Starfish

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of marketing for CommScope, a consumer products group. We’re a manufacturer of electronic communication equipment. I oversee the marketing for all the retail segment, which is marketed under another brand name. We make a line of surfboard and cable modems and surfboard max mesh Wi-Fi systems.

What challenge were you trying to address with Starfish?

We needed help with marketing and advertising. The work was aimed explicitly at messaging and positioning a new product for our mesh Wi-Fi system.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We initially had a briefing meeting with Starfish; they talked to one of our marketing people. We gave them the background on how we would position the product to customers, some of the key message points we wanted to highlight, the audience we were targeting, and the distribution channels. They went back and made changes. Then, we reviewed it with our product team.

They created content for us and put together a whole messaging and positioning strategy targeted at high-tech early adopters. Starfish developed all the creative elements for the advertising campaign.

What is the team composition?

David (Founder & CEO) was very involved. Additionally, there were two creative people on the project.

How did you come to work with Starfish?

I worked with Starfish at a previous company. They did similar work, and I’ve known David for years. We’ve worked together on several projects.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost was between $15,000–$20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February–April 2021.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They understood the product and audience very well. They built our messaging strategy across different media, which was very effective. The sales for the product have been good, although they’ve been slower than what we’d like. However, I don’t think it had to do with the messaging; there were a lot of other factors involved.

Overall, we were 100% satisfied with their work, and they exceeded our expectations.

How did Starfish perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was excellent. We didn’t use any project management tool; we communicated via phone, Zoom calls, and emails.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their key strength was their ability to understand our technical products and translate them into consumer language that is meaningful to consumers.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We worked with them on a subsequent project, and they were a bit slower to respond on that one. They could improve on their time management.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Whether in-person or via video conference call, be thorough on your brief and fully engage them when you meet with them. When we got our first review back, we didn’t have to go through multiple rounds of edits.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the former sales director of a beverage manufacturing company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Starfish?

We needed someone to help us market and advertise our new product in the US.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Starfish provided us with general branding and marketing services. Their deliverables included establishing the positioning of our brand, developing policy statements, creating a brand manifesto, and creating tag lines, as well as other creative initiatives associated with the core elements of the positioning statement.

Apart from that, they organized the customer journey strategy from a deliverable standpoint that we were able to leverage for OOH and local trade magazines. 

Lastly, they provided us with day-to-day services as an outsourced sales and marketing agency, as an extension of our brand. They gave us a full 360 program, which culminated in a launch party event where we were able to garner many of the key influencers within the industry and secure a number of key distributors in several markets, as well as some key retail distribution opportunities.

What is the team composition?

We communicated regularly with the CEO and about three other people from their creative team.

How did you come to work with Starfish?

We found them through my network of industry contacts. We hired them because we thought they would be a good fit, as they provided the talents of a large agency at the scale, budget, and attention of a smaller one.

How much have you invested with them?

We probably spent about $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I worked with them from January 2013–January 2015, as I left the organization in 2015.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They helped us win the hottest new brand award at one of the industry’s largest trade shows thanks to the exhibition display they put together. That alone reinforced the value of their work, and it gave our brand credibility to have discussions with potential customers.

We were able to present our brand in a professional and strategic manner, which helped us gain distribution points with respect to our in-store tasting campaigns — because of that, we increased our conversion rates to higher levels than we expected.

How did Starfish perform from a project management standpoint?

They managed the project and implemented tools internally, so I wasn’t aware of how they did it. They had a more entrepreneurial style of working, and we mainly communicated through email and phone.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to scale their business for large and small clients is really impressive. They have the talents of a large-scale company, but they also provide a greater degree of attention and flexibility in working with startups or companies that are trying to enter the marketplace.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They accomplished all their deliverables, responded consistently, and were honest about some of our feedback, so there’s nothing they could’ve done better.

It was a good relationship and I was very happy with what they did.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I advise you to do your due diligence and speak to different agencies so you can understand what you really want out of the partnership.

Don’t limit your search, but also don’t discount Starfish just because they don’t have the global reach that some other larger agencies do — they will provide you with the same, if not, better service.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief marketing officer of a law firm.

What challenge were you trying to address with Starfish?

