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Marketing in Progress is a spinoff of Work in Progress that digs into what’s moving the needle in B2B. We feature marketing leaders, sales leaders, and agency owners sharing real stories, smart ideas, and no-filter perspectives—so you walk away with practical guidance to help you do your job better.
[00:00:00] Kate Hamilton: So when developing branding,
You need to leave room for the people to be able to see themselves and advocate for the brand can that, average employee really see themselves somewhere that story bring it to life. If you can do that, you've got the right story.
[00:00:19] Gayle Kalvert: Welcome to Marketing In Progress. I'm Gayle Kalvert. This show is for B2B marketing leaders who are under real pressure to deliver results without a clear roadmap.
Each episode is built to give you practical insight you can use right away. We focus on what actually matters, how success is measured, and the decisions and trade-offs necessary for success. If you're trying to cut through the noise. Do better work and build credibility inside your organization. You are in the right place. Let's get into it.
[00:00:52] Gayle Kalvert: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Marketing in Progress. I'm your host, Gayle Kalvert, and today I'm chatting with Kate Hamilton. Kate is a narrative-driven strategic marketer who specializes in helping businesses get clear on their story and align their teams to move forward with real momentum. With over 20 years of experience in brand content and go-to market strategy, she's worked with everyone from Fortune one hundreds to mission-driven startups.
Kate's the go-to person for helping companies navigate growth leadership changes, and those times when their messaging just isn't hitting the mark.
In today's episode, we're gonna dive into how clarity drives growth and helps businesses break through the noise. Navigating leadership transitions, repositioning or scaling your organization, and how company culture can keep teams motivated and aligned during change.
Kate, I'm so excited to have you here today. Thank you for joining us on Marketing and Progress.
[00:01:50] Kate Hamilton: Oh, thanks for having me.
[00:01:51] Gayle Kalvert: You started your career actually in journalism. So before we dig into marketing, how has journalism affected the way you approach marketing today?
[00:02:02] Kate Hamilton: I've always had this story storytelling, love, and I think that does come from those journalism roots, which really. Taught me early on to stay deeply curious. and I think in marketing you can't ever keep up You know, the the speed to which it changes, the speed to which marketers have expectations, new tools to learn, it can feel really overwhelming.
But to stay curious allows you to constantly dig for that deeper story, that better story. And the other thing I think in journalism that I've held onto is that concept that there's more. sides to a story than the one side. I know the adage is there's always two sides to every story, but I've always believed there's at least three. there's your story, my story, and then there's something in the messy middle that truly represents everything in business and in marketing specifically, you have the company. You have leadership, your employees having a story, customers have a story, and then the collective legacy has a story.
And when marketing only reflects one of those stories, it really falls flat. And I think that that's really helped me bring a dynamic to branding and marketing and how I approach all of that and a little bit of a different, vantage point.
[00:03:17] Gayle Kalvert: How do you apply that when you're building. A business' narrative and messaging. You mentioned something about it being an operating system. when I think narrative and storytelling, I don't necessarily think operating system.
So what does that mean for you?
[00:03:30] Kate Hamilton: Yeah. You know, I think if we remember that marketing isbeyond just communication. It's coordination branding isn't a box. You have to check once and, put that message back on the shelf. It's a continuous maintenance and consistency that branding brings. Messaging brings, marketing helps deliver. So if you think about that, the narrative is actually, if done well, can serve as this operating system that guides decisions, not just messaging. When you have a narrative driving an operating system, or it's, part of the business operation, it might be an easier way to think about it. what that narrative or that story is doing for you. It creates shared truth. it guides the decisions around what goals are we really going to go after? What priorities are we setting as an organization? and it makes the trade-offs of business easier because you have this collective narrative driving decisions.
And then ultimately, you know, especially for leaders, it can help keep teams aligned when things get really hard. In moments of growth, in moments of change, every decision can feel and. Act pretty critical. And so this shared narrative or operating system that I, I feel is really the way we need to be thinking about it. It really can help, a lot of that kind of friction, be addressed. and then ultimately. business, I think we've forgotten that most business really is just communication. You can't scale. You can't get teams on board. You can't build revenue without first uniting people around. Some kind of shared reality.
Shared truth, shared story.
[00:05:09] Gayle Kalvert: I really see this and we see this at CREA with our clients as well. because you can think branding means a great tagline, or branding means a beautiful website. But What you are talking about is what we see too, the difference between organizations that are actually successful and organizations that flounder.
