Build a healthier organization. Create something worth marketing.
Catwalk Advisory helps business owners strengthen organizational health as part of business planning. We examine how leadership, employee safety, trust and accountability shape the way work gets done, then help identify what needs attention before investing in the next move.
Every path starts with the Free InBrand Index (IBI). About ten minutes, no cost, nothing to schedule.
You have probably already tried the obvious fixes.
You changed channels. You changed the message. You may have changed the person running marketing. Results move for a while and then settle back. The frustrating part is rarely the spend. It is not knowing where the problem actually lives, which turns every next decision into a guess.
Often the cause sits upstream of marketing: how the business is positioned, whether customers trust it, whether the digital presence supports the sale, and whether decisions get followed through. Marketing reflects those things. It cannot always fix them on its own.
Studies consistently report that about three-quarters of change efforts fail to deliver the anticipated benefits or are abandoned. Anand and Barsoux’s four-year study of 62 corporate transformations suggests that misdiagnosis is as much to blame as poor execution.
One starting point. Different paths from there.
Start with the Free IBI. Your results show how you currently see the business, and they include a recommended next step.
Your results, and a conversation if one makes sense, determine what comes next. Sometimes that is further work. Sometimes it is nothing at all.
You do not have to work out what you need before Catwalk knows anything about your business. That is the reason everything starts in one place. Take the Free IBI
I am Vanessa Smith.
I have spent more than seventeen years in marketing and business, and the same thing kept happening. A campaign underperforms, so a company changes the campaign. Sometimes that works. Often the campaign was never the problem. The positioning was unclear, the customer experience was inconsistent, or a decision was made and never turned into a plan anyone could follow.
Catwalk is built for the moment before you commit more budget, when the honest first step is to understand what is actually going on.
How the work is done.
Catwalk starts with evidence, not with a conclusion it is hoping to confirm. We look at what can be verified from outside the business and at the owner’s own account of what is happening, and we weigh them against each other. Findings are ranked by what matters most, and we are clear about where the evidence is strong and where it is not. Where we are not certain, we say so.
In a widely cited review, Nickerson described confirmation bias, the tendency to seek or interpret evidence in ways that favor what we already believe, as pervasive and strong. Starting with evidence is one practical way to guard against it.
One advisory method.
Every engagement follows Catwalk’s advisory method. It was developed by founder Vanessa Smith over more than seventeen years of watching how marketing, leadership, customer experience, and execution connect, across a range of industries and company sizes. It came out of that work, not out of a borrowed framework.
Start with the Free IBI.
Marketing may be where the problem shows up. It is not always where it starts. The Free IBI gives an initial, self-reported view of the organizational conditions underneath it, from governance clarity and trust to execution and marketing integration. It is a starting signal, not a diagnosis. Your results shape what comes next, including whether anything should.
Let’s build something worth marketing.