A lot of our marketing content and communications were created with an out of date style guide, so we wanted a more consistent look and feel to our marketing communications.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their graphics team reviewed our portfolio and made suggestions, which we then implemented. Afterward, they designed our communication style and messaging. We gave them an older version of our style guide at the outset, as well as our goals, objectives, and visions moving forward.

What is the team composition?

We worked with less than 10 people.

How did you come to work with Starfish?

I worked with Starfish at my previous job and met David (Chairman). We issued an RFP when we selected a vendor for this project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $77,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September 2021–February 2022.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The quality of their service was very high. The final product was very well done. We were very pleased.

How did Starfish perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed very well in project management. They were accessible and responsive. Communication happened over Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Telephone calls and email also supported the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They had a deep understanding of our mission. David and their project leader asked a lot of questions, showing a true understanding of our business and our goals.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything they could have done better on this particular project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clarify your vision and goals and what you’re trying to accomplish.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of global brand marketing for Principal Financial Group, a financial services company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Starfish?

We were in need of a brand strategy relaunch. The last time that we relaunched our brand was in 2015, and we needed to make sure our brand was still representative of what was happening on the outside, but also reflected how we have advanced and moved forward as an organization.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired Starfish to help us navigate through the whole process of relaunching our brand positioning, which entailed both internal and external research, stakeholder interviews, competitive analysis, and preview and insight analyses. The work we did with them was critical for us to then set the stage for other critical initiatives strategies (e.g. CX, Though Leadership, Creative Strategy).

Aside from that, they also assisted us in making sure that we had a clear brand promise and brand personality by helping us sharpen our brand position as well as the pillars supporting that promise.

Starfish also took the job of translating our strategy into our brand book, brand guidelines, visual identity, tone, and voice. The work that they delivered was paramount to the creation of our other branding materials.

What is the team composition?

We worked with David (Founder & CEO) and Rachel (Account Executive).

How did you come to work with Starfish?

They had previously worked with the CMO in other projects, so they were already assigned to this task when I joined the organization in 2020.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent somewhere around $500,000 on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together on this project from November 2019-December 2020.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We track our advertising through another data analytics company, and we have definitely seen some improvements in our awareness, favourability, consideration, metrics, and also brand attributes as a result of our new brand strategy and positioning.

In terms of the quality of Starfish’s work, I’d say that I see an improvement in the consistency across all the different messages that we're bringing to life, not only through advertising but also through corporate communications.

How did Starfish perform from a project management standpoint?

Starfish performed very well in terms of project management. I’ve never worked with such a committed partner like they were. The way they worked was very personal — even their CEO was always available whenever we needed them. 

I also appreciated how thorough they were — they made sure to cross all their t’s and dot all their i’s before handing the final products over to us. They really are the kind of partner that will go above and beyond to make sure that they deliver the best possible solution for their clients.

We typically communicated through phone calls, emails, and video conferences, and we used Excel to manage the timelines of our deliverables.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m really impressed with Starfish’s leadership skills, strategic mindset, and business expertise. The breadth of their experience in different verticals within and outside the industry really stood out. 

They helped us connect all the different dots and understand how customer consumer insights would help us better articulate and put together our different proposals. They asked the right questions and challenged every word we put into our brand pyramid to make sure that it reflected who we are today and what our aspirations for the future are.

They always made sure that we were not losing track of our goals and that we had considered every possibility that was out there. They brought a fresh, external perspective, yet they managed to keep us really focused on the outcome that we needed to deliver in the first place.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to give them as much information as possible and to bring them to your decision-making meetings. Treat them as a business partner and not just a vendor, and make sure they are involved every step of the way.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the head of communications and marketing for a fitness company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Starfish?

We needed help to re-envision our brand, as well as with our strategic transformation.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Starfish helped us with our strategic transformation, so their work involved qualitative and quantitative research. They also provided us with a roadmap for transforming our brand experience in the club and helped us with a brand campaign for the new year.

What is the team composition?

We worked with five people from Starfish on an ongoing basis. Their team included the president, the creative director, a program coordinator, and a copywriter.

How did you come to work with Starfish?

