Jason Lankow

I am a cofounder of Column Five (columnfive.com) and cohost of our podcast, Best Story Wins (https://www.columnfivemedia.com/best-story-wins-podcast/). Column Five is a B2B marketing agency that specializes in brand and content marketing for SaaS companies. I work closely with our Strategy and Client Services teams. I enjoy helping brands build a strong foundation starting with a good brand heart based on shared vision and purpose, and helping connect that story with their ideal community and customers. I’m intrigued by and always working to get better at navigating the challenge of aligning purpose to strategy to ideas and action. Sometimes, you just have to get rolling and try things, but eventually, lack of alignment on vision causes problems that must be addressed. So, it's worth the sometimes painful work of getting to shared excitement, because it makes everything better downstream. The tactics, tools and processes evolve over time, but the essential marketing challenge remains — figuring out how to connect with people and build trust through compelling stories and shared experiences. When we started our business in 2008, many companies were using blogs for writing corporate announcements and maybe a product-based article each month. Inspired by publications like GOOD, Newsweek and NY Times, we started doing more visual content like infographics and explainer videos for our clients. Learning to marry data to design, with thoughtful distribution, we were able to work with many of our dream clients and meaningful brands. Through the rise of social media marketing and mobile, on to the wacky world of web3 and AI, and the exciting rise of immersive multimodal experiences, the fundamentals remain. Solid yet nimble strategy informs story, and then you put it out in the world and see what resonates and what doesn't. Then, learn, adapt the strategy as needed, and go again. This lifecycle is hard. It requires being ok with being wrong sometimes, and still believing the next effort might work. As you figure it out and start to connect with your people, you build the basis of community around your brand. And, if your brand can show up as true with the community — you mean what you say and back it with your actions — your company can succeed with purpose. As we do these things with AI storming the scene, I'm a huge believer in each brand committing to responsible AI. I'd be happy to chat with anyone to share resources we've gathered to define this for ourselves and clients as part of broader marketing systems and strategy.