And typically it is because, it's directly correlated to how clear everybody within that organization is on what the company's brand mission narrative. So I love what you're saying, where this isn't just about marketing, this is about ensuring that everybody inside the organization understands who we are.
What do we stand for, what problems do we solve, et cetera. Like everybody has the same answer to those questions. I might be oversimplifying it. So let's get into some examples, Somebody's listening and sort of like, okay, I, kind of hear what you're saying, but I'd love to hear how does this actually work?
And like we said, you've worked with large global brands, you've worked with small founder-led organizations. can you explain or maybe give some tips if somebody's listening, what is the difference in how you create marketing foundations successfully? When you're at a small company versus a large global organization.
[00:06:26] Kate Hamilton: I think you just kind of mentioned the biggest thing is that everyone needs clarity, to scale. You know, it's a lot easier to
[00:06:34] Gayle Kalvert: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:34] Kate Hamilton: three people versus 3000 people.
I think that it's not really the size Where the breakdown is, clarity can break down in a number of ways.
So for big companies, where I see that most is because of the natural silos of teams. that interpretation, variance that happens with strategy across those different leaders and those different teams. Misalignment often happens kind of hidden in the process. You and that translation with process between teams, with founder-led companies, the story often is just locked in the head of the founder. They are highly visible and highly driving all of the direction. And so marketing becomes overly dependent on that one voice, and that's where scale will break down for sure. And teams will struggle. To To act independently and be able to make pretty quick, nimble decisions if we can't get the narrative, the story out of that founder's head.
[00:07:32] Speaker: Are you a marketing leader in B2B Tech? Do you wanna hear what your peers are actually doing? What's working, what they're ditching, and how they're navigating the pressure we're all under.
Well, you're in luck. We just launched the Marketing and Progress community. It's a space for sharing ideas, learning from your peers, and having fun along the way. Visit Creo collective.io/marketing and progress to learn more and join us.
[00:08:01] Gayle Kalvert: When companies experience a stall or slowing in their growth, wanna dig into this because typically what we see is then there's more pressure on marketing to bring in leads. Demos, right? It's like we've gotta book more demos or we need more leads. It's always about where the focus becomes, we need more and better results or activities that will lead to sales.
But what you say is that when growth stalls often that is because companies have a messaging challenge. Whether it's fragmented, it's not necessarily hitting as they think. Maybe it needs to be refreshed. What are the signs that mean a company needs, like they need to work on their narrative, whether it's clarity or scaling that message better internally.
[00:08:51] Kate Hamilton: one of the, more obvious and where people see. It most is when the performance of marketing or sales, have different sort of points when the, their performance is, measured. But when that slows or plateaus, that can be a signal, but it's not the only signal. I find it's often easier to see that something is breaking down when you just do a simple little exercise of asking five people, what does the company do? If you get five distinct answers, you usually then could quickly point, okay, now we understand what's going on here, you know, marketing can only give you enough. Resources, sales has to believe it and leverage it. delivery folks have to truly understand the value proposition that's being pitched out there, whether it's marketing first or sales first, and then deliver that value proposition to create the continuity and the deliverability of whatever you're doing, service, product, et cetera. you can see it in a number of different signals, I truly think that just doing that litmus test could take. meeting, get everybody to do a 62nd elevator pitch. And that usually will be the easier way than waiting for the the next 30 days of marketing performance to come in. Or for sales.
Sometimes you might wait a quarter to see where you're, landing. And I think if any leader has a gut feeling, Hey, something's feeling off, just start there. 'cause it can literally happen. In a day to understand where something might be breaking down instead of those delayed performance cues.
[00:10:31] Gayle Kalvert: I love that so much. Like I have to reiterate that I've never heard that before and it is the quickest, easiest way to test internally. If you need messaging work in some way, ask five people what the company does.
[00:10:47] Kate Hamilton: right.
[00:10:48] Gayle Kalvert: Is that correct? That's what you said. What does the company do? Ask five people. I wanna do this at Creo immediately. It's just a great quick test.
[00:10:57] Kate Hamilton: easy, it's almost like, well of course that would be an easy test. highly recommend as diverse of a group of five, but
you could even do this with your high level leadership and if it's breaking down their. Those folks who are highly tapped in, far more tapped in than maybe anyone else in the organization.
Then you have actually probably a slightly bigger problem than you wanna admit. cause those folks are helping in some ways, shape the direction and the strategy. And if they're off Yeah. Others are feeling it too. Mm-hmm.