Starfish was recommended by a board director who had worked with them before.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in mid-2021, and we stopped collaborating when the Omicron wave of the pandemic hit around September 2021.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The research that Starfish did for us was on point and very helpful.

How did Starfish perform from a project management standpoint?

Starfish’s project management was great. They were very communicative and timely, and their work was really well done. We communicated via email and Zoom meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Starfish did a great job. We were a complicated client because our business was in constant flux, but they were very patient and flexible, which we really appreciated.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be crystal clear on what you want them to accomplish.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an advisor to a government agency.

What challenge were you trying to address with Starfish?

We were faced with public perception issues perpetuated by media stereotypes of our clientele and the reasons behind their situations. It affected our external communications, as well as the perception of our work by our internal staff. Starfish was initially brought in to help with our internal marketing (build our optimism for the work) by building a strategic plan involving an overarching document, video, and internal/external collateral. Now, they’re doing ongoing video work for us.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Primarily, they’ve created digital video for us for our social media and website, as well as other platforms like taxi televisions and kiosks.

After one of our main public-facing services was assigned to a different agency, we were left with a question as to what we were selling and what our call to action should be as an agency. The projects since then have run from general awareness and learning campaigns that drive people to our website to sharing opportunities for volunteer participation and partnering with other agencies.

There was also a public-facing project that informed local residents to call 311 or connect with our team through our app if they saw someone on the streets that was in need of our services.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with around 10–12 people in total. I mainly work with our project manager and their associate, but there have also been editors, subcontractors, who did the actual video work, and writers.

How did you come to work with Starfish?

I came on in the middle of our initial internal branding project. The person in charge of our communications team had done some work with Starfish previously or knew someone who’d worked with them before, I believe. When I had these other projects in mind, I thought of Starfish again. Part of the initial strategic plan was a video, so we knew what their video work was like.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent close to $1,000,000 so far with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since 2016.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We see a lot of response when we put pieces up on social media, as well as a lot of impressions. It drives an increase in our web traffic too. Internally, people love our videos and think they’re very moving. Starfish seems to get what we’re after from virtue of knowing well what we’re working on. They’re great at bringing that to life.

How did Starfish perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re somewhere between hands-off and hands-on. They’re good at sticking to deadlines but are also able to shift priorities when we have several ongoing priorities, as we sometimes do toward the end of the fiscal year.

I didn’t use any project management tools. They knew our deadlines and told us what we needed to do to hit them. We communicate mainly over email and phone.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a great team, and it’s always good to work with them. They’re professionals dedicated to their work, and they’ve worked for similar agencies to ours in the past.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We wouldn’t have them do things any other way because the production value is so high. Anything else would be counterproductive.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

In our environment, which has a lot of internal stakeholder opinions and requests, I try to defer to Starfish. They listen to us and accommodate our specific requests, but we try to let them do their thing since I trust their expertise.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the chief marketing officer for a law firm operating out of New Jersey.

What challenge were you trying to address with Starfish?

Simply stated, we wanted to build our brand, raise the firm’s profile and position it more strongly in the market.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The overarching goal of the project was establishing a visual identity, which essentially consisted of a new logo and accompanying design integrations across the entire firm. That plays out in digital and traditional media, so our website and digital properties as well as stationery and print media.

We did two major redesigns of the website, and they were in charge of the whole design process, from UI/UX planning to the actual execution in development. Beyond that, they provide us with marketing assets and then we use them to elevate the company profile.

What is the team composition?

I was consistently in contact with the owner and our primary project manager throughout the project, but I believe there were about five people working on the project in total.

How did you come to work with Starfish?

They were already engaged in work for the firm when I joined, so I think what I did was continue and grow the relationship.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first started working with them in September 2017, and I left the company about nine months ago, but the two firms are continuing to work together.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

As we implemented the redesigns of our website, we saw very clear improvements in our engagement metrics. I’m not familiar with the exact numbers, but we were definitely seeing healthy double-digit increases in traffic and click-through rates and things like that.

They are really good at coming up with not just creative ideas, but also effective design solutions, if you will. It can be very difficult to develop highly targeted brand messaging while also satisfying the wide range of requirements and personalities that you find in the legal services and consulting part of the business community, and yet they continue to exceed expectations on all fronts.

How did Starfish perform from a project management standpoint?

They are very accessible and very proactive about staying in contact. Their team stays on top of all deadlines and communicates very openly. Throughout the project, it was always very clear that we were being taken seriously and that we were important clients to them, which we really appreciated.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’ve got a wide range of abilities in their personnel, but they are also very accurately aware of what they can and can’t do. It’s clearly important to them to deliver on everything they promise, so they are very careful about turning down anything they feel they might not be able to complete with their standard of quality. Their integrity in that respect was really valuable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have a recollection of anything I wished they would improve in working with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open with them, not only about your requirements and what you want them to do, but also about what it’s going to be like working with you. At some points in our project, I had to tell them that it was going to get messy because of all the hoops we had to jump through, and preparing them for that made everything go much more smoothly than it would have otherwise.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the director of marketing and communications for a law firm of about 350 lawyers across the country. We specialize in Life sciences and technology investment funds, and I oversee all of our advertising, our website, and our social media and public relations.

What challenge were you trying to address with Starfish?

We’ve had lots of challenges that Starfish has addressed with us. One of the largest ones was a complete overhaul of our website's home page and a refresh of all of our internal pages, which they worked closely with us over a period of months to complete.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their team started by coming up with design concepts for the home page and taking that all the way through our internal approval processes, which can take a lot of time at a law firm. From there, they designed our internal pages, helping to refresh our branding guidelines and producing content.

Starfish manages all of our advertising, including prominent videos on our site and about 70–80 print and digital ads over the course of the year. They handle everything from color palette, typography, and placement of graphic elements, to advocating for content and investment decisions with the partners at our firm.

What is the team composition?

We have a couple of primary contacts on their team, primarily David (CEO, Starfish), Dayna (Account Director, Starfish), and Elizabeth (Assistant Account Executive, Starfish).

How did you come to work with Starfish?

We started working with Starfish before I joined the firm, but I’m sure it was a competitive pitching process. Since then, it has been a really easy decision to stick with them because of the quality that they deliver.

How much have you invested with them?

I’m not sure how much we’ve spent in total on the account, but it is certainly upwards of $1,000,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in 2015, and we continue to rely on them for all of our advertising and website needs.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The feedback from within the firm, which is one of our most important factors, has been extremely positive. Leadership loves the new home page and the way the whole web site works.  People feel that it is clean, efficient, attractive, and gets the right message across. They managed to strike the right balance so that design doesn’t get in the way of content.

In terms of metrics, our website gets many more eyeballs than it used to on our old site. Page views are up. Our headlines get more attention, and people stay longer on given pages. Their whole team has just been incredibly helpful and really efficient. They never sacrifice quality for the sake of expedience, which is really important to us.

How did Starfish perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re super organized and always start with a consultative approach, which I think is the right way to go. They ask lots of questions and get feedback, and they know who to go to for approval on different things in order to start work.

Then, they come back with concepts and ideas and walk us through the whole design review process. When it’s time to execute, they do that in a very organized, calendar-driven way, which is really helpful.

We have weekly project status calls, but the majority of our communication is via email. We use phone and schedule in-person meetings, but those are much harder to arrange, just logistically speaking.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re incredibly smart. Lots of places can do good design or provide good copywriting. With David and his team, it’s clear that they’ve been around the block. I came up in advertising as well, and it’s obvious to me that David has been in advertising for decades and really knows what he’s talking about.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Unless they wanted to give us things for free, I really don’t have any criticisms.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The most important thing as a client is to do some of your own thinking. Price matters, but you have to think about what your goals are. Be ready to come to the meeting prepared, because their team is great at making those kinds of decisions, but it has to be a two-way street.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for an anti-discrimination non-profit organization, and I’m the vice president of branding and marketing.

What challenge were you trying to address with Starfish?

We were trying to rebrand the organization to become closer to our changing constituents. Our organization has been around for 100 years and we brought Starfish in after the hundredth year of our existence, so our audience and the needs of that audience have significantly started since we got started. Our new leadership wanted to make sure that we were presenting ourselves in the most compelling and current ways.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first step was to conduct a lot of interviews to help Starfish form a really deep understanding of the organization and the challenges that we were facing. They spoke with leadership, long-term and new staff, and donors to really get a sense of what people need from our organization.

That set the stage for a very broad research study that we did about awareness and segmentation. From there, the challenge was to segment the market and determine where we should be focusing our publicity efforts and how we should be positioning our brand to encourage people to get engaged.

What is the team composition?

We worked with David (Owner, Starfish) as well as two account leads and several designers. They also partnered with a research agency for the study.

How did you come to work with Starfish?

I had met David several years earlier and was really impressed with his diligence and customer service, so when this job came up, he came to my mind first. Since I wasn’t the only decision-maker, they had to present and impress out of about 14 other organizations through three levels of review by my colleagues. In the end, they were the group we decided to go with.  

How much have you invested with them?

All in all, we spent somewhere between $250,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from May 2017–December 2018.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They really helped us come up with a new positioning for our work which centered around a great tagline that we were able to settle on after many, many rounds of trying to figure out the perfect one. We are extremely pleased with their copywriter’s skills and the result they were eventually able to produce for us. The new brand is extremely sharp, flexible, and fresh.

How did Starfish perform from a project management standpoint?

I think they are a little stronger creatively and strategically than they are with project management, but they hit all of our changing deadlines and worked well with my colleagues. We took a long time to make decisions and considering that, they worked at a very high level.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are able to really dig in and understand their client’s problems and challenges. They take the core issues to heart and figure out how they can really solve the most underlying problems. We were very impressed with their creativity as a group.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They have some room for improvement at the mid-level of project management. They were great with the overall planning and the granular detail-oriented stuff, but some of the day to day gets a little bit lost in the process. I do have to add that they had some staff turnover issues that may have contributed to that as well.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

At the time of the project, I was president of Haier America, a consumer appliance and electronics manufacturing company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Starfish?

They were responsible for pretty much everything regarding our brand design, so they were helping us with web and packaging design, as well as in-store displays and numerous other side projects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

From planning to implementation, they were really essential partners for us. They helped develop a brand strategy for Hair around television products to establish us more firmly in that market. From there, they delivered a go-to-market strategy around display and packaging for our products.

Their team also completely managed our web design from start to finish. At the time we were working with Google on an Android platform for our newest product and Starfish was right there with us through discussions between Google and our product people. Thanks to their work, we were able to communicate our proposition to the marketplace and our dealer partners as well.

What is the team composition?

We worked very closely with their president and one of the senior partners at Starfish that was responsible for our account, as well as with several staff members at their headquarters who were more behind the scenes.

How did you come to work with Starfish?

One of the main reasons that I reached out to Starfish when I got into the role was that it was clear to me that we needed somebody who fully understood the electronics business who could be a real partner with us. They are more of a boutique agency and demonstrated pretty early on that they had the ability to really provide support at any given moment, regardless of timing. That convinced me that they could be the essential partner that we needed.

How much have you invested with them?

The budget for the whole project was in excess of $1,000,000 for that period.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2018, and that team is continuing to work together on the web design and subsequent product launches.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

From an external standpoint, I think the fact that our dealer partners receive the information that we provide to them very favorably says a lot. Package design is a huge challenge in the television space because there’s such a highly competitive market. Starfish really played a strong role with us making sure that our packaging stood out on the floor.

We also received a lot of comments from our retail partners on our web design basically thanking us for being able to provide a good tool, not only for them to be able to research information on the product, but also for consumers that want to learn about the products that are in their stores.

How did Starfish perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated very regularly with their senior management, which I really appreciated. When it comes to their attention to detail, my experience there has been second to none.

It was also very common for them to jump in a car and come meet with us after-hours to discuss whatever particular issue we were having at the time. No matter what the time or budget restrictions there were, they were always willing to work with us to make it happen.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think the enthusiasm about the brand that they would bring to the project, along with their creativity and willingness to explore new opportunities on how to present the brand, makes for a really enjoyable partnership. They became a strong partner that I hope to and plan to work with in the future.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Quite frankly, I really can’t think of anything that they could have done better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a really good sense of who you are, what your brand stands for, and be specific in translating that to goals that you want Starfish to achieve. If you can communicate that clearly to them, they can take the ball and run with it and come back with some really great ideas.