Marketing may be where the problem shows up. It is not always where it starts.
Catwalk Advisory helps leaders examine the conditions behind stalled growth, from leadership, decisions, and roles to execution and marketing, before they spend more money trying to fix the wrong problem.
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.
I start with evidence, not with a conclusion I am hoping to confirm. I look at what can be verified from outside the business and at the owner’s own account of what is happening, and I weigh them against each other. Findings are ranked by what matters most, and I am clear about where the evidence is strong and where it is not. Where I am not certain, I 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.
Who you are actually working with.
Catwalk is my practice, not a large firm. That is the point. You work directly with someone who has spent more than seventeen years watching how marketing, leadership, customer experience, and execution connect, across a range of industries and company sizes. The method behind the Diagnostic came out of that work, not out of a framework I read somewhere.
Start with the Free IBI.
Marketing may be where the problem shows up. The Free IBI looks at the conditions underneath it: leadership clarity, decision making, trust, employee support, execution, brand integrity, and marketing alignment. Your results shape what comes next, including whether anything should.
Build something worth marketing.