[00:11:30] Gayle Kalvert: Well, and this is really good for anyone listening who's in a leadership role in marketing and is thinking, you know, God, we need this right? But I always get pushback from leadership to do messaging. We see this all the time. If you say the word messaging to leadership, for whatever reason, they don't want to invest in it.
It feels like a nice to have versus a must have. And what this test does is very quickly and easily with no investment required, show your leadership that you do need to work on this by asking five people what the company does, and then coming back with quotes and saying, look. Either there are gaps, they're different, whatever that is, right there, I think you're getting, you know, budget approval to do something, to help the situation.
And that's what I wanna dig into next. Kate, is, okay, you've identified there's a narrative issue, or for whatever reason, it can be positive, right? You could be experiencing great growth. You are in a different stage as a company than you were when you created your messaging. So you wanna refresh it, right?
Whatever the reason is. Tell us about maybe an example of a client where you helped that company go from feeling whether they were stuck or just their messaging wasn't up to date, and then ended up being aligned. And is this like a six month process? Is this a 12 month process? This is always the concern, right?
Like, how long is this gonna take?
[00:12:55] Kate Hamilton: Right. I think one of the, the best examples was an organization that had been around for about 15 ish years, I think, they'd outgrown that original messaging to the point where. the old messaging was creating a bit of imposter syndrome. in where the business wanted to go, the messaging was never gonna help them get there. was too soft, too undermining of the talent and the possibility and the capability of the organization. So in going through the process, we were able to really represent today, but what I always like to stress with branding and messaging, uh, however words you wanna interchange here, there should still be like level of aspiration. For tomorrow. So it's gotta reflect today. It cannot be future five years but you know, have some, aspirational direction. And it really changed the way that the organization not only talked about itself, but saw itself. possibility was. Actually on the table again, and changed the way, all the way down to individuals, how they related to the work that they were doing.
It was really interesting. I know gonna talk about culture a little bit later, and this touches a little bit on the culture side, what good branding and can do. you asked about the time. is. and it really depends on leadership's ability to really back up that level of change. The one downside I think of branding and narrative, especially when you're making a big change, you're rebranding, you're refreshing, even that branding to a point where, it's significant enough, there is some organizational change. That's gonna have to happen. You've gotta train folks. What's the new shared vocabulary?
What are our, quick one-liners that we wanna, be hammering home? And so, an organization can go as fast as they can support that. And an example that I gave, I think it was about, probably all said and done and wrapped up after launch, probably about an 18 month process. But then again, even after that, it was the leadership's. Commitment to keeping that messaging going and even expanding it, that gonna make it more successful. but it can vary, a smaller team that the leadership team's really gunning for. Like, we need to do this kind of change. You can do it faster if you've got that support.
[00:15:19] Gayle Kalvert: When you think about something potentially taking 18 months. What are the phases in that? Obviously the 18 months is not the development of the messaging, but then making sure that everybody is enabled right on that messaging.
[00:15:34] Kate Hamilton: that 18 months is the developing of the branding, the artifacts, you know, to which to support that. So that could be, the brand documents, some, you know, key collateral pieces, the training and then getting it in the hands of everyone.
In this particular example, we were also doing a website redesign at the same time as, one of, you know, our key artifacts in marketing often ends up serving, as that sort of destination. So, a lot of
[00:16:00] Gayle Kalvert: Yeah.
[00:16:00] Kate Hamilton: in that. If you can think about in that phase, like there should still be an organizational change part at the end to ensure that the brand is really embedded within the organization.
[00:16:12] Gayle Kalvert: Right, right. And you mentioned culture. So when you're helping companies navigate growth and change, how do you ensure that the culture doesn't get lost in the shuffle? Another way to think about it is how do you, I think, really improve? How does this improve culture as well?
[00:16:31] Kate Hamilton: Yeah, it may be helpful from a contextual perspective. I've spent about. A decade plus at this point, in marketing roles, specifically in consultancies, agencies, firms. And so I think that gives me a little bit of a unique perspective because your people are your product,
and so
[00:16:49] Gayle Kalvert: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:50] Kate Hamilton: even more important.
But I think this applies to all companies. Your people bring their whole identities to work and they need to see. Something in that messaging, to inspire them. That story gives them a grounding into where they fit in with the organization. So your branding, the messaging, it's, got to reflect the people at some place and some time.
'cause again, like. most organizations, they're just a bunch of people together, shared story. They're, you know, embracing that shared story. So how do you get your internal folks to be brand advocates? They should be the number one brand advocate, not necessarily your buyers. To the employees. So when developing branding, I find that that's really critical to keep at the forefront, is that even if you're developing a go-to-market brand, there is an overlap with your employer brand.
