Analysis of Digital Product Market Revealed a Need for Change
After more than 12 months of research, Big Nerd Ranch reveals a new look to match their new position in the market of a top Digital Product Development agency.
ATLANTA, April 15, 2019 (Newswire.com) - Big Nerd Ranch has been building brilliance in the mobile development space since 2001 by training engineers and designers responsible for 21 of America’s 25 most popular apps. Over the years, their books have become best-sellers, their immersive bootcamps have become legendary and their training relationships have evolved into long-term, strategic partnerships with the largest tech firms on the planet. At the same time, these senior engineers, designers, and strategists have played a more strategic role in the development of digital products for start-ups and mature organizations. And now Big Nerd Ranch is poised to go even further in the digital product development (DPD) market.
Big Nerd Ranch’s Marketing Director, Nikki Porter, expressed the importance of dissecting the business and the market before any change could be made. There was an investment of a full year of strategy discussions, leadership and board meetings, client focus groups and 3rd party consultants. Once the new brand was finalized, the Marketing team strategically rolled out the new look to make sure everyone understood the context around the visual adjustments.
To make decisions on our visuals, we had to have difficult conversations about our company and the market as a whole. Our board, our employees and our clients all got a chance to weigh in, which makes the output of this process so valuable.
Nikki Porter, Director of Marketing
“Having gone through a corporate rebranding twice in my career, it was refreshing to collaborate with other stakeholders throughout the organization this time. To make decisions on our visuals, we had to have difficult conversations about our company and the market as a whole. Our board, our employees and our clients all got a chance to weigh in, which makes the output of this process so valuable,” Porter said.
Big Nerd Ranch market research revealed a market that is highly fragmented from the consumer’s perspective. But as the lifecycle of a digital product matures, the number of viable players drops drastically. As the application/mobile development industry shifts from a project management model to a product management, design-driven model, the need for technical experts who can understand the users and market drivers will drastically increase. “Because our consultants are also instructors and authors, we are able to offer a different experience when clients partner with us to build their digital products. We serve as a standalone team for start-ups and work alongside teams of mature organizations all while sharing best development practices and serving as mentors,” said Stacy Henry, CEO of Big Nerd Ranch. “No one else in the industry can offer this kind of comprehensive experience.”
To validate this new position in the market, Big Nerd Ranch partnered with Atlanta-based Matchstic to facilitate strategy discussions with the leadership team which included:
- Stacy Henry, CEO
- Emily Herman, COO
- Chris Stewart, VP of Engineering
- Angie Terrell, Director of UI/UX
- Dan Ra, Director of Project Strategy
- Justin Williams, Director of Sales
- Nikki Porter, Director of Marketing
Upon completion of the strategy portion, Big Nerd Ranch continued to partner with Matchstic to take the findings from their strategy sessions and translate them with a new visual identity system – one that would quickly communicate their level of maturity, while preserving the emotional ties of a system that the market has grown to love over the years.
It was unanimously agreed that the name “Big Nerd Ranch” had too much equity to abandon. So a name change was off the table. The hat, too, had a great deal of equity but there was room for adjustment with this widely-recognizable symbol. They found a way to evolve the hat into a more mature version. The thicker typography in the logo intends to make a bolder statement. The warmer color palette signals to the market that while their designers, developers and strategists are best-selling authors and consultants who have access to some of the most secure tech hubs on this planet, they are also kind and authentic.
About Big Nerd Ranch
Big Nerd Ranch is a digital development firm based in Atlanta, GA with senior engineers who are also world-renowned authors, instructors, developers and designers. Since 2001, Big Nerd Ranch has been partnering with companies — from startups to Fortune 100s — to build brilliance through innovative digital product development and training that empowers individuals and organizations to dream big and achieve more. Big Nerd Ranch helps technology leaders and digital product owners take their products from “visionary” to “market advantage.”
Big Nerd Ranch has one of the most exclusive, immersive developer and designer training programs in the world to accommodate various training needs and learning styles. Their training models include offsite, immersive Bootcamps where developers spend up to one week in a totally immersive learning environment, onsite Team Training where instructors travel to client sites, and Online Screencast Subscription service to supplement recent trainings.