The three primary elements of our brand have a lot of meaning to us. Here is the story and thought behind our company name, logo and tagline.
The Company Name: “The CP Journal“
During his time as a Marine, our founder Patrick Van Horne saw what it was like to work in an organization that celebrated their history. He was first exposed to the principles of behavioral analysis as a team leader in the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Program and as an instructor in the Combat Profiling portion of the course. While we don’t teach combat profiling (or combat tactics or any form of profiling) here, the “CP” part of our name is a reference to the innovators who worked with the USMC to develop the behavior pattern recognition and analysis program so that Marines could be more safe and more effective overseas.
The “Journal” comes from our origins as a company. We started as a website that published articles and videos so that Marines could practice the skills they just learned in the Combat Hunter course. While we have evolved beyond just articles, it serves as a reminder that our goal is to improve the performance of our nation’s protectors after they come through one of our courses.
The Company Logo: “The Lenses”
When Scott Harrison of five5six design set out to create our logo, all that we asked was to ensure that it had meaning, significance and tied to the left of bang mindset we embrace. To say that he exceeded our expectations would be an understatement as he ensured that every piece of the logo was significant.
The logo consists of three hexagon shaped lenses. The three lenses represent that three sources of uncertainty that contribute to the fog of war discussed by Marine General Charles Krulak MCDP 1 – Warfighting. “Uncertainty pervades the battle in the form of unknowns about the enemy, about the environment, and even about the friendly situation,” (Warfighting, 7). The three questions we ask ourselves in order to establish a baseline – what’s going on here, what would make someone stand out, and what are we going to do about it – are designed to reduce the uncertainty caused by each of the three contributing factors. Behavioral analysis and assessments provide the information needed to make intelligent decisions when we only have a limited amount of time and limited amount of information available.
Each lens is a six-sided figure that represents the six domains of observable behavior discussed in “Left of Bang,” in the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter program and in the Army’s Advanced Situational Awareness Training program. The domains come from different fields of behavioral science and become the “lens” that we view our environment through.
The inside lines of each lens are a different color to show the relationship between the different behaviors and to reflect that only when a situation is viewed through all of the lenses does it begin to provide true value and meaning to the observer. These connecting lines represent the Rule of Threes that we use to build our clusters and identify anomalies that rise above and fall below our baseline.
Each of the lines entering the lenses from the outside world represent the seemingly infinite amount of information that we could observe and is available. The vast amounts of inputs historically overwhelmed the Marine or Soldier “on-the-ground,” but when viewed and analyzed through the lenses, provides an observer with the ability to find true meaning, focus on the indicators needed to make a decision, and get Left of Bang.
The Company Tag Line: “Get Left Of Bang and Stay There“
The phrase “get left of bang” refers to the point on an attacker’s timeline before they conduct their assault. While “bang” is the action that the criminal, terrorist, insurgent or assassin takes, all of the pre-event indicators that reveal their violent intentions exist left of bang on that timeline. Our focus is to prevent violence from occurring. When we are “right of bang” on the timeline, we are reacting to the attacker and they have the initiative. Our goal is to force the criminal to react to to the good-guys, and create a environment of safety, confidence, and protection.