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Best Story Wins

Best Story Wins

Written by: Column Five
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About this listen

 Welcome to “Best Story Wins,” a podcast for marketing and branding professionals looking to unlock their growth potential. Hosted by Column Five—a B2B marketing agency that specializes in brand and content marketing for SaaS companies—each episode features insightful conversations with industry leaders who are winning customers’ hearts and minds by building world-class brands.

Tune in to hear expert insights, hard-won lessons, and key strategies to take your own marketing efforts to the next level.Column Five Careers Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales Personal Success
Episodes
  • The Real Reason Your POV Isn’t Landing with Amanda Verdino from Forma

    The Real Reason Your POV Isn’t Landing with Amanda Verdino from Forma
    Feb 19 2026
    Search isn’t broken—it’s been replaced. Buyers are skipping funnels, ignoring gated PDFs and asking AI to decide who’s credible before they ever talk to sales. If your content still assumes attention is linear, you’re not behind—you’re irrelevant.In this episode, Amanda Verdino, Director of Content Marketing at Forma dismantles the comfortable lies B2B marketers tell themselves about storytelling. We talk about why differentiation without defensible substance collapses under AI scrutiny, how first-party data becomes your only real narrative advantage, and why most “thought leadership” is just recycled opinion dressed up as confidence. Amanda shares how Forma keeps humanity and joy alive inside HR tech, what actually earns trust in AI-mediated discovery, and why restraint—not volume—is the new power move.We also dig into:
    • Why louder messaging accelerates brand decay instead of stopping it
    • How original research outperforms hot takes in AI-driven buyer journeys
    • The mistake teams make when they treat clicks as commitment
    • Why LinkedIn credibility now matters beyond LinkedIn itself
    • The uncomfortable shift marketers must make from persuasion to diagnosis

    This episode is for B2B teams still polishing templates while the buyer rewrites the rules—and for the ones ready to build stories that survive contact with AI.
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    46 mins
  • How Loop Marketing is the Answer to the Death of Inbound with Kyle Denhoff

    How Loop Marketing is the Answer to the Death of Inbound with Kyle Denhoff
    Feb 12 2026
    Search is decaying, attention is fragmented and AI is rewriting the rules faster than most teams can update their decks. If you’re still planning content like it’s 2019, you’re already invisible.

    In this episode, Kyle Denhoff, Sr Director of Marketing at HubSpot, pulls the curtain back on what happens after the inbound era. We get brutally honest about why channel-first thinking is dead, how HubSpot rebuilt itself as a media company inside a SaaS giant, and why “always-on” isn’t a buzzword—it’s survival. Kyle also breaks down how AI is actually being used behind the scenes (no, not to replace marketers), and why taste, editorial judgment, and distribution matter more than ever in a world flooded with machine-made content.

    We also explore:
    • Why “more content” is the fastest way to lose relevance
    • How audience-first strategy replaces blogs, funnels, and campaign calendars
    • The real way HubSpot uses AI to drive conversion—without killing the brand
    • Why creators and practitioners now beat brands in buyer trust
    • The uncomfortable truth: nobody has the playbook, and pretending you do is the risk
    This is a reality check for B2B teams still clinging to templates while the ground shifts under them.
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    43 mins
  • The Only Content That Cuts Through with Jillian Hoefer Head of Content at UserEvidence

    The Only Content That Cuts Through with Jillian Hoefer Head of Content at UserEvidence
    Feb 5 2026
    AI proof isn’t “building trust.” It’s getting ignored—or worse, backfiring—because it’s generic, gated, and wildly irrelevant. In a world of risk-averse buying committees and AI-driven discovery, your “best case study” might be your biggest liability.In this episode, Jillian Hoefer (Head of Content at UserEvidence) delivers the reality check B2B teams keep dodging: buyers don’t need more claims—they need credible, searchable, situation-matched evidence that makes choosing you feel safe. Jillian breaks down why the classic “one giant ROI story for everyone” approach erodes trust, how AI search punishes gated proof, and why the winners in 2026 will treat customer evidence like a living system—not a dusty PDF trophy. If your strategy is “big stat → blast it everywhere,” this one’s going to sting (in a helpful way).We also explore:
    • The trust-killer nobody tracks: irrelevant proof that makes buyers think you don’t get them
    • Why evidence belongs at the top of the funnel, not just the “deal’s stalling” panic button
    • The “no one gets fired for buying Salesforce” problem—and how proof reduces career-risk
    • The content moat play: original research + human thought leadership in an age of AI slop
    How to repurpose one report into a year of credibility (without turning into a content farm)
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    49 mins
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