It’s a crossed epsilon, also known as an old-school ampersand – an arcane rendering of et, the Latin word for “and”.

Technically, it’s known as a ligature, which is a conjunction of two letters to form a single glyph.

Back when we all wrote long-hand, ligatures saved us time, because one letter seamlessly followed the other.

Given our contemporary obsession with productivity strategies such as “Inbox Zero”, that actually makes them pretty modern.

Having an ampersand in our name also puts us in league with the likes of Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, Dolce & Gabbana, Procter & Gamble, hundreds of law firms, and at least one Caliber employee’s favorite candy company, M&M’s.

But back to the Caliber logo – and the really important part of it.

The letters bookending the ampersand are “B” and “R” – as in “brand” and “reputation”.

Which brings us nicely to the purpose of this hidden message.

At Caliber, you see, we believe in the integration of brand and reputation – in how they’re measured, managed and strengthened.

In other words, we’re not a brand tracker. Nor are we a reputation monitor.

And we don’t talk about “brand reputation” as if it were a single concept. It isn’t.

After all, a company might have a healthy consumer-facing brand but a bad rep among stakeholders such as journalists and employees – and vice versa.

Measuring brand and reputation has been part of our M.O. since day one – and it’s one of the key elements that distinguish us from our competitors.

We also believe that companies looking for a competitive edge should integrate how they monitor their brand and reputation.

Why? Because doing so can break down silos, improve decision-making, and help build trust with stakeholders.

In fact, building better businesses through greater trust is Caliber’s vision.

We want to help businesses become more trusted and trustworthy by helping them listen to relevant stakeholders.

We think the way to do that is to help them track what those stakeholders think and say – and how they’re likely to behave – in real time.

And we reckon the most powerful – and successful – way to do that is to have a unified, integrated approach to brand and reputation management.

In other words, we think forward-thinking companies should stop seeing brand and reputation as distinct attributes that should be tracked or monitored separately.

Hence the subtle message lurking in our logo.

Now you’ve seen it, of course, you’ll never unsee it. Which is exactly as it should be.

As for what’s hidden in those other logos, you’ll have to figure them out for yourself.