STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a funeral association; we’re a nonprofit organization serving funeral homes.

What challenge were you trying to address with STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging?

We wanted to reach out to veterans and encourage them to consider employment and funeral services.

What was the scope of their involvement?

STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging worked with us to develop a program that could attract qualified veteran workers to consider a career in funeral service. Their efforts involved video production in the form of a PSA, SEO, PR with the funeral service industry and veteran community, and collateral support to local funeral homes in promoting the program.

What is the team composition?

We mainly worked with three members of their team, including Brian (President) and a PR specialist.

How did you come to work with STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging?

We put out an RFP, and their proposal won the project.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent $50,000–$100,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February–October 2021.

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

The awareness for our program was raised, which reached our goals.

How did STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was good; we used phone calls as our main communication channel.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their creativeness stood out the most about their work — it was their superpower.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on — they were able to overcome the only issue that arose throughout our engagement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re one of the most creative agencies that I’ve worked with!

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and president of Great Lakes Distillery.

What challenge were you trying to address with STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging?

We did two separate projects with them. The first one was to promote our products in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second was to create a new business and product line branding.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had several initial meetings for both projects to discuss the scope with STIR so they could understand what we were trying to accomplish. From there, we established the budget and began each project. There was frequent back-and-forth contact to make adjustments to the plan and have them fill us in on what step they were.

We sat down with them for the first project to explain our situation. Then, STIR gave us their thoughts and ideas on how to approach it. On the second project, we approached them to build our new brand. We had an idea, and they came up with the brand, name, design, and label. Overall, they worked on the general creative aspect for both projects and did press releases.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with five team members, including the company’s president on many creative aspects. Also, we’ve worked with a graphic designer and their PR, social media, and web development departments.

How did you come to work with STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging?

They called me some time ago, and I was intrigued by their portfolio and previous work.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent near $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in April 2021, and our relationship is ongoing.

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

Our sales numbers have increased beyond what they were before the pandemic. Also, we’ve launched the new product and are getting a lot of good press. It’s still early to measure the success of the product, but STIR’s campaign has definitely worked well.

How did STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is excellent. They’ve communicated well and delivered on time. We typically communicate via email, phone, and Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They give personalized attention. We’re a small account for them, but they still make us feel like our business is important for them. The team seems to enjoy working with us, and they’ve done everything well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything. They’ve performed exactly as we’d hoped.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We definitely recommend them. They have a hands-on approach, and they’ve made us feel like a significant customer even if we’re a small client for them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president and owner of a cheese company.

What challenge were you trying to address with STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging?

We needed help in branding our business.

What was the scope of their involvement?

STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging helped us select a unique name for our company, developed a logo, and created a Facebook page to make weekly or monthly posts to create interest.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $17,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January–June 2021.

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

The quality of their work was excellent; they came up with different presentations for the company naming and some marketing strategies.

How did STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging perform from a project management standpoint?

They were always on task and communicated well. Their team is also talented and understands the naming and branding trends and marketing and artisanal items — they even like my cheese!

What did you find most impressive about them? 

They gave us another way to market our product.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on — they took care of our requirements right away.

Any advice for potential customers?

I recommend people to engage with them; they were a quality firm that provided me with what I needed.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of the Milwaukee County Federated Library System, and I’ve been working here for 16 years. We’re a state-supported organization in Wisconsin that provides services to public libraries within Milwaukee County. There are 16 library systems in Wisconsin, and we’re one of them. In addition to providing services like automation, delivery, and purchasing of computer equipment and technology, we also try to promote collaboration with our members as much as possible.

What challenge were you trying to address with STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging?

One of the areas that we decided to focus on was marketing, and that was one of the services we were looking at providing as a system. We were looking for an organization with marketing experience that could provide high-level thinking for us; hence the involvement of STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging.

What was the scope of their involvement?

