FIG (Formerly Hungry)

Introduce the business and what you did there.

I was the Creative Director of AT&T AdWorks. It was an advertising and sales division of AT&T.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hungry?

We needed to design and build an experience that took you through the history of AT&T’s innovation. It was both a web and an experiential touch experience that would happen in the lab in our office.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired Hungry as a technical partner and to be part of our team. From a technical standpoint, they were our lead. We designed the experience and then they advised us and built the framework for it. That involved coming up with a development language that made sense for this type of project. We ended up using AngularJS to build it. Hungry handled all the coding and all the back-end infrastructure and functions.

We hired them for a few other projects as well, including our sales app and an explainer video. This was an iOS-based app that they helped build a portion of. We had something already but it was old; Hungry improved it and gave it a facelift. The video that they produced for us was a product explainer video that used motion graphics.

How did you come to work with Hungry?

It’s a unique way of finding a group: they originally hired me as a freelance motion graphics artist. I liked them and thought they were a talented agency. When I was in a position to hire somebody, I thought they would be a good group to work with. We ended up forming a relationship. They were the right group for the job and that’s why we hired them.

How much have you invested with Hungry?

We have spent over $50,000 on this project. They were flexible with us in terms of the price because it was our first time working together and they wanted to start the relationship on a good foot.

What is the status of this engagement?

This project started and finished in 2015. 

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

One success story is that we got an honorable mention on a site called Awwwards.com. It’s a site dedicated to showcasing the most beautiful experiences on the web. We were nominated and got an honorable mention for the site of the day. We were also in a similar category on TheFWA.com, which is a similar site.

How did Hungry perform from a project management standpoint?

We primarily communicated with Hungry using Slack, which at the time was pretty new to us. We found it to be extremely useful. In terms of their project management style, we primarily interfaced with Brady [Donnelly]. He’s one of their co-founders and was in charge of most of their project management. I’d imagine that they’ve grown quite bigger since then. Brady was a pleasure to deal with. He’s super smart. He is totally insightful in both the development and creative process; he speaks both languages fluently.

We found Hungry’s project management to be really strong and the project went off without any major problems. They always delivered on time. Also, they didn’t nickel and dime us on some extra work that they needed to do. They were very flexible. When we were in a jam, they helped us out. They knew that we would help repay them for it in some way or another in the future.

What did you find most impressive about Hungry?

I think that their technical expertise is extremely high, especially on the web development side. A lot of agencies would farm out the work to somebody more technical. In fact, I think a lot of agencies farm out their work to Hungry. If you’re looking for the most modern, advanced systems to do whatever type of project you’re trying to do, Hungry is more than capable. In that way, they definitely stand out. They also are very strong in design. That is nice and super helpful, especially for someone like me.  

Are there any areas Hungry could improve?

At the time, they were still a relatively small company. Hopefully, they have increased their team since then so that they could take on more work and put more resources into a project. It didn’t ever feel like we didn’t have enough resources, but I think that there were times where we were thinking, “Maybe this could’ve been done a little bit faster if they had more people dedicated to it.” I think that’s just a matter of scale for them and where they were in their agency life, not a function of their typical delivery.

Right now, they’re a smaller agency, so I think they need to be a little bit more competitive with their pricing so that they can grow and build a stronger client base. That doesn’t mean that the work that they do isn’t of the highest quality and doesn’t deserve the price that they ask for. When they start taking on bigger projects, they’ll be able to command the price that they’re asking for now. I think that they are capable of working on the highest of levels.