A site to stop your scroll: The making of The Martin Group’s new website – The Martin Group
This spring, The Martin Group was proud to launch our brand-new website, a redesigned, reconceived, and renewed take on everything we do as an agency. It was a celebration for the work it represents and the team members who contributed to its eventual completion.
But it didn’t happen overnight.
Over a span of two years (or six if you count all the time we thought about it), an impressive number of collaborative hours were spent conceptualizing and completing our new online introduction—and we couldn’t be happier about the results. But across those years and hours, work pushed incrementally forward while a cavalcade of contributors juggled an ever-growing flow of client work and concerns that didn’t stop for internal needs.
This month, we’re talking to some of the main players in our shiny new website’s origin story. Each has a take from every step of our latest creation story, and their recollections now help us appreciate how we progressed from an idea to a more comprehensive representation of all we are as an integrated communications operation.
Let’s have them walk us through things:
Step 1: We need a new website
Yes, we needed a new website. But before we could unleash our current work earlier this year, we had to come up with the FIRST new website—about 10 years ago. This edition brought The Martin Group’s brand into modern day and laid the foundation for what was to develop in the coming years.
Michael Tsanis (Senior Vice President, Creative): When I first started at The Martin Group (in 2016), my first assignment was the [agency] rebrand. It was kind of a daunting task as the new creative director to come in, redefine the brand, and put a flag in the ground for all of that. And one of our bigger obstacles [in the rebrand] was the website.
But just a few years after this website fix, the agency had grown significantly, adding more than 70 employees across multiple New York locations. Services had multiplied, diversified, and deepened. Work for clients had become more complex—and even more impressive. Website adjustments were needed to reflect these changes and better communicate the gravity of The Martin Group’s level of performance.
Levi Neuland (Senior Vice President, Digital Marketing): We really started thinking about how we might need to change how we communicate ourselves on our website, starting in 2019.
Lisa Bellacicco (Chief Operating Officer): Our website didn’t reflect who we were as an organization anymore. It just didn’t reflect our brand. We’re a branding company, and it should be able to be a great external interpretation of who we are as an organization, and it just wasn’t doing that anymore.
Neuland: Our website really was not doing a great job of speaking in-depth to what it is we do.
Bellacicco: I felt like [the old website] was the college version of us, like it just represented a very brief moment in time of who we were. It wasn’t representing the sophisticated nature of the agency. It wasn’t representing all the great subject matter experts that we have here, and everything that we’re doing. It just needed to be able to reflect that in a much stronger and better way.
Neuland: We needed to solve this problem, and really, get ourselves out there a bit more than we had in the past.
Tsanis: I’m surprised it held up as well as it did for 10 years, but it definitely was time for something new.
Step 2: Let’s get it started
Once there was agreement that a new website was needed, conversations shifted to purpose, necessary design elements, and needed collaboration, with initial conversations between principles yielding direction that would guide the coming months—and years.
Bellacicco: Yeah, the toughest part was absolutely just trying to get a plan down on paper and trying to figure out how are we going to do this? Because we knew it was going to be a big undertaking, because we were going to have to take a really good, long, hard look at who we are and how we wanted to talk about who we are.
Tsanis: When we were talking about putting this thing together, the direction I gave the creative team was, let’s make it feel really exciting and dynamic as you move through it—even though I hate when people say “dynamic.”
Jennifer Hunold (Vice President, Business and Insights): From my perspective, [the new site] needed to do a better job of talking about us in a way that really represented what we could do in a way that was clear and actually representative of our capabilities.
Neuland: Some of the elements the new site had to have were a lot more detail about what we do across things like creative, paid media, digital marketing, social media, PR—just a lot more context beyond a brief intro and showcasing our work. We needed something to demonstrate the expertise we have and how we are more forward thinking than it might really seem at first blush.
Ryan Boyle (Digital Development Supervisor): We definitely wanted to step it up in terms of visuals and user experience. I think this was the biggest thing from design to development. It’s not just how it looks; it’s how it feels when somebody goes through this. It should be an experience.
Tsanis: Throughout the years of having this brand, we’ve always kind of taken small diversions with it. I think it’s designed to have a little bit of flexibility in it. This was exciting in the sense that [for a project like this] we could bring a lot of motion and interactivity to something that was [already] there.
Step 3: Trust the process
Over the time it took to get from start to competition, a variety of obstacles had to be navigated: copy and design changes; on-again, off-again collaboration from an agency-wide team; staff additions and subtractions; and balancing website construction with an ongoing influx of client priorities. It was like owning a constantly busy auto garage—and attempting to build our own street-legal hot rod on the side.