That's just as important. You need to leave room for the people to be able to see themselves and advocate for the brand and, what this looks like from a mechanism perspective is, Including a variety of roles in trying to develop that story. You know, not just relying on leadership, although they're critical. they often can give you an idea of not only reality, but maybe that aspirational level that, maybe the, the average employee might not know, but the average person also can give you on the ground reality. And so. Going back to journalism, multiple stories. is where you can really create a fleshed out narrative and then you have to litmus test it. You know, you really gotta pressure test across, not only teams, but you know, levels. Can that, average employee really see themselves somewhere that story bring it to life. If you can do that, you've got the right story. You've really been able to capture it.
[00:18:43] Gayle Kalvert: How are you? Pressure testing? Are you interviewing? I'm picturing people. Getting tested.
[00:18:47] Kate Hamilton: yeah. Interviewing is really helpful. focus groups can be really helpful. So various points in brand development. Now this is like, we are totally rebranding, right?
[00:18:56] Gayle Kalvert: you're definitely interviewing a bunch of folks. Focus groups can be helpful to not only to get either team representation or diverse voice. And then once you've got. level of, tested out messaging. is where you take it back to those folks and you get them to respond. Now, this can feel really scary for most leadership teams and marketers, right? This adds time sometimes. and you have to hear, multiple voices sometimes that that message may just fall flat for a couple of folks. But if you can do this, you're actually bringing. organization along for the ride, and you're going to identify where the friction points are. Indra Newie from Pepsi, she talks about when she was there leading that organization and she wanted to rally, she went to the most divisive. product team, the ones that were so resistant, and she's like, I'm going to get their buy-in first. like, she could read the room, right? Like, how am I gonna.
right.
[00:19:58] Kate Hamilton: this ginormous organization. I'm gonna go to the ones that have the most opinions and that are most resistant, and I'm gonna get them to understand where we're gonna go.
And then after that, you know, it'll be hopefully domino effects. and understand from of course her story that that actually worked. And so that's a thing to keep in mind is not that you're expecting people to. Argue with you, but making sure that you go around and you pressure test can ensure that you know where those friction points are and then you can counter them or adjust if you need to.
[00:20:30] Gayle Kalvert: Right. I'm sure anybody listening, I could speak from my own experience working in house, would agree that yes, there are always some people who are maybe not bought into the company mission. I think that's just. Fact. Right. And that's really smart to go to those that hopefully you have that transparency and you know, where those, people may lie.
and bringing them along is, super smart. Yeah. we've talked a lot about a marketing audit, so can you tell our listeners when Kate Hamilton says a marketing audit, what does that mean? That can mean a lot of things to a lot of people.
[00:21:06] Kate Hamilton: It can. so my marketing strategic audit is looking at a moment in time at all of the activities, the messaging aligned to where your business strategy and goals are at that time. So it's a little
bit of a litmus test.
To understand how is the messaging resonating? How is the messaging being distributed? How is the, narrative and brand showing up in the places that matter? So that could be your website in any content. And I use content very broadly and liberally here. So when I say content, I'm talking about all the various outputs that that could look like. Blogs, your one-pager collateral, even your sales messages.
So content and big broad strokes. it also looks at a couple of distribution channels, and even sales, you know, like this is where a lot of times the messaging is truly hitting, where business often, critically needs it to. And it looks at all of that and it compares to, what are you saying you're trying to say in the market? Who are you saying you're trying to reach? what are those goals that you've, you know, put on the board and kind of measures whether or not that's the reality is truly there. Um, and that I find that audit, it's almost like a hundred foot view pause. And it allows a lot of leaders to take that step back, understand what's actually happening, and then make the next intentional decisions based on what it's saying. It doesn't mean you're doing everything wrong. It may not say you're doing everything right, and it doesn't mean that everything in that output has to be adopted, but I think it gives you a real clear picture to then truly prioritize. Where do we really need to focus? and I think it's a really nice way to create shared reality without blame, know? 'cause everyone's involved, everyone's participating. So it's not marketing only. It should Right.
of the collective decisions that have been made allow for a roadmap to then be developed from that audit.
[00:23:21] Gayle Kalvert: While you were talking about the marketing audit, I wrote down de-risk in my notes, and that was the first thing I thought of is like, What your marketing audit does is really de-risk the decision to invest.
