Case Study: Brand Partnerships Strategy & Infrastructure
Astrostyle is the astrology media brand built by Ophira and Tali Edut (the AstroTwins) over more than two decades. They’ve been the resident astrologers at ELLE Magazine since 2009, published more than 20 books, and built brand partnerships with Away, Coach, Pandora, HBO Max, and Maybelline, among others. In early 2026, with a pivot toward the professional wellness and corporate education space underway and a brand partnerships program they wanted to scale, they brought me on to strategize and modernize their brand partnerships systems.
The challenge:
Astrostyle had built a strong foundation over years of successful partnerships (recognizable talent, an established media footprint, a track record of successful campaigns, and a strong warm network) but as they moved into a new phase of growth, with a pivot toward corporate wellness and a more proactive outbound program, they needed systems that could scale with the ambition. That meant a CRM built for a multi-person team, a research infrastructure that could support higher-volume prospecting, and strategic clarity about which new categories and brand profiles to prioritize for this next chapter.
My approach:
Over an initial eight week engagement, I focused on modernizing the strategic and operational infrastructure that a brand partnerships program needs before outreach scales: the research layer, the systems layer, and the strategic clarity layer.
That meant getting into the actual texture of what had made their past partnerships work, what their current assets and channels looked like honestly (including what the traffic numbers did and didn’t support), and what categories of brands would be genuinely aligned rather than just demographically adjacent.
It also meant thinking carefully about where the media landscape was heading, including a substantial analysis of how AI Overviews and the “zero-search” planning frameworks emerging at major publishers should inform Astrostyle’s positioning and product priorities.
Deliverables included:
Pipedrive CRM architecture and implementation, including product category structure, custom fields, lead ownership tracking, and a 12-week adoption roadmap • Brand research across seven categories (wellness supplements, clean beauty, challenger finance, small business tools, personal productivity, cycle health, and home fragrance), with strategic rationale, funding context, values vetting, and direct contact information for each prospect • A curated “Do Not Call” list with documented reasoning for exclusions • Meeting facilitation and documentation across the full engagement • A strategic memo on the AI and SEO landscape as it applies specifically to a niche-authority astrology brand, translated into actionable recommendations • Narrative architecture and structural outline for a multi-city live event pitch deck targeting a national media partner
“Ariel really shines in a break the ground role. She came in and modernized our brand partnerships program, asking all the savvy questions, spearheaded an update to our CRM infrastructure, researching companies, and producing strategic analysis I’d actually trust to pitch from.
What I didn’t expect was how strong her creative instincts were alongside all of that. She thinks like a writer and a systems architect at the same time, which is a rare combination. In our I*AM system, she’s The Modernizer — and that’s exactly what she did for us.”
— Ophira Edut, Co-Founder, Astrostyle
(ELLE Magazine’s resident astrologers since 2009)
The impact:
The value delivered was infrastructure: a CRM the outreach team actually wanted to use, a vetted prospect list organized by fit and actionability, a clear picture of the competitive and media landscape, and a strategic and structural framework for pitching a new event concept to media partners and brand sponsors. The partnerships program that was operating on instinct and warm introductions now has documented systems, researched targets, and a strategic foundation it can build on… all in only eight weeks!
The takeaway:
A brand partnerships program is only as strong as the infrastructure underneath it: outreach without a CRM can create chaos, while pitches without category research can produce misaligned asks. For a small media brand moving from relationship-driven inbound to a scalable outbound model, the foundation work isn’t a just preliminary step… it’s mission critical work.
