The Mission
Rock Agile co-founders, John and Brian, were stuck. The founders knew the business needed to grow and were struggling to get traction with new clients.
John (CTO) often met potential clients at events, but without a clear in-person pitch for Rock Agile, he found himself not pitching the business enough, and Brian (CFO) was anxious to increase the visibility of the company through marketing.
The team was stuck in the weeds, trying to agree basic elements like typography and brand colors, and the endless back-and-forth was taking a toll on their long-term design partner. Concerned at the lack of progress, and not knowing how to move forward, they reached out to Victoria for help.
An initial consultation with Victoria uncovered that Rock Agile had a bigger problem than simply choosing brand colors - neither of the founders had a clear sense of who their ideal customer was and, as a result, were struggling to clearly communicate what value the business provided across the board.
Victoria's mission became clear:
1. help Rock Agile identify a niche within the technical consulting space,
2. reunite the founders with the "why" of the business,
3. align the Rock Agile branding with the needs of their clients, and
4. build a go-to-market strategy focused on growth and visibility.
Rock Agile Logo Before Re-brand
The Niche and the New Brand(s)
Within the first few consulting sessions, Victoria learned the Rock Agile team had significant expertise in DevOps - a vertical notorious for not having enough qualified technical talent to fill the demand. In fact, the CTO was just a few weeks away from releasing an open source tool that he built specifically to address a set of roadblocks he frequently encountered as a DevOps engineer.
Rock Agile decided to combine the CTO's DevOps software with a pivot into DevOps services for the business overall. And with that, the project shifted to build identities for not one, but two, budding brands.
After a series of workshops with the founders, Victoria recruited the help of Darian Rosebrook (So Magnetic Agency). Together, they began crafting an improved visual identity for both Rock Agile and their newly named software, Shiplane.
Initial design direction board based on takeaways from meetings
The new Rock Agile logo
The new Rock Agile logo (in color)
Becoming a Leader
For Rock Agile's content, we took a conversational, benefits-driven approach that would be relevant to both technical and non-technical clients alike. Victoria also prioritized creating the website content within a structure that would allow the Rock Agile team to make updates and improvements without having to start from scratch.
Beyond crafting the brand itself, Victoria also provided basic sales coaching for both Rock Agile founders on how to pitch their services in-person.
With an updated Rock Agile brand, sales training, and a successful launch for Shiplane, the Rock Agile team has been able to focus on aggressively growing their client base. Since the launch, the CTO has been able to leverage Shiplane to build a reputation as a thought leader in both DevOps and Ruby on Rails spaces, and continues to use opportunities to promote Shiplane as a means to also position Rock Agile as a premium service provider.