In messaging, it can de-risk for a marketing leader the request to get funding and or time to do a whole host of things, because if I'm understanding correctly, the output of the audit is really a snapshot of what your company's not just messaging, but also different teams are putting out. do you include user generated content, like user generated social?
We talk about a lot, right? we want our company's employees to generate content and be posting and doing all those things. As, individual brands are becoming, more and more important. However, there's risk there, right? Because your employees generating content that is aligned to in fact, what your brand and your messages are?
Have you. Worked with this at all, or do you have any thoughts on that?
[00:24:29] Kate Hamilton: Yeah, if user generated content is a, key element of the marketing, it should be included. it depends on whether an an organization is at that maturity level. Usually they're a little bit more mature, in their marketing, to be able to manage. User generated, kind of like what you said, it can have risk to it. it generally requires some rules and some process around, but if you're dependent, especially, you know, go back to service organizations, marketers know this, the brand they don't do a lot. they're necessary. You need to have that backbone. You need to show, as an organization, we're moving, we're shaking, we're doing things.
But the true, is within the individual networks. You know, it's with your client delivery folks, it's with your sales folks, it's with your executive leadership teams, you know, those people making relationships matter. So if. That is part of your strategy. It should definitely be looked at, especially if you're truly saying that's part of your strategy, but you're not seeing the results. possible that you need to take a look at it in an auditing perspective to go, well, what might be breaking down here? Maybe those folks don't have the tools. Maybe they don't have that shared narrative, And so from an audience perspective, when we're, back here, you can see. something's amiss over there, And so that could be really beneficial, especially for those organizations who have invested in a user generated, content program.
[00:26:02] Gayle Kalvert: So alignment, obviously critical. what is one thing, somebody listening could do today to create more alignment around their marketing and go to market strategy. What comes to mind? we could maybe give you two.
[00:26:18] Kate Hamilton: kind of my two main recommendations. Again, this easy exercise of ask around if a marketer leader is, really feeling this. And let's be honest, we know when it's off. You
[00:26:32] Gayle Kalvert: Yep.
[00:26:33] Kate Hamilton: it. this exercise, get a, a variety of folks, especially outside of marketing, to talk about what the business does, and you'll hear where maybe some of those gaps or those friction points are, and that can be really helpful for a. The leadership team or the decision making team to see, oh, okay, we get it now. And then an audit is also a really great way to do that. Now, you know, there's a bunch of organizations that are out there that can provide audits. I do, I provide a marketing strategic audit that I think is pretty, accessible. if for whatever reason it's premature, you can't get that initial funding for an audit, take a quick inventory. take a look around at your various channels, at the collateral. Is it consistent? in saying just a couple of things, those, key points, are people using the materials? that hurts deeply when you find out.
[00:27:25] Gayle Kalvert: Yeah.
[00:27:26] Kate Hamilton: using any of these things.
[00:27:28] Kate Hamilton: it could be a variety of things, but that'll start to signal, okay, something not hitting, and validate that gut and also can give you some data points, albeit kind of abstract data points, but data points to go to leadership and go, we're investing resources, time, money into marketing, and something's breaking down.
We could keep doing this. Or we could take the step back, and figure out how we fix this. so everyone's, talking the same talk, walking the same walk.
[00:27:56] Gayle Kalvert: lot of times we go into meetings and we say, well, I feel right. I feel that we need this. Like I can really tell this is going on. Well, leadership doesn't typically give out budget based on how you feel, right.
Or like vibes. So when you were talking, I wrote down, I feel, versus here is what? Is going on. if you do an audit or like you said, you do your own audit, right? And you see what's out there and there are gaps in the messaging. Things might be conflicting.
Marketing content and materials may not be used by sales. They're creating their own stuff, right? I keep hearing you say that. We're not placing blame here. Nobody's in trouble. Also, critical, again, I'm thinking from our listener standpoint, like you're going to your CEO or your COO or CFO, and you need budget for this.
[00:28:45] Kate Hamilton: Negativity and blaming isn't gonna help you. Feeling that things need to be worked on is not going to help you. So by doing what you've just outlined, you're able to go to leadership and say, here is what is happening, Here's some data points or here's some examples of what's happening on the ground, you know your leadership team better than anyone. So some leadership teams are really gonna gravitate towards sales tensions. You know, others might feel more aligned with the delivery, although that's, it can be hard to track that all the way to delivery. If that's what they are feeling, go there
[00:29:22] Gayle Kalvert: And listen, you know, these audits that we're talking about, including the one that I. Deliver for clients. They don't have to take that long. deliver mine within about two weeks. You know, if I can
Mm-hmm.
