How do you turn your “company story” into action? (Exit Five Newsletter)

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✍️ Turn Your Company Story Into Actionable Marketing Ideas Right Now

I love storytelling, product marketing, narrative building – all of it. But here's what I see happen over and over again:

People get the concept of having a company narrative. They understand they need a story. But then it's like, "okay, what comes next from there?" It’s one of the most common questions → Ok we have this story, but now what?

Do you change the homepage headline? Make a new sales deck? How do you actually get the whole company rallied around this messaging? And then how do you execute on this from a creative standpoint?

But here's what I believe: Less is more. When you have one unifying message, all the creative ideas should flow from there. One story becomes the foundation for endless campaigns, hooks, and content that actually connects with your audience.

The gap between "we have a story" and "we have ideas" is where most marketing teams get stuck. But it doesn't have to be that way.

In this week’s edition of the E5 newsletter, we have some examples for you to back this up.

Pranav Piyush (Founder & CEO of Paramark) walked through his exact process for turning company narratives into a creative engine that never runs dry. Not theory. Real examples. The kind of tactical stuff you can use today.

The Real Problem: Creative Bankruptcy

Before we dive into solutions, let's talk about what's actually broken.

Pranav runs a measurement company. They help B2B and B2C brands figure out what's working in their marketing mix. But here's what he's learned: "The challenge almost always isn't a measurement challenge. It's do you have enough creative ideas to go test."

Think about your last campaign brainstorm. How much time did you spend trying to come up with ideas versus actually executing on them? Most teams are creatively bankrupt. They're running the same playbook, recycling the same concepts, hoping something sticks.

The companies that win aren't necessarily the ones with bigger budgets. They're the ones with better systems for generating ideas tied to their actual story.

The Foundation: What You Need Before You Start

Here's where most marketers go wrong. They jump straight to tactics without doing the foundational work. It's like trying to build a house without a blueprint.

The companies crushing it right now aren't necessarily using better tools. They're doing better foundational work. They know who they're for, what job they do, and when people should think of them.

Once you have that foundation, tools like ChatGPT become incredibly powerful.

Pranav's company has 4 core documents that feed everything they create:

1. Company Narrative/Manifesto This isn't marketing fluff. It's a strategy document that answers: Who is your audience? What's their problem? How big is the opportunity? What's your specific point of view that nobody else has?
2. Category Entry Points This concept comes from the book "How Brands Grow" and it's simple but powerful. When should people think about you? Corona wants you to think of them when you think "beach." Kit Kat wants "break time." Paramark wants you to think of them when you're stressed about your quarterly business review, when you're launching a new channel, when you're doing annual planning. Write out 5–10 scenarios when prospects should mentally associate with your brand.
3. Jobs To Be Done What are the 5–10 specific jobs your product helps customers get done? Not features. Not capabilities. Jobs from their perspective. "I have to prepare a deck for my QBR." "I have to submit an annual financial plan." "I have to measure the impact of my YouTube test."
4. Behavioral Psychology Principles Study behavioral psychology. List out 15–20 principles like loss aversion, scarcity, reciprocity. These become creative ingredients later.

The System: From Strategy to Campaign Ideas

Here's where it gets practical.

Step 1: Create a Custom Project Upload all your foundational documents into a ChatGPT project. Add custom instructions telling it to generate ideas that connect dots between all your materials. Keep the tone aligned with your brand voice.

Step 2: Feed It Inputs This is the key insight: Everything can become marketing input once you have the foundation in place.

• Sales call transcripts
• Competitor LinkedIn posts
• Podcast transcripts
• Event presentations
• Blog posts
• Customer interviews

Step 3: Generate Output Now you can ask for specific things:

• Ad campaign ideas for LinkedIn, YouTube, and podcasts
• Scripts using analogies (Pranav used basketball to explain marketing mix modeling)
• White paper outlines from podcast transcripts
• LinkedIn carousel ideas from presentations
• Email series concepts

Real Examples That Actually Work

Here are some actual campaign ideas Pranav generated live during the session:

Ad Hook Generated from Sales Transcripts: "Faith versus proof. Still investing on faith at the top of the funnel? Let's show your CFO the proof."

This came directly from real sales conversations where prospects talked about needing to show ROI to their CFO.

Another one: "Branded search looks amazing until you realize it's cannibalizing real growth."

This addresses a specific objection that came up in multiple sales calls.

Campaign Concept Using Analogies: A YouTube explainer video using basketball to explain marketing mix modeling. Player hits a three-pointer, another dives for defense – was it the offense or defense that won the game? Just like you can't evaluate one player individually, you can't evaluate one marketing channel by itself.

AI even suggested objection-based hooks: When Pranav asked for "unsaid reasons prospects hesitate," it identified trust issues with newer companies and suggested turning that into messaging: "Yes, we're newer. Here's why that's actually better for you."

Where This Falls Apart (And Why Human Judgment Matters)

Not everything AI generates is gold. AI gets you from 0 to 1 fast, but you still need human creativity to get from 1 to 10. You're not replacing human judgment. You're giving yourself a crazy smart intern who can help you iterate faster.

The Repeatable Process

Here's what makes this system powerful: It's repeatable. Every week you get new sales transcripts. Every week you see interesting posts from competitors. Every week your executives do podcasts or presentations.

Instead of starting from scratch each time, you have a process:

1. Take the new input (sales call, podcast, presentation)
2. Feed it into your project with your foundational docs
3. Ask for specific outputs (ad hooks, content ideas, campaign concepts)
4. Apply human creativity and brand judgment
5. Test and iterate

Your Next Steps

Want to build your own creative engine? Here's what to do:

This Week:

1. Audit what foundational docs you actually have. Most teams discover they don't have clear category entry points or jobs to be done.
2. Block 2 hours to write out your company narrative if you don't have one. It doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to exist.

Next Week:

3. Set up a ChatGPT project with whatever materials you have. Start feeding it inputs and asking for outputs.
4. Take one recent sales call transcript and ask it to generate ad hooks for similar customers.

This Month:

5. Build the missing foundational docs. Category entry points. Jobs to be done. Behavioral psychology principles.
6. Create a repeatable process for turning weekly inputs into monthly campaign ideas.

The bottom line? Your company story is sitting there, waiting to be turned into campaigns that actually connect with prospects. The tools exist. The frameworks exist. The only question is whether you'll do the foundational work to make it happen.

Your opportunity is to build a system that turns your actual strategy into an endless stream of testable ideas. Ideas rooted in real customer conversations. Ideas that differentiate you from everyone else saying the same generic things.

The creative bottleneck doesn't have to exist. But only if you're willing to do the strategic work first.

– Dave

P.S. Almost always the questions we see from marketers are related to strategy. And it's often not their fault. It's actually because the founders didn't do these things in the beginning. BUT if that’s you, your job now is to push to make it happen. Because you need this level of detail to do good marketing.

So where are you feeling stuck right now? I want to know because we’re here to help.

📺 UPCOMING EVENTS

[TODAY] Marketing in the Age of AI: CMOs Separating the Hype from What’s Real (Live Discussion)

AI is everywhere in marketing right now. Every tool, every vendor, every headline promises to change the game. But what’s actually working—and what’s just noise?

We wanted to do something different and tapped a group of CMOs to sit down and share what’s actually going on inside of their marketing teams with AI. Have they fired the whole team yet and just used AI agents? Is ChatGPT writing all of their content? Are things running autonomously 24/7? What are some real examples and ways they are using AI as a B2B marketing team?

Dave is hosting Jennifer Delevante-Moulen (CMO, Knak), Tara Robertson (CMO, Bitly), and Sara Ajemian (VP of Branding and Communications, SOCI) to have an honest discussion about how to survive the AI hype cycle in marketing (and hopefully leave you with a few real examples of what their orgs are actually doing right now)

They’ll cover:

• Where AI actually accelerates campaign execution
• The creative work that still needs a human touch
• How CMOs should prepare their marketing playbooks for AI
• Plus they’ll be live to take all of your questions so we can do a bit of “marketing therapy” if you want to talk about your challenges right now too

Think of it as a practical guide to navigating AI in marketing without losing sight of what really matters.

Save Your Spot

🏢 Open Roles

Who's hiring right now?

Tatari is hiring a Digital Marketing Manager to expand and optimize paid media across search, social, podcasts, newsletters, influencer campaigns, and industry publications. The ideal candidate is a creative B2B SaaS marketer with hands-on ad copywriting skills, experience repurposing content (including video with AI tools), and a proven track record running multi-channel campaigns that deliver measurable demand.

Other open roles on the Exit Five job board this week:

• Vapi is hiring a Head of Marketing
• Tatari, Inc. is hiring a Senior Manager, Customer Marketing
• Paramark is hiring a Marketing Manager
• Doist is hiring a Lifecycle Marketer
• Enumerate is hiring a Senior Product Marketing Manager
• Red Stag Fulfillment is hiring a Director of Growth Operations
• Dynamic Lifecycle Innovations is hiring a Director of Marketing
• Offsite is hiring a Field Marketing and Partnerships Lead
• BrightHire is hiring a Social and Community Marketing Manager

See all open roles

Have an open role and want to make sure the best B2B marketing talent sees it? Just reply to this email and we'll send over more info on how you can post it on our job board + get it in front of 42k+ marketers.

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