name?’ I said, ‘Because you just got up out of your chair and walked 20 feet just to talk to us.’ She said, ‘Oh, that’s good.’”
Everything the duo does may come off a tad odd, but every execution has a purpose. If you take one look at the company’s website, you will quickly realize it’s not like any other website you’ve been on. It’s set up like a corkboard, and includes things like a grocery list, flyer for a lunch promotion the duo is running, and a mission statement certificate endorsed by the great Benjamin Franklin ... sort of.
The mission statement reads, “This is to certify that this version of The Quilted Squirrel is the ‘Real Deal’ and has been and will continue to be used in the creation of marketing greatness.”
Or maybe it’s the box of acorns the company sent out to potential clients announcing its launch. Perhaps the decision to give $147 to the winner of the Sack O’ Cash Giveaway because, as Lingle put it, “we had $148, but we lost $1.” And then there are the business cards, which double as coasters.
All of these executions seem downright bizarre. But, they have accomplished what they were intended to accomplish: They have people talking.
Lingle worked as a marketing and PR director at Immaculata Academy in Hamburg, started a landscape design business and worked at FedEx.