[00:29:35] Kate Hamilton: uh, provided, and that's because it's not meant to be this exhaustive, big lift. It's a moment in time. let's do that pulse check, right? So that's another thing that I think marketing leaders can kind of keep in the back of their minds. Often other outside leaders don't.
See that, you know, CEOs, CFOs are gonna be worried. This is a three month endeavor. No. If it's that long, then you have other challenges. I would say,
[00:30:02] Gayle Kalvert: Yeah.
[00:30:02] Kate Hamilton: all you're trying to do is like, Hey, we've got a clear strategy, we know what we're doing. Let's pulse check that we're, you know, getting it out there, that shouldn't take that long. And that can help as well. I think in not only settling, marketing leader, nerves that are happening, but also get a little bit of buy-in. Let's just take the little bit of time. We're already doing strategic planning for next year. Let's just fold this in. That kind of thing could be really
[00:30:26] Gayle Kalvert: Okay. Awesome. So we're gonna wrap it up here with two last questions. many, many marketing teams are stuck in being reactive, constantly, either responding to needs within the organization, shifting changes perhaps from the founder-CEO at smaller companies, right, or trying to hop on a trend. So many reasons why.
We go from wanting to be intentional to being reactive. So if you're in a team and you feel like you're being reactive, that's not gonna get you the results you need. We can tell. I could tell you that. I'll take that one. It's not going to get you the results you need. So how can you help teams shift
from being reactive to being intentional again?
[00:31:14] Kate Hamilton: the first thing I would say is if you're feeling that trust, that gut, I've been on more teams than I'm probably really wanting to admit. That keeps driving forward. I've probably led those teams too, if we're really real, right? You know, caught up in the reactionary, sort of
[00:31:33] Gayle Kalvert: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:34] Kate Hamilton: wheel that can happen. So as soon as you start to feel that, take a pause, take a beat. Trust that gut, trust your team's gut and take that step back. You don't have to tell. Other teams or the leadership, you're doing it and take a pause and then really look hard at what you can say. No, that's usually the easier one.
You know, what can we say no to what's no longer serving us? in today's marketing, I think we test and learn. Test and learn. Try the new tool, try the new tactic. I would love for us to start embracing no, a lot more.
[00:32:10] Gayle Kalvert: Hmm.
[00:32:10] Kate Hamilton: Because more is not more. never been more.
more tends to lead to diluted messaging, chaotic tactics, stretching your teams thin as well as distracting and stretching your buyers.
[00:32:27] Gayle Kalvert: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:28] Kate Hamilton: You know, we're all so busy, so trust your gut. and start to go, what can we say no to? figure out that list. Then there's gonna be a part of that list that's like, well, leadership expects us to keep doing this. Then you can figure out, should we build a case to go, this is no longer serving us we would be better spent. Our resources and time is where we're seeing positive results or where we know we need to go.
And then you can have those deeper conversations, but start with what you can pull back, what really is no longer helping.
[00:33:03] Gayle Kalvert: Yeah, so if we boil it down to the two things I wrote down is what can we stop doing and more does not equal more.
[00:33:10] Kate Hamilton: Yep.
[00:33:11] Gayle Kalvert: is there anything else that you want leaders or marketers, to think about if they wanna build a more proactive approach to their messaging and their marketing?
[00:33:22] Kate Hamilton: maybe a simpler way to understand everything we've talked about is no one wants to share a tired story when the story is right when it hits. The alignment will follow pretty easily. If you're feeling the tension, then something is off, We've used narrative interchangeably with storytelling and brand and marketing, but I think if we just boil it back down to the story, if it feels tired, if it feels like it's not working. There's something there. When the story is right, you're gonna really see a cascading alignment and it's gonna, help propel that growth, that scaling, that
that any organization wants.
[00:34:02] Gayle Kalvert: Amazing. Kate, thank you so much. Sharing your time with us and all these amazing tips on how to get better alignment, better messaging, right? And get back to intentional marketing rather than reactive marketing. where can people find you?
[00:34:20] Kate Hamilton: Yeah, they can find me at katemhamilton.com. Don't forget the M. It's pretty important.
[00:34:27] Gayle Kalvert: Okay. We'll put it in the show notes too. Yeah, we'll make sure.
[00:34:32] Gayle Kalvert: If this episode was helpful, please follow marketing and progress and tap like it helps other marketing leaders find the show. And if you know someone who's navigating similar challenges, feel free to share this episode with them. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.