Emotion drives behavior. You can’t hope to persuade people if you don’t know what will appeal to them emotionally. So we get to know your audience on a molecular level. We listen to them, research them, read their job descriptions, and join their industry organizations. We learn to respect them and, yes, even love them. What we do flows from empathy and a sense of our common humanity. If you want to know what makes us different, there it is. Love.
Pinwheel operates as a component of your team. No intermediaries. No agency games. No egos. Just great work that works.
We sit down and interview you about the organization, brand, goals, culture and especially the audience so that we can hit the ground running.
We work with you to complete a Pinwheel Project Success Document (the brief) and a timeline that sets the team up for greatness.
We dig deep to come up with truly powerful ideas, strategies, and plans that deliver results (and the foundation for more success in the future).
Actively seek out feedback and results from every project so that we can learn and improve as we go along.
Digital marketing happens fast. Our clients need pros who can come in, understand projects immediately and add value... before Tuesday at noon. We have a vast network of exactly these types of people.
Before the coronavirus made it chic, we were all working virtually in the US, Canada and the UK. We also have a satellite office in Marin County, California that we share with another agency.
Todd is a life-long student of the persuasive arts. An award-winning copywriter with 25 years of experience, he has run creative agencies, worked for them, and managed them on the client side. His agency stays include marquee shops like Ogilvy, Y&R, and JWT and he's had leadership stints at global media companies CBS and Yahoo. And while he's worked on big brands like Coca-Cola, J&J, and Amazon, he very much enjoys launching and growing plucky young startups.
A Suma Cum Laude graduate of Barnard College in New York, Melissa spent most of her professional career in the broadcast and marketing worlds working in production, project management, strategy, client handling, and user interface design. She has managed teams, run departments, led the production of award-winning ad campaigns, produced a syndicated sports call-in show and her first book was published in 2021.
With over 20 years in content, copywriting, branding and marketing, Sarah has worked with startups, Fortune 100s and everything in between. Before that, she grew up in her parents' creative agency from the tender age of eight. She’s helped tell stories and create content for Credit Karma, Playboy, Teletubbies, United Healthcare, Volvo and many others. She loves simplifying the complex and is passionate about helping brands find their voice and communicate clearly.
L. Roen Prowe is a veritable compass. An author, aspiring psychologist and marketing pro with nearly two decades of agency leadership, he is a sought-after senior advisor with an obsession for revenue and coherence. Previous agency stints include Interpublic, Omnicom, Dentsu and McCann. As a former strategic and creative lead, he is comfortable working with marketing and branding teams to optimize user experience. His is instrumental in all aspects of an organization’s revenue-generating activities and business development. He lives in rural Vermont with his wife and four-legged pet-lings.
Like many designers, John is hell-bent on teasing apart signal from noise, amplifying the bejeezus out of the signal, then giving it an OCD level of polish. John cut his teeth in myriad small Bay Area agencies as a production artist, designer and art director. John digs working with small agencies and start-ups who set out to make the world a better place. He lives in the Bay Area with his Catalan wife and two beautiful girls.
A Senior Designer with extensive experience in brand and visual design systems and responsive web design, Katie has worked at hot design shops like Method (SF), Code + Theory (London), and Meta Design (Zurich). In her spare time, she’s helped develop young design talent as an instructor at San Francisco's Academy of Art University. She lives in Portland with her husband and 5-(and a half!) year-old daughter.
Laura got her MFA in fiction at University of Montana and has written one novel that’s tucked away on an old hard drive somewhere in her basement. She wishes she still had her 1957 Ford F100 pickup, but fulfilled another vintage vehicle dream when she purchased a 1958 Shasta trailer. She has a crazily talented husband and a 13-year-old daughter who loves skateboarding, tadpoles, and Tyler the Creator. Laura is a one of a kind writer who can easily switch back and forth between marketing writing and journalism and still be excellent at both.
We engender a feeling of teamwork through a collegial environment where it's clear that everyone's top priority is quality (not scoring "points" or being superior to others).
Let it be known that everyone has a voice, a valid opinion and that those voices are our very best chance for improvement and rapid growth.
We have a relentless forward-thinking attitude. We do not dwell on past mistakes. We only hire people who hate making them in the first place. We acknowledge that mistakes were made and we move forward with a positive attitude.
We check our egos at the door (they can peek in from time to time to revel in our success, if they choose).
The senior people at the company work to teach the junior people at the company what they know so that those people can be the best they can be. Hopefully better than us Senior people.
We are constantly communicating about the vision quest that we are all on together. We sell that quest to everyone: employees, contractors, partners, clients, each other, everyone.
Be bold. Be confident. But leave your ego at the door. Too much swagger communicates insecurity and hints towards incompetence.
Maniacal focus on revenue. Return on investment defines success for our client partnerships.
Companies have wasted millions of dollars, countless hours, and valuable momentum by bumbling through the process of managing their creative output. This free guide is filled with hard-won insights and smart ideas to help you do better work for less money and in less time. Check it out!
If you want to change the world, we’d love to talk.