It was a lot to manage. But with constant communication, confronting our obstacles, and consistent belief in creating something brilliant, we carried forward.
Hunold: I think we were all on the same page. We just didn’t understand that it wasn’t a page—it was a chapter in a book.
Bellacicco: There were a lot of people [who were] involved, who were going to be driving the process, who was going to be contributing. [There’d be others] we would kind of tap into throughout the process, but maybe wouldn’t be involved the entire time. That was very challenging, and I think the team did a really good job at trying to outline as much of that up front as possible as we could.
Neuland: When it comes to the agency, we don’t do much self-reflection to consider, oh, here’s who we are now and how we’ve changed. So, the website was really a moment where [our staff] were forced to do that, which can be a little bit difficult and uncomfortable. Ultimately, I think everybody felt a lot better about it once they kind of got through that process.
Hunold: We all forget how to do our own jobs sometimes. You have to go back to basics pretty frequently with major, comprehensive, multi-phase projects. That’s not a failure; that’s just being a good steward of the team in the process.
Step 4: I think we have something here
As team members continued to finish copy, design, and video elements of the site, things were in the approvals stage throughout the winter months of 2025-26. After years spent constructing an ambitious website that better represented 25 years of Martin Group brilliance, a finished product seemed to finally push past possibility to inevitability. This was going to happen, and people were excited.
Hunold: After [some productive] meetings in December 2025, there was a moment where I felt like, okay, we’ve got this. We’re completely all on the same page. We’ve eliminated any roadblocks or things that could have created some heartburn.
Bellacicco: The team is so good at problem solving, and everybody tries to figure it out. But really, where we come up with the best solutions is when we work together collectively. That was really what got us over the finish line.
Tsanis: I really wanted it to be unexpected at every turn so that, within every moment of interaction, you have no idea what’s going to come next, in a good way. So it kept you glued to the screen. Certain functional things are templated, but each moment is its own singular moment within this website—and there are many of those moments.
Boyle: It was a huge project, but also the coolest thing that I maybe have ever built from a development standpoint. It could be overwhelming when you were alone, but the collaboration part was what made me feel like we were together and it was actually possible to get this out to the world.
Step 5: It’s out there—and we’re loving every minute of it
On March 19, we officially announced the launch of The Martin Group’s ambitious website. After years of collaborative work and creative spirit, it tells the story of who we are, where we’ve been—and probably most importantly, where we’re going—with a style, voice, and sophistication reflective of our agency id. So much award-winning work. So many clients across the U.S. and around the globe. It’s all across the pages, copy, images, and animations of our site.
Now, we can kick back, take stock of what we’ve done, and appreciate the journey—albeit while we get back to work on a million other things.
Tsanis: Having been part of this process 10 years ago, it’s wild to see the growth [of the agency]. Obviously, we’ve grown physically as a company, but even with the type of work that we do, the expertise and the capabilities that we’ve brought to the equation. Now, we finally have a place where we can put it all, and I think that opens up so many more possibilities for us.
Neuland: This is who we are right now. But I think with how we approached the new structure, the content, how everything came together, it also gives us a lot of flexibility for what’s next, whether that’s what’s happening the next 30 or 60 days or the next three or six years. We’re much more equipped now to not only think about how we talk about ourselves and kind of have a good North Star to look at and say, okay, here’s how we can go about expanding our services or pivoting into new directions.
Bellacicco: I think the team really loves seeing some of their personality come through [on this site]. It doesn’t feel overly corporate. It doesn’t feel cold or staged. It just feels like this is who we are. We have fun, we do really great work, and we have a personality.
Hunold: We could have hit the easy button at any point. [Instead], we worked collaboratively to have a website that pushes the envelope in a lot of ways. And that’s the kind of possibility I think people should see in us when they think about where we’re headed.
Bellacicco: We’re not a complacent organization. We’ve never been complacent. We’re always very much about what’s next, and this site will allow us to continue to build on that and further our narrative.
Boyle: We were really bold and ambitious with this project. I think it showcases to the world and our clients what we can do and what we can do for other websites.
Hunold: Every company who chooses a major project like this is going to have an experience. So after our experience, who better than The Martin Group to walk a company through that? We did it for ourselves, and we now know how comprehensive and complex it can be.
Bellacicco: We almost didn’t realize how far behind we were in our telling our own story. It’s great to be able to tell our story [with this site]. It’s so good, creative, and smart, and I just love it.
Tsanis: I’m really proud of how we brought it all together.
To learn more about how The Martin Group can help you with your website design and development needs, click here.
