A military-family survey is an exercise in asking people for something: their time, their attention, their candor. In October 2025, the people Reingold needed to reach had more immediate concerns. A federal shutdown had disrupted military pay just as the Military Family Advisory Network was preparing to launch its research. The promotional calendar had collided with the household budget.
Reingold changed the assignment. Survey promotion gave way to sharing support resources. When promotion resumed, the agency leaned into community partners and ambassadors, emphasizing independence and confidentiality. It says the campaign sacrificed roughly a month of promotional time and still collected more than 10,000 completed surveys. The interesting decision came before that number: someone had to stop treating the calendar as the boss.
- The work: communications, creative production, digital marketing, websites, and training.
- The customers: public agencies, nonprofits, associations, and businesses.
- The useful idea: investigate what makes the next action difficult.
01 A condo, then a question
Janet Reingold began the company alone in her Washington, D.C., condo in 1985. In the firm’s account, her method included client “BrainTrust” meetings to agree on success before execution began. That is an unusually useful origin detail for an agency. It puts the definition of the problem ahead of the production of the advertisement.
Today, the privately held Alexandria firm sells professional services across strategy, design, media, technology, and learning. Government buyers can use its listed contract vehicles. For clients, the appeal is having people who can research a problem, make the material, build the delivery system, and teach others to operate it.
The technical reach extends through Ibis Public Sector, a wholly owned subsidiary offering engineering and cybersecurity services. That places Reingold in a broader buying conversation than its advertising label suggests. A public agency may need both a persuasive invitation and a secure, functioning destination. Bringing those disciplines together is part of the proposition.
02 The city that needed less website
Phoenix offers a particularly concrete example. Reingold reports reducing the city’s website from 5,500 pages to fewer than 2,300. The redesign also moved publishing to Adobe Experience Manager. One bespoke integration imported structured content directly into the platform, avoiding manual work. The project required decisions about what deserved to survive, alongside decisions about how it should look.
Reported page counts from Reingold’s Phoenix project. Bar lengths use 2,300 as the upper bound.
The city’s own project report describes a collaboration led by its technology and communications teams, with Reingold handling research, content strategy, design, development, and change management. Representatives from more than 60 departments and functions helped rewrite content and adopt the new workflows. The site launched on March 24, 2025. Reingold says it trained more than 200 staff members.
This is where an agency’s job gets less photogenic and more consequential. Publishing rules have to make sense to the person updating a parks page next Tuesday. A new interface needs an organization capable of keeping it useful. Training, office hours, and workshops become part of the product.
Phoenix approved that contract limit in July 2023. A January 2025 council report requested $2 million more for expanded operational and maintenance support, proposing a $5 million aggregate ceiling through July 2028. These are spending limits, not an invoice for the launch.
03 A tool is only half an answer
The same organizational difficulty appears in health care. Reingold began supporting the VA Office of Connected Care in 2014. Its discovery work included listening sessions, focus groups, and user testing. Concerns included privacy, infrastructure reliability, and learning unfamiliar tools while delivering care.
The response combined communications with hands-on assistance and clinician education. Reingold describes helping refresh more than 200 online courses and making training easier to complete within VA’s learning system, including access to continuing education credit. A clever message cannot repair unreliable infrastructure. Training also needs time and institutional support. The lesson travels well: identify the barrier before choosing the channel.
“Our stories are all unfinished.”
Theme of the NBA’s 2024 Rising Stars engagement
04 Now put the story in the room
Then there is basketball. At the NBA’s 2024 Rising Stars engagement, former guard Brandon Jennings told his story against changing backdrops: childhood living room, NBA locker room, fashion studio. Reingold supplied the visuals and timed them to the live presentation.
The agency also made personalized illustrations for 30 attending players, with QR codes for digital copies and prints. For the Rookie Transition Program, it built The Atlas, a web app with maps, session schedules, and illustrated recaps. Here, the message occupied the walls, the screen, and the route through the building. Each piece had a job in the experience.
05 Ask a better question. Then test it.
Reingold’s commercial work carries the method into acquisition and search. For Education Affiliates, an engagement beginning with an Adobe audit in 2021 expanded into website testing, platform modernization, and AI search analysis. One audit found important nursing-program outcomes buried in PDFs and recommended accessible HTML instead. For the American Society of Anesthesiologists, it used patient search questions to shape clinician-led short videos. Reingold reports over 3.2 million cross-platform views for that program.
The ASA program included more than 40 customized short videos. Its production logic is something a smaller organization can borrow: start with questions people already ask, find credible people to answer them, and publish in formats those audiences use. The reported view count measures reach; establishing what viewers subsequently did would require a different measure. Choosing the outcome belongs at the beginning.
In market terms, Reingold sits where communications agencies meet digital consultancies and training specialists. Its breadth makes sense when a client’s problem spans those disciplines. A buyer needing only a small, isolated deliverable should weigh how much of that coordination is actually useful. The transferable habit costs less than a broad agency engagement: define the desired action, ask what obstructs it, and test the answer.
That public-service orientation extends into the employer’s account of itself: volunteer drives, a week of service, and support for continued learning. ACT for Alexandria separately credits the agency with donated communications work. The revealing detail is the willingness to do work around the message. A course completed, a page maintained, a trusted introduction: these are small actions, but they are where an organization’s intentions finally reach somebody else.