DeSantis Breindel

I’m the HR manager at Silver Oak, an organization that grows and makes wine.

We needed assistance in building a strong employer brand and creating collateral and marketing materials to attract great talent.

DeSantis Breindel helped us create our employer value proposition. The team created a playbook we could use in HR and marketing as we put ourselves out there as an employer of choice on LinkedIn and other platforms. Although they didn't create a content calendar, our marketing team could use the playbook for content creation.

We worked with three teammates from DeSantis Breindel, including Dru. She was part of our project from beginning to end.

They were a recommendation from our legal partner. We did a full RFP and interviewed multiple agencies. We selected DeSantis Breindel because they were warm and genuine during our call. We felt they would be a great partner for our culture.

We spent $30,000.

We worked together from January–July 2024.

We’re still in the process of launching the work internally. DeSantis Breindel was phenomenal to work with. Our management and ownership, including our CMO, were impressed with the work the team did. They were able to come in such a short time and capture the sentiment of our employees.

They were responsible for coordinating times with our employees and setting up spaces for DeSantis Breindel to engage with them. We used Microsoft Teams and email for communication, and they had a Gantt chart for project management.

Dru was amazing. She and Anne were so much fun to work with, and our employees loved them. Dru and Anne made the work effortless. They were able to connect with our employees and company and accurately capture our employer brand.

DeSantis Breindel's ability to listen to our employees' sentiments and translate them into an employer value proposition was impressive.

No, there was nothing I’d have them improve.

Trust that they are experienced professionals. They will capture what you’re trying to convey to your employees and outside candidates in coordination with your brand.

I'm the chief growth officer at a company that provides commercial services to the life sciences industry.

We were looking to rebrand our company. We had previously been structured as a series of independent teams that worked collaboratively together. We wanted to restructure both internally and create a new go-to-market brand.

DeSantis Breindel started by doing a discovery to understand our landscape, our company, our competitors, and our project's goals. The team also did research with our internal and external team members, taking all the information we provided. After the discovery phase, DeSantis Breindel started going through our strategic framework, helping us define who we were and how we wanted to sound. The team helped us think through the visual story associated with our strategy and ultimately create our brand messages to launch it in the marketplace. DeSantis Breindel created our brand positioning and value proposition for our target audiences and how to articulate our message collectively and for our different segments. The team also wrote our website's content.

We worked with 5–7 teammates on average, including Chelsea (Account Director), Caitlin (Director of Strategy), a creative lead, a digital lead, two copywriters, and a project manager.

We spent a little under $1 million.

We began working with DeSantis Breindel in September 2023. We did a soft launch in April 2024 and a hard launch in June 2024. The team helped us with the strategic and creative list we needed, and if we needed something after the launch, we called the team.

DeSantis Breindel did a great job of ensuring that our internal executive team was brought along and helping us pull through the internal launch. We received a positive response internally, and our team felt like they had a brand they were proud of going to market with. I did early interviews with clients to roll out the brand and received positive feedback, stating that our new brand made sense and was what they wanted from a partner. Every place we turned to, we received positive feedback across the board.

We mainly communicated via texting, weekly calls, and email. DeSantis Breindel delivered work on time and was good at keeping us on task because we had many tasks happening quickly. I appreciated the team was on top of us and pushed us to the right places. If we proposed something DeSantis Breindel felt didn't make sense, they were a good thought partner to let us know and were great in that perspective. We had a great experience.

DeSantis Breindel knew exactly what they were doing and showcased great expertise. The entire team was fantastic partners. Chelsea was our day-to-day contact, and she knew exactly how to push us in the direction we needed to go, keeping us on task. Caitlin was super strategic and learned how to build a brand. The entire team was strong and knew exactly how to do what we asked.

The only area I wasn't pumped about was our website copy because I felt it was too generic, and we had to go back and amped it up. However, the team nailed every other aspect of the project.

We partnered well with DeSantis Breindel because we let them do their thing and handed them the reins of the project. The team was good at pulling us along, and I hope we were as good a partner to them as they were to us. I encourage other clients to do the same because and lean into DeSantis Breindel's expertise.

I'm a marketing manager at a software company.

We needed to rebrand our company.

The first phase of our full scope of work with DeSantis Breindel includes research, brand strategy, and customer journey work. The second phase involves building a brand platform and creating a new visual and verbal identity, including a new name and logo. The last phase of the project consists of the team giving us recommendations on a launch plan and go-to-market strategy.

