How do you create a unique AI agent when everyone and their mother already has one?
We’ve had AI functionality in our platform for years, but our upcoming release makes Brightspot’s AI truly agentic. It can execute tasks end-to-end and automate pretty much any workflow. It’s a super powerful tool, and it needed an identity to match.
Everyone’s natural instinct was to start with a name. But we quickly realized that was not the move.
Opal, Otto, Siri, Alexa… every ‘techy’ name was either boring or taken.
Plus, it was extremely important to us that we didn’t fall into the AI sea of sameness. The tech industry is riddled with AI tools whose capabilities are overstated and branded with buzzword after buzzword. People are tired of unsubstantiated AI claims they can’t trust and haphazardly built agents that feel like a cash grab.
We knew our agent was different. It was developed with care through years of strategic planning, and every feature addresses a real need we’ve heard about from our customers.
So we started with what the agent can do: Lure simple answers out of a vast content library, build pages and sections, automate pretty much any content management task… And a theme emerged. Our AI agent can comb through an ocean of content, tasks and complex workflows to find and create exactly what you need.
Ocean? workflows? Pulling answers out of the depths? Where many tech companies draw inspiration from outer space when naming their agents (Opal, Iris, Polaris, etc), ours came from another of life’s great mysteries — the depths of the sea.
A common yet shocking ‘fun fact’ is that we know more about the surface of the moon than the bottom of the ocean. In the same way that scientists don’t know what’s going on down there, content teams often don’t understand half of what exists in their vast library of web content, apps and internal knowledge docs. That’s the great thing about Brightspot. You can manage all your content, internal and external, across all your different brands and sites, from one unified platform. And our AI agent can swim through that vast sea of content to surface exactly what you need, when you need it.
We also knew our mascot had to have something to do with light. With a name like Brightspot, themes of lightness and brightness follow our brand everywhere we go.
Suddenly, an anglerfish emerged as the clear solution to our agent woes. Anglerfish live deep in the ocean and have a bioluminescent lure that lights their way and lures prey out of the darkness, just like our AI agent lures simple solutions out of a vast, dark ocean of content and data.
It just made sense. Our AI agent should be an anglerfish, and her lure the signature Brightspot ‘O’.
The only problem? Anglerfish are — no offense — really ugly. They have terrifying teeth and a face only a mother could love. But luckily, we have a really talented Art Director who found a way to make her approachable. And there’s a certain charm to making an ugly thing cute, isn’t there? Kinda like the charm of taking an ugly lump of content and data and turning it into something actionable? The metaphors basically wrote themselves, and we knew that we’d made the right choice.
Oh, and you may have noticed me say ‘her’. Only female anglerfish have a lure, so we knew our agent had to be a lady. She’s a bit of a diva, too.
Now that we had agreed on a concept, we needed to name her. And as I mentioned earlier, naming is harder than it sounds. Plus, our agent is unique. There’s nothing quite like her on the market. So she needed a standout name to match.
We turned to science for answers. The anglerfish’s lure, aka the ‘bright spot’ on her head, is called an Esca. Boom, there it was — a gorgeously simple yet catchy four-letter word that was memorable, Googleable and unique — just like her.
Then, we discovered that Eschatology is the study of “the last things”. We’ve always regarded Brightspot as “the last CMS you’ll ever need”. That was it. We knew then that we had found the perfect name for her.
Her name is Esca, and we love her. Just look at her!
I’m sure you’re curious about exactly what this adorable little anglerfish can do. Stay curious, because answers are coming soon. In August, she’ll start swimming through Brightspot, ready to automate all the tedious tasks that weigh you down day-to-day. You’ll be hearing from her soon.
