You’re getting this email because we like you. 

(Also because you’re on our subscriber list, which we’re finally dusting off. So if you haven’t heard from us in a hot