One of DeSantis Breindel's founders was involved during the RFP process, as well as a customer experience strategist and an account director. When we moved into engaging with the team, we worked with other teammates who had come in and out. A customer experience director was involved in the customer journey work, and a brand strategist was involved in the initial stages of creating a brand platform. Another teammate was involved in the naming, and a creative director and designer were involved in the visual identity. DeSantis Breindel's account director has been consistent throughout the project.

We've spent around $250,000 on this project.

We started working with the team in March 2023, and our engagement is ongoing. Our project is in the last phase, and we'll wrap it up in the summer.

We haven't launched our new brand, but overall, DeSantis Breindel has done a great job. The team delivers good-quality work, and I'd recommend them. DeSantis Breindel has done an excellent job of understanding our industry, competitive landscape, and customers, leading to a strong brand platform. Our new brand identity is a really good representation of the company and where it is today.

I want to shout out Chelsea's (Account Director) work. She has been a great support and really understood our needs throughout the project.

We were most impressed during the project's first phase when the team dug into our industry and competitive landscape. DeSantis Breindel conducted interviews with our customers and market research and distilled that information into a presentation with insights that they shared with us. The team's customer journey and go-to-market strategy recommendations also stand out.

I don't have constructive feedback for DeSantis Breindel; they've done a great job.

We were delayed at the beginning of the project because our team wasn't prepared for the engagement with DeSantis Breindel. We needed to gather more information that would help the team better understand our company and kick off the research. I recommend customers ensure they have the internal resources and are ready to dive deep with the DeSantis Breindel team. The team is very good at distilling a lot of information, and ensuring customers have that information at hand will really help start the project as soon as possible.

I’m the head of marketing and communications of a company that manages the revenue cycle of large healthcare systems and hospital groups to ensure they’re paid for the care they provide. We help them accomplish their mission of providing patient care. I lead all of our internal and external communications and marketing efforts.

We acquired and merged a number of companies with unique brands. Given that, we needed a brand strategy that leveraged the strengths of those brands while positioning the business proactively for the future. The strategy should align with our investors’ vision for bringing the brands together and solving real problems in healthcare. As a result, we hired DeSantis Breindel to help us through the brand strategy work.

The project started with the strategy phase. Then, DeSantis Breindel built our brand identity and created an implementation plan. The third phase was the actual implementation of the strategy.

The team composition varied throughout the project. At each phase, we worked with various teammates. During the strategy phase, we collaborated with 3–6 teammates who actively engaged with us. For the branding phase, we had up to eight contributors. For the implementation phase, we worked with around 10 teammates participating in different workstreams.

I found agencies through recommendations from colleagues, my network, and other people who were either in our industry or worked in marketing. Apart from that, I spoke with consulting firms, and they gave me recommendations, too.

We spent around $1 million, give or take 20%.

The partnership lasted from March 2023–March 2024.

The new brand was launched in March 2024, and we looked into different metrics to measure the success of the brand. For our internal activation, I measured success based on a monthly employee survey, and we saw significant levels of engagement and awareness. We were pleased with these results.

We structured the SOW without knowing the ultimate scope of the project; we had to work on it in phases. Despite that, DeSantis Breindel was flexible in how they worked with us as our scope changed. They were fair, and we worked well with them throughout the process.

Dru and Howard were highly engaged throughout the project, particularly during critical moments around decisions or pivots from one phase to another. Debbie was extremely helpful and connected everything together to ensure we remained on track. She coordinated with our internal project and program managers. Shannon and the others also led the work in certain areas.

They had a methodology that they used with other organizations going through similar transformations. However, they adjusted it as they went through the strategy with us — they understood how we operated, who our decision-makers were, and what we were trying to accomplish. I was impressed with this flexibility and their ability to adjust to the environment and situation, pivoting quickly where needed.

DeSantis Breindel should continue to develop their network of freelancers and contractors. This way, they can pull in resources where needed or scale back easily, especially if they’re growing in project compliance.

Be transparent with DeSantis Breindel at every step regarding what’s working and what’s not. They’re willing to adjust for the best results, so maintain transparency. On top of that, ensure that your internal stakeholders are aligned with the work you're doing with the team. This way, everything remains in sync, and you can identify potential internal roadblocks early.