Goodbye Old Eight Bit:
How our toughest year pushed us to grow a deeper brand.
2019 was rough. We weren’t ready for the storm that swept through Eight Bit Studios these past twelve months. We’ll never be the same (and that’s a good thing). Maybe our story will help others find their way through similar challenges.
Planting seeds of possibility.
Let’s go back to 2008. Banks were getting bailed out, Barack was being sworn in, and the App Store was just taking root.
On a cold December night in Chicago, some wide-eyed digital believers got together to eat pizza and plant a few seeds for what would eventually sprout into one of the world’s top mobile app studios.
We were drawn together by our enthusiasm for technology, design, and the idea that eight bits are better than two. We grew up during the 8-bit gaming era, which gave rise to a generation of artists, musicians, and programmers with a sense of wonder for creative technology and collaboration.
Each of us had been coding, creating, or gaming from an early age. We each brought our ideals to the workforce as adults, but struggled to find a company that embodied them. As individuals we were limited; combining our skills opened up exciting new possibilities.
We asked ourselves, “If we were to create an agency, what would we have to do so that we could sleep at night?” and came up with some pretty awesome answers:
- We shall support a great work-life balance from the onset.
- We shall create a place where people want to work, play and create every day.
- We shall be truly collaborative, giving everyone a voice with no one team or individual always having the final say.
- We shall treat our clients like partners and friends.
- We shall make things for ourselves because we too are entrepreneurial
We called it Eight Bit Studios as a reminder to stay true to that creative spark that took root in our youth.
The iPhone and mobile apps tapped into our sense of wonder much the same way 8-bit games did. We were obsessed. We dove into making apps and haven’t looked back.
Some say a recession is one of the best times to start a business. That seemed to be the case for us. While the country was reeling from the economic turmoil, we were swimming in possibilities and brimming with optimism fueled by the internet, startup culture, and the rise of mobile devices.
Growing from the ground up.
A lot happened in the decade to follow. Here are just a few highlights.
Mobile mushroomed.
There are now more mobile phones than people on the planet according to the UN’s International Telecommunications Union. We spend 90% of media time on mobile devices in apps and 10% on the mobile web as reported by eMarketer. And in 2019 alone, Statista’s data shows that 194 billion mobile phone apps were downloaded.
Society muddled.
The effects of the 2008 financial crisis are still rippling. Many data points indicate we’ve recovered, but how do we feel now?
Topics like diversity, inclusivity, equity, privacy, political correctness, and generational gaps are at the forefront of our personal and professional lives, forcing us to look in the mirror and at each other through a more discerning lens.
More than ever, employees want to work for a company with strong values and a clear purpose.
Eight Bit Matured.
Through all this, Eight Bit has experienced a few distinct stages of growth:
Eight Bit 1.0 (2008–2009) — We set out to create an outlet for our ideas, passions, and digital products. Revenues would come from advertising sales, subscriptions, and selling technology to other companies.
Eight Bit 2.0 (2010–2013) — We switched gears to consulting and laid the foundation for a studio on our own terms, focusing on mobile work for small teams, startups, and entrepreneurs.
Eight Bit 3.0 (2014–2018) — We assembled an elite team of digital experts and fostered a dynamic culture built around work-life balance with a healthy mix of enterprise, startup, and internal work.
We grew for 10 straight years, making the Inc5000 list in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. We’ve teamed up with many ambitious organizations to launch and improve their digital products: Allstate, Echo Logistics, EdNavigator, GrowIt!, MDRT, UL and Vivid Seats to name just a few. We’ve pushed more than a million lines of code to the app store and welcomed over 10 newborns into our families.
It hasn’t been all rainbows and butterflies. We’ve hit plenty of rough patches, but our positive momentum and great work have gotten us through. Our expertise, quality of work and our people have all bloomed. On the surface, everything looked great.
Warnings.
Much like the great recession, the warning signs of what lay ahead for Eight Bit were there, but it was easy to sweep them aside to deal with day-to-day surface-level challenges.
Our people were asking questions about the direction of the company and it became clear we didn’t have a strong shared vision. Early attempts to address this fell flat and morale was slumping. The team wanted a stronger connection between their actions and where Eight Bit was going.
Operational pressure was also affront, the kind that follows growth from five to forty people. We were putting a lot of focus on process, policy and organizational structure.
The Eight Bit brand was stuck in the past—no longer representing who we are, the quality of our work, or our future. Our original logo, inspired by the idea of collaboration and conversation, was represented by two chat bubbles put together to form the number 8.
