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Ed. note: This brief profile of Stormship is one of a series of three that provide a little background on the companies that sponsored my charity: water campaign.
When you run a small business with just a few employees, you quickly learn the importance of working together as a team. That’s certainly the case with Mike Brennan and Anne Damphousse, whom I’ve known since I worked at EMC. As the two principals at Stormship, they consider their business “a caring and compact creative team.” As a former client and now business partner, I would certainly agree.
For Stormship, a Boston-based design firm offering print, web, and interactive design and development, “team” extends beyond their own internal organization. For them, team includes “an expansive network of top-notch creative and technology partners,” which allows Stormship to scale and customize appropriately. However, even more important than the partner relationships they’ve built over the years is the good relationship they have with their clients. “We like to hear that our clients are pleased with the level of design expertise that we brought to the table,” Mike says. “But more so, we like to hear that they felt we were a reliable and valuable part of their team.”
That attitude, the way they value relationships, is undoubtedly one reason Stormship is still thriving after 20 years in business. That’s a long time in agency years. For that kind of longevity, an agency must continuously deliver outstanding work; but for Stormship, it’s about more than just the end product. “We learned the importance of being able to quickly and clearly articulate the value we bring to the creative process,” says Anne. And that’s where I’d say their value as a teammate becomes evident. Stormship works in partnership with clients to understand the goal and together develop an approach that addresses the need.
Moreover, I believe that sense of being part of a team was a motivation for Stormship to support the charity: water campaign. “The idea that even a small donation could do so much good was very appealing to us,” Anne told me. I agree. One thing that makes this project so satisfying to me – and I suspect to Mike and Anne as well – is this notion that we’re working together, contributing to something larger than ourselves, pooling our resources to more than any of us could individually. Isn’t that the definition of teamwork?
For more information about Stormship, please visit www.stormship.com.