When Falls Church, Va.-based Viget says it's a full-service digital agency, it really means full service. Recently, the agency added hardware to its list of services for clients, and it's already made a name for itself among major media organizations and national brands alike.
"The original idea was to basically bring together teams of engineers and designers and develop really good software," said Brian Williams, co-founder and CEO of Viget.
Founded in 1999, Viget has worked with clients such as the World Wildlife Fund, ESPN and NBC Universal on a variety of software or hardware products—like building a web template for Politico for their 2016 Election night coverage. Or like when they were called in to build a smart brooch for Johnny Weir's live Kentucky Derby coverage with NBC. The horse brooch danced whenever a viewer used the hashtag "#WatchMeNeighNeigh." Viget, which also has offices in Durham and Boulder, says they saw over 4,000 tweets that lit up the hardware.
Williams said the agency's transition into hardware just seemed natural. Innovation has always been a part of their company's core, and when Williams looks at the future of tech, he thinks hardware.
"Right now, most people interact with technology via screens, but that will change over time," he said. "The experience we're gaining now will be increasingly valuable as software applications need to connect with people through screenless interfaces."
The break into a realm that few digital agencies traverse isn't out of the blue for Viget. The agency has an innovation hub in their office, called the Pointless Corp, that designs in-house apps and other products. If someone has an idea, they pitch it, set up a team and use the space to effectively experiment within the agency.
Back when the company started—during the first dot-com boom—it was aimed at helping only startups with their marketing and product design. But, as Williams said, that model quickly went out the window.
"It only takes one time to get screwed by a client; you never forget that," Williams said. "Working with startups seemed like an awesome opportunity, but within a year, it all started to fall apart."
Williams said the dot-com boom taught Viget how to attract more stable clients in their mix of clients, too. "It doesn't take an MBA student to realize that if you're not generating enough revenue to make payroll, then you're not going to be in business for long," he said. "So finding stable clients was really important."
Now, for the agency, it's not abnormal for them to be working here in D.C. one day, working with a client like the WWF, and then in Connecticut the next day working with ESPN.
Viget's projects vary widely. For ESPN, they developed an interactive timeline that takes you point-by-point through how Lebron James became one of the Top 10 highest scorers of all time. For the Chronicle of Higher Education, they helped develop a social platform, similar to LinkedIn, that's just for higher ed professionals. And for a Cal Poly engineering student, they created a laser pointer system designed to help runners keep pace on a track.
And although the company has a new hardware setup, it doesn't plan on abandoning its other services anytime soon. If anything, hardware is a companion to its existing suite of offerings.
"Founders who need help prototyping a hardware concept have similar challenges to traditional software product founders—everything from product strategy to development to marketing," Williams said. "Our hardware lab is designed to help with that."
Images courtesy of Viget