We began rebranding, but without a shared vision locked down, the process dragged on and never felt solid.
Still, 2018 was our most profitable year-to-date and things seemed to be progressing well. We expected the trajectory to continue and put too much trust in past successes to predict the future.
Our tree looked thick and full from the ground up, but our roots were going to be tested like never before.
The Great Storm of 2019.
2019 didn’t go as expected. Every year has had its own unique set of successes and challenges, but this was by far the hardest.
Revenue and sales were down from the onset. We threw everything we had at keeping the team intact, nearly past the point of no return. In the end, we had to face the hard reality and make some tough decisions which included saying goodbye to some good friends.
It was stressful. It was personal. It was shaming. It made a real mess of everyone’s confidence in our competence to steer the ship back on course.
Thanks to many people stepping up, we made it through and laid some important groundwork.
Taking Deeper Roots.
Some say “Storms make trees take deeper roots,” and this difficult period certainly put that theory to the test for us. We took on the challenge how we always do. We got curious. We got collaborative. We got creative. Through the process, our brand began to sprout.
Looking Inward.
One key step for deepening our brand was to define our core company values. Eight Bit has many strong principles, but settling on four codes of conduct was essential to guide our action and decisions going forward.
We wanted to know how our team perceived Eight Bit. Using our brainstorming tool Candor (’cause remember, we like building things), we collected adjectives from colleagues and put them into a word cloud. This was enlightening and helped inform our rebrand.
Looking Outward.
We spent considerable time looking outside our bubble to see how our industry and the world is evolving.
When the app stores first went online, brands were clamoring to catch up. Assertions like “Our brand needs an app” where having any app was good enough, has been replaced with questions like, “how will our brand improve the lives of our customer-base through a mobile app?”
The need to understand what users are experiencing, their pain points, and in what ways they have yet to be delighted is critical to the success of all apps.
Today, there is no more precious real estate in the world than the home screen of apps on every device. Apps that don’t nail their purpose or delight their users get deleted; and quickly.
Finding Empathy.
Our sense of wonder for creative technology and collaboration will always be part of our roots. That’s why we started Eight Bit, not why we exist today.
To find our “why,” we looked back and found a common theme. We have a track record of investing emotionally with our partners in the apps we make and the people who use them. Translating emotion into software is our superpower.
Our best work happens when facing complex problems that require high levels of empathy. We have a knack for breaking challenges down to their fundamental parts, reconfiguring those parts, and building solutions that didn’t exist before. It looks a bit like this:
We discovered deeply held beliefs and a renewed purpose. We believe the world needs more empathy and want to do our part to make that happen. We believe organizations that champion empathy will be future industry leaders because they are better equipped to:
- Communicate inside and out.
- Navigate conflict.
- Empower work-life balance.
- Provide and carry out strategy.
- Produce meaningful work.
- Be great partners.
Dr. Patrick Gentempo, a respected expert in the world of health, wellness and business, says “Your Stand is Your Brand.” Our stand is, and always has been, to spread empathy so we can work together and shape a better world for everyone. Our mission is to incite organizations to craft amazing apps and websites with empathy.
Looking Forward.
With a shared purpose and clear goals to pull us forward, it couldn’t be a better time to relaunch the Eight Bit brand.
Vincent Van Gogh has been credited with saying, “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”
Our new logo is comprised of eight smaller shapes coming together to form a larger numeral “8” in the negative space. It’s about seeing new possibilities that are greater than the sum of their parts. You can’t see the “8” without the individual pieces. This represents an empathy cornerstone: Perspective taking; the ability to imaginatively see and feel things from the perspectives of others. These are the deeper roots we are growing.
Embracing the future.
When organizations experience turmoil, having a deeply implanted brand can be a great source of resilience. While our brand was in flux, we didn’t have that part of our support system in place. Now we have a much stronger foundation in place to grow from.
We continue to focus on communication, processes, tools and projects that require us and our partners to become better listeners.
Our podcast, Bytes Over Bagels, will dive deep into the topic of empathy in 2020.
We’re getting ready to release a major update to Candor, a brainstorming tool that is very much inspired by empathy and inclusivity. Candor is the way voices are heard without bias or exclusion, empowering everyone to express great ideas.
Reaching this point, finding a renewed purpose, and relaunching our brand are reasons to celebrate. We have everyone to thank in Eight Bit’s past and present for helping us connect the dots backwards so that we can take a giant leap forward into the future. Thanks for all your support, resolve, and understanding.
