More Than Deliverables
North Star Marketing partners with organizations that want more than output. We help teams bring structure, clarity, and direction to their marketing so the work they create actually gets used and makes an impact.
What That Looks Like in Practice
- Helping teams understand why before deciding what to create
- Guiding how marketing assets are used across channels, teams, and moments
- Creating structure around messaging, priorities, and execution
- Acting as a strategic partner for organizations without internal marketing leadership
- Connecting creative work to real business goals and decisions
- Providing steady guidance as marketing evolves, not just at launch moments
Experience changes how you see the world
My path into marketing didn’t come from one role or one industry. It came from years spent creating, leading, listening, and learning often from the inside of organizations where marketing had to earn its place. Those experiences shaped how I see the work today and why North Star was built differently.
Tim Riethmiller
Tim Riethmiller has spent his career working at the intersection of creativity, communication, and business leadership. His path through journalism, design, photography, marketing, and executive roles shaped a perspective that values clarity over noise and partnership over production. North Star Marketing was built from that perspective.
Background & Perspective
Tim’s foundation began in journalism at Taylor University, where he helped establish the university’s journalism program while studying alongside his wife, Corrie. That early focus on storytelling, accuracy, and audience understanding became the throughline of his career.
From there, Tim worked as an art director for multiple newspapers in Washington, D.C., served as art director for South Magazine, and became a lead designer within the USA Today newspaper network. His creative career expanded behind the camera as well, photographing for organizations including the Wall Street Journal, ESPN, Team USA Men’s Soccer, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Kansas City Royals, PBR, and on assignments involving President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama.
As his career progressed, Tim moved deeper into marketing leadership serving as marketing manager for multi-million-dollar manufacturing organizations, director of marketing in the financial sector, and eventually Chief Commercial Officer for a multifaceted manufacturing company. In those roles, marketing wasn’t an abstract exercise, it was accountable to sales teams, operations, leadership, and growth.
What the Work Taught Him
Across industries and organizations, Tim noticed a consistent pattern: marketing agencies were often hired for execution, then dismissed when the work failed to connect internally or drive meaningful outcomes. The issue was rarely talent, it was a lack of understanding, ownership, and guidance.
Marketing was being created, but not stewarded.
That realization reshaped how Tim approached the work. Strategy had to be grounded in how businesses actually operate. Creative needed context. And teams needed someone who could help them apply marketing not just produce it.
The North Star Approach
North Star Marketing was built to fill that gap.
Today, Tim brings decades of experience across digital marketing, photography, design, creative direction, internal communications, and executive leadership into a relationship-centered consultancy focused on clarity and use. His work has been recognized with MarCom and dotCOMM awards, but success has always been measured differently, by whether teams feel confident, aligned, and supported as they move forward.
North Star exists to guide organizations through the decisions that make marketing effective and to serve as a partner that learns the business deeply, rather than operating at arm’s length.