From hobby to agency: The Evolution of Unicorn
In 2015 I found myself in a career limbo. I had just left my role at P2BInvestor as a co-founder and CTO. I decided to take a 6 month sabbatical and work on my own ideas and products. I was working with my friends on freelance projects here and there, and running a successful blog. I needed a legal entity to track the income under, so when it was time to set it up, I paused and reflected on the brand. I spent a lot of time on introspection:
- What would distinguish me from my thousands of peers?
- What words described my “jack of all trades” approach to technology?
- How can I make my quirky personality come through in the brand?
I drew upon my education in design and branding. Starting with a keyword list and outlining my demographic, I knew I needed to hit a few key points:
- Work with clients that “get me”
- Something that’s fun and playful
- Gender neutral, I don’t want to be a “programming bro”
- A name not easily forgotten
- A legacy that transcends beyond me
The answer was in front of me for a long time before I embraced it. At the time the word “unicorn” wasn’t as popular in tech. There was a ruby gem with the name, but many searches for the brand with other keywords seemed to reveal that I had stumbled upon something both unique and uniting. Unicorn. Fucking ‘ell this was it. Forget the haters, this is ME. I’m effeminate but straight. I’m talented and unique. I’m all the colors of the rainbow and I’m not ashamed of it.
Building a Brand
I worked with Josh Gary to design our logo and business cards. The results were amazing. This brand was perfect for what I wanted at the time: to be bold and colorful. Rainbows were flying everywhere. I thought to myself: this is a logo that will never age, will expand into whatever role I wanted it to be, and is clearly perfection. What I didn’t realize at the time was that a brand must evolve if the business evolves. More on that later.
Adapting the brand to the business
This logo worked well for a couple years as a personal brand. It was my legal entity as a consultant, and I felt the brand was really just an extension of self. However, the name Unicorn really began to take shape when I started working with Cesar and Adam. The three of us had been working on a SaaS product (aka the “blog”), SwiftCast.TV, together for almost two years. The name SwiftCast was constrained to Swift, and we wanted to teach a variety of other subjects. We took the name Unicorn and adapted the brand to suite the rename of SwiftCast.TV to Unicorn.TV!
We juxtaposed the bright colors of the logo on muted earth tones to have the best of both worlds: a bold, memorable brand with soft colors and clean typography for readability. The brand stayed mostly the same, but we refined our color pallet and typography to focus on readability. This was fine until the service side of Unicorn started to demand more of us. We found ourselves sticking to a brand that was built first as a personal identity, then a blog, and now a consultancy?!
Pushing the brand to it’s limits
As we began to consult and work on larger projects. We discovered the name Unicorn had the desired effect: it was memorable. A side effect that we didn’t predict was a constant confusion from customers.
Customer: “Are you a blog, or a consultancy?”
Us: “Yes”
We had grown a user base of loyal followers that the brand resonated with both in service and as a product. To meet the growing service demands, we started to transition the brand into more than just a logo or blog. We built a dedicated website for the consultancy and promptly launched Unicorn.XXX, complete with the same colors, logo and typography to preserve unity. People asked us: why a .XXX domain? Because we’re different (and could afford it). Deal with it! We would later discover, that mentality only goes so far in the business world.
I wondered how similar our path was to that of 37signals. As an avid reader of their blog Signal v. Noise we seemed to have many parallels. As our product was growing so was our consultancy. We kept pace with the demand to be a service: updating websites, business cards, swag, and attending conferences. Even though it wasn’t our original intent or focus, we were now building a strong reputation as a business.
Brand Evolution
After a couple years, our growth was creating a substantial conflict. We were torn between Unicorn representing both a product and now a service. We knew it was time to separate the consultancy from the blog, but we didn’t know how to do this without sacrificing cohesion. Making the decision more difficult: we were more of a full-service agency now and not just tech consultants. We also had lost Cesar to becoming the CTO and co-founder for one of our clients.
Adam and I were pushing forward full-steam. In the course of a year, we had shaped the agency-to-come. We started building a team of the best developers, designers and growth hackers we knew. We were also feeling our way through a merger with one of our business partners, AMG to give this agency some stronger legs. Once we worked through the details of the merger, it was time to address the elephant in the room: how does the brand evolve to represent this newfound agency?
Adam and I put our heads together and came up with a solution: we would rename and rebrand the service side of the company. From there we figured a slow-release marketing strategy would be most effective for the transition. We actually needed the brand to lose some of it’s unity in order to drop the constraints that came with it. So we tasked our designers with the challenge of creating Unicorn Agency as a brand that focuses more on the prestige and mystery that we wanted, and decided to leave the old brand alone and isolated for Unicorn TV.
What our designers came up with is splendid. Here we are now: a growing and thriving agency, setting out to turn heads and win awards. If we’re going to be an agency we are going to do it with class and style. We’re still in the process of revealing and developing this brand, but you may have already noticed a new logo and some reveals of the website to come.
With this new brand comes a new commitment: setting out with intent to be one of the most reputable agencies in the world. It’s a lofty goal, but we’re up for the challenge. We’ve already helped multiple clients raise millions of dollars and worked on projects for Samsung, Google and Comcast. The sky is the limit and we will aim for nothing short of our goals. Tesla Motors, Coca-Cola Costa Rica, Slack we’re coming for you! Let’s build something magical together!
We’re slowly wrapping up the brand revamp. We will be releasing more previews of the website in coming weeks and talking more about brand evolution, so be sure to subscribe.
The future looks bright
We love everything we do. Our team is made up of some of the brightest and hardest working folks we can find. I know, lots of businesses make that claim, but have those businesses filtered through hundreds of talented individuals to find the cream-of-the-crop? We have. We are artisans, engineers, animators, and dreamers. Our brand is evolving and Unicorn is maturing. With an Oculus Rift, Hololens, Vive and a myriad of other tools in hand.. We’re ready to take on the next evolution in tech: virtual/augmented reality. With a track record of already building some of the most innovative applications you can bet we’re up for the challenge.
WORK WITH US
Did this story speak to you? Are you a fellow Unicorn, ready to make something magical?
We are a full-service agency partnered with some of the best minds in the digital world. We make products from ideas and pour our heart and soul into nearly everything we build.
Contact us and talk to a real live Unicorn (or human) to get started, we’re only a couple of 1’s and 0’s away from starting something great together.
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