STIR helped us create a multi-year marketing plan that serves the system as a whole, the county, and the population. It also gives the libraries some of the tools that they need to help them market their resources better to their patrons.

We had a one-on-one meeting with our marketing and advocacy committee, myself, and a number of people who were interested in marketing at the system level with member libraries. We also had a couple of consultants that worked with us to help guide the process because they had experience in the field. STIR’s team met with us and gave us a really good overview of what we were after. They did some research to understand libraries more. However, we weren't required to do data collection.

Initially, we were asking for a lot, but STIR came at our project from the appropriate angle and helped us narrow the scope in terms of the audiences we were after.

STIR gave us a number of recommendations and a very detailed campaign plan to promote what we had and help our member libraries. They also provided a lot of high-level thinking and guidance for us. Some assets of the marketing plan are still on the works, but STIR’s involvement is pretty much done.

What is the team composition?

Christel (VP, Earned Media) was the primary person that we worked with. She went back and forth with us on the drafts for the plan. When we got feedback from our multiagency coordination group, we shared it with her, and she made the edits almost immediately — she worked really well. We also worked with Brian (President & Strategic Planner) in the initial meeting.

How did you come to work with STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging?

We went through a fairly involved RFP process. As a system, we’re not obliged to undergo an RFP process, but we decided to do it for transparency. Initially, the RFP didn’t generate much interest because it was way too expensive. We were asking for data collection and marketing at the same time — it was too much for one organization to handle. However, we got five really good responses. STIR responded to our initial inquiry, but we didn’t get the message from them until later. Our phone system during the pandemic was a mess.

I reached out to Christel, and one of the things that stood out was that they were very strong library users. They had a passion for our service to the communities and residents. We did reference checks to them, and they also had a really good track record, particularly within the Milwaukee area, which was something we were after. 

They also had connections within the community that we could leverage. In the plan itself, they mentioned a few people by name; people that we could reach out to to get the campaign started. Those partnerships were really important — STIR felt like a good fit in that regard.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $10,000. STIR gave us a deal price and did some free work, too. They knew that, even though the system had to pay for their services, it wasn’t something that we typically invest in, and our budget was pretty small.

What is the status of this engagement?

We signed the statement of work in October 2020. The engagement was slanted to end in December 2020, but there were a number of delays. We lost a couple of staff people from our organization, which put me at a disadvantage. I needed to take care of that first, so we went a little slower than what we anticipated. We eventually approved the marketing plan in March 2021. Essentially, it was a six-month process. We’re now just waiting on the final draft of the marketing plan.

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

STIR had experience and breadth of knowledge, and they were able to put together a plan that worked. It’s a little early to measure success but, in terms of STIR’s role, I can’t imagine a better outcome for us. They gave us a very detailed and thorough marketing plan — that’s a very successful outcome. 

This plan wasn’t something that was done over a weekend; it involved a lot of editing and thought to reach the greatest number of people that we could. Our stakeholders are all over the map, but STIR helped us identify some useful categories to focus on, such as parents with young kids and lifelong learners. 

Now, we got the approval to hire a 25-hours-per-week marketing person to run the plan. STIR’s part on this project was extremely successful — I couldn’t be happier with that.

STIR’s team is top-notch. They treated us like their primary customer, even though we didn’t have a huge budget and the task was fairly small compared to what they typically work on. Christel had a real passion for our work, and that spilled over into the plan — I really appreciated that.

STIR was great to work with, and they gave us the attention that a large contract would draw. When we met with them, we felt like the most important people in the room.

How did STIR Advertising & Integrated Messaging perform from a project management standpoint?

STIR’s project management was top-notch. Christel was always on top of things. When things got crazy and we lost the staff members, she kept us on track. When I sent her the edits from our team, she came back with the changes to the draft in less than a week, even though some changes were significantly large.

As the scope of the project was small, we didn’t have a lot of meetings and only communicated via email — it worked out fine. However, we included all of our groups and stakeholders in the process.

What did you find most impressive about them?

STIR's attention to detail and passion for their work were impressive. It was easy to tell that they loved doing these types of projects. When they saw the RFP that we posted, they were really excited about it. I noticed their energy when we talked on the phone, and it really worked out well. Their energy was something that put them over the top compared to other companies.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything that STIR could have done differently. We agreed to make this process as simple as possible, and they delivered what we asked for.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don't hesitate to work with STIR — they’re a really good and disciplined organization, and they’ll treat you as their top customer. They can bring passion to any organization. If STIR can understand what it is that you're after and what you're looking for, they can actually do a lot of great things for your organization. You’ll be well served with them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a designer and art director and I was contracted as a part-time campaign manager by Eras Senior Network, a nonprofit organization.

What challenge were you trying to address with STIR Advertising _ Integrated Messaging?

Eras had done a campaign similar to this about four years ago, but because of pandemic, their volunteers from the greater Milwaukee area decided to halt their services. They needed to implement a few different types of non-contact options to help keep the number of volunteers up while minimizing the risk of  COVID-19, and STIR helped them with the campaign that was going to advertise that.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started by providing STIR with a list of clients who could potentially do TV ads, PR promotions spots, radio ads, and the like. STIR interviewed these clients and did a heavy amount of PR work for us in terms of getting the word out through radio and TV. 

In tandem with our PR efforts, the team also conducted a social media campaign on Facebook. They then produced a few out-of-home billboards for the campaign and a landing page to help capture conversions.

What is the team composition?

The executive director of STIR was generally involved in some of the follow-ups. 

How did you come to work with STIR Advertising _ Integrated Messaging?

Eras Senior Network had an ad campaign that they were planning to run from September–December 2020. At the time, they had four different RFPs which I reviewed with their internal team. We made a decision to go with STIR for that campaign because they proposed to improve some of our existing assets which lacked emotional appeal, like our social media accounts, landing pages, and PR efforts.

How much have you invested with them?

They had a $150,000 grant and three-fourths of it was in kind or pro bono.

What is the status of this engagement?

The kick-off was around the middle of September 2020 and the campaign closed at the end of December 2020.

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

For the Facebook campaign, we were trying to shoot for 100 new volunteers but reached about 30 conversions, nine of whom had heard about the campaign through social media, six from the radio, three through online ads, another nine from newspapers and news stations, and two from family and friends’ referrals.

We got about 293 page views with a high average time on page of two and a half minutes. The bounce rate was a little high, but it was understandable since there was only one page for users to go to.

How did STIR Advertising _ Integrated Messaging perform from a project management standpoint?

The team’s availability was great, especially for a nonprofit client like Eras. I felt that the project manager was great to work with on a daily basis. We were always getting answers to any type of question that we had. They also reached out to me for certain types of information that they could use during the interview.

Eras had Basecamp but didn’t use it for this project. It was mostly just setting everything up through email. We also had two initial video calls at the beginning of the process to get everybody in the same team space and to talk through any questions or concerns. STIR got that done pretty quickly so that we could capitalize on all four months of work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive aspect of their services was their PR work. We had originally gone with STIR for their capabilities in the visual side, and they had delivered on that pretty well. The landing page’s visuals were probably the weakest compared to the social media pages and billboards, but I was pretty impressed with STIR’s PR capabilities nonetheless. 

The script writing for the TV interviews and radio spots was really well done. The contributions that they did for the newspaper press releases were also quite good.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The landing page’s design could’ve been improved a little bit. They had also created some ads for a liturgical publication company, but their output didn’t necessarily match the overall look and feel. I’m not sure if there was a different designer involved but they could have done with some more consistency from a visual standpoint.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I felt that I could always get clarity on anything with STIR. Our executive director also found that they were very transparent. The team is highly inquisitive and really digs for information with the right questions. However, if you’re investing in your campaign and in this team, it is also dependent on you to be involved and ask questions.