Why We Are Called Okapi (And What It Says About How We Work)
The okapi is one of the most misunderstood animals on earth. It looks like a giraffe, a zebra, and a horse all at once. That is exactly why we named our agency after it.
Most people have never heard of an okapi. Fewer still have seen one.
I have. In the jungle of what was then Zaire and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. One of the most remote and inhospitable places on earth.
And when I saw it, I did not know what I was looking at.
An animal that does not fit neatly into a box
The okapi is the only living relative of the giraffe. It stands about five feet tall at the shoulder. Its face and neck look like a giraffe. Its hindquarters are striped like a zebra. And in the middle, it has the smooth, dark, chocolate-brown pelt of a horse.
When you see one in the dense rainforest of the Ituri, your brain does not know how to process it. You are looking at something that seems to be three different animals at once. It does not match any category you already have in your head.
The okapi was unknown to Western science until 1901. For years, European explorers heard stories of a mysterious creature that local Mbuti pygmy communities called by various names. Some thought it was a type of horse. Others thought it was a forest-dwelling zebra. When the first skull was finally examined by zoologists, they discovered it was actually a giraffe.
Everyone had been looking at it through the wrong lens.
Why that matters for your business
This is exactly the problem most businesses face, whether they realise it or not.
You know what your business does. You live it every day. But the way you see your business from the inside is often very different from how people see it from the outside.
A business might offer two or three different services. To the owner, those services make perfect sense together. But to a potential customer searching online, or asking an AI tool for a recommendation, the connection might not be obvious at all. They are looking for a giraffe. Or a zebra. They are not expecting to find both in the same animal.
This disconnect between how a business sees itself and how the outside world perceives it is one of the biggest reasons businesses struggle to attract the right customers.
How we look at your business
We named our agency Okapi because our job is to see your business the way the outside world sees it, not the way you see it from the inside.
We start by looking at your business through the eyes of search engines, AI tools, and the people who might need what you offer. We use our own tools to understand how Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity interpret your business. What do they think you do? What questions do they associate you with? When someone asks for a recommendation in your sector, do they mention you?
Often, what we find surprises business owners. The way AI systems describe your business can be very different from how you would describe it yourself. And the gap between those two descriptions is where you are losing potential customers.
Finding the right channel, not just the obvious one
Once we understand how the outside world sees your business, we work out the best way to close that gap.
Sometimes that means SEO. If people are actively searching for what you offer, then making sure you appear in those search results is the obvious first step.
But sometimes SEO is not the right answer. If people are not searching for what you do, because they do not know it exists, or because they describe it differently from how you describe it, then ranking on Google will not help.
In those cases, we might recommend social media to build awareness. Or email marketing to nurture people who already know you but have not taken the next step. Or offline activity like events, networking, and local partnerships. Or a combination of all of these.
The point is that we do not start with a solution and work backwards. We start by understanding the problem, then choose the right channels to solve it.
The okapi is endangered. So is invisibility.
There is another parallel with our namesake that we take seriously.
The okapi is an endangered species. Fewer than 25,000 remain in the wild, and that number has been falling for decades. The threat comes from habitat loss, poaching, and the instability of the region they call home. Their survival depends on active conservation.
Business visibility works the same way. It does not maintain itself. The landscape is changing constantly. New competitors appear. Search algorithms update. AI tools reshape how people find information. If you are not actively working to maintain and improve your visibility, it erodes.
We exist to make sure that does not happen to the businesses we work with.
Want to see how the outside world sees your business?
If you are curious about the gap between how you describe your business and how search engines and AI tools describe it, we can show you. Our diagnostic tools check your visibility across Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity and present the results in plain language.
It takes about 30 minutes, it is free, and every report is checked by a human.
Visit okapiandco.co.uk/contact to request yours.
Okapi and Co is a digital marketing agency in Shaftesbury, Dorset. We help businesses get found by the right people, in the right places, through the right channels.
FAQ Schema Content (to be moved to FAQ Schema field once created)
Q: Why is the company called Okapi?
A: The okapi is an animal that looks like a giraffe, a zebra, and a horse all at once. People who see one struggle to categorise it. We named the agency Okapi because most businesses face the same problem. The way you see your business from the inside is often very different from how potential customers see it from the outside. Our job is to bridge that gap.
Q: What is an okapi?
A: The okapi is the only living relative of the giraffe. It lives exclusively in the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo and was unknown to Western science until 1901. It has the face of a giraffe, the striped hindquarters of a zebra, and the smooth brown coat of a horse. Fewer than 25,000 remain in the wild.
Q: What does Okapi and Co actually do?
A: We help businesses understand how the outside world sees them and then work out the best way to get them found by the right people. That might be through SEO, AI search optimisation, social media, email marketing, or offline activity like events. We start with the problem and choose the right channels rather than starting with a solution.
Internal Linking Suggestions
- Link to GEO service page
- Link to AI visibility diagnostic / contact page
- Link to "How to check if your business is invisible to AI search" post
- Link to About Us page
- Link to the AI Lab tools
Social Sharing Copy
LinkedIn: Why did we name our agency after one of the rarest animals on earth? Because the okapi looks like three different animals at once, and most businesses have exactly the same problem. Here is the story.
Facebook/Instagram: Ever seen an okapi? Our founder has, in the jungle of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. It looks like a giraffe, a zebra, and a horse all at once. That confusion is exactly why we named the agency after it.