You may have noticed a change in the last few days. Slowly but surely I am working through the website switching over from RPS Driven School of Motoring to Steel City Driver Training. But why the change? In this article, I will discuss some of the reasons that I’ve opted to change the name of the business.
Saying What We Do Clearly
While the names RPS Driven School of Motoring and RPS Driven Electric tie in well with my other business ventures, it doesn’t show what I do. This is especially true given that I’ve spent most of the last year identifying as RPS Driven Electric. It says that I do something with electricity. I could just as well be fitting EV charge points as teaching people to drive in an electric car.
Also, since I left Pass N Go and became independent the, if not quite unique then rarety of an instructor in an electric car has become a lot more common. On the day I started teaching in Eva, there were 6 EV instructors in all of Sheffield. Now there are 6 Hyundai Kona Electrics with instructors in Sheffield. Add to that the Zoes and the Leafs and the Corsas, the e208s and the e2008s and the Mokkas and the Neros and the list goes on. I estimate around 10% of the driving instructors in Sheffield are now teaching in an electric vehicle.
While I am proud of my decision to go electric for the environmental and cost benefits it brings, I am an early(ish) adopter. It’s no longer anything to shout about, it’s become almost the norm.
The new name, Steel City Driver Training, says what I do and where I do it in just 4 words. Sheffield is known across the country as the Steel City, given the city’s centuries-long association with the steel industry. When I saw that the domain names SteelCityDrive.com and SteelCityDrive.co.uk were available, it seemed the logical choice for a clearer, more focused brand.
Separating the Driving School from Other Enterprises
As you may know, I wear many hats. I am a driving instructor, a truck driver CPC trainer, a website developer, a sports photographer and a podcaster. Each different field of endeavour comes with its own RPS brand. I do my photography as RPS Sports Media. I train truck drivers as RPS Professional Driver. RPS Driven SOM seemed like a good idea when I started.
The RPS Driven Media brand is very me-focused. It’s about what I do, my passions and how I work with those passions and have turned them into businesses. This isn’t what I want for the driving school. I want a driving school which is a collaborative group of instructors working with a great group of learner drivers to succeed at our individual goals. I needed a name which wasn’t inextricably linked to me and me alone.
That’s continued into the new logo, which doesn’t fit with any of the logos already in use by RPS Driven Media Ltd. The new logo was a careful design study. It links the history of Sheffield as the City of Steel with driving and driver training. The result is based on an instructional road sign telling you something you have to do.
The new graphic of the logo is a blue circular road sign. If you read the Decoding Road Signs blog post on this website, you will see that O is an Order and Blue you do. The graphic of an anvil, hammer and sparks symbolises the Steel City.
The new slogan, Forging Sheffield’s Safer Drivers, is again designed to link the driving school to Sheffield’s steel history.
Changes to Social Media and the Website
The changes will be rolling out across all channels over the next few weeks. I am currently working on new social media templates for Instagram, Facebook and Twitter (X). Video content will now carry the Steel City Driver Training logo instead of the RPS Driven Electric branding.
For social media channels, the usernames are all changing to SteelCityDrive and the website address has changed to www.steelcitydrive.com.
