One of the things we hope to use this blog for is to give you a window into our corporate culture. A natural place to start first is with our name, and what we hope it gets across.

It came up as I was brainstorming ideas for a corporate name back in the spring of 2007. I wanted something short, pithy, memorable. I guess an easy thing would have been to use my name, or a combination of partners’ names, but for this venture, I wanted to communicate something bigger than one person or a group of people. I was also keenly aware how tough it was to marry the “short/memorable” directive with something that would produce a unique, available URL that made sense to people. Since this was going to be (at least in large part) a web firm, that was important too.

I also knew that though we’d operate in the political space, the name should transcend politics. It should communicate something about the broader Internet culture, and how it was changing politics. It should also have a clear meaning, communicate a message in two words or less, and serve as a motto of sorts.

I had a few names in mind, but Engage is the one I liked right off the bat.

The Internet is fundamentally about openness and a two-way dialogue. To “engage” is the naturally successful posture online, whether you’re a politician, business, celebrity, blogger, or social media maven.

The word gets used a lot, often in the “PR 2.0” world, in the soothing context of “conversation” and “community.” As you can see from our sidebar, we like those concepts too — but if it just ended with the warm and fuzzies, it probably wouldn’t have been what we chose.

Rather, what drew me to the name was its double meaning, something those of you who come from the campaign world will instantly recognize.

When Mindy and I worked on the Bush campaign, the word “engage” had a clear meaning: to go on offense. If an idea was vetoed in a strategy meeting early in the campaign, it was likely because “we aren’t engaged yet” — meaning that we hadn’t yet begun a lively and spirited public conversation with our yet-to-be-chosen Democratic opponent. But the clear converse of this was that when we were “engaged” — it was pedal to the metal, all hands on deck, and nothing left on the field.

It was this forward-leaning posture that won us the 2004 election. We seek to capture it and embrace it totally — just as we also believe that truly engaging your audience is the key to success online — and off.

There were a few finalists. I wrote them down on a piece of paper, and focused group them to family and close friends. Engage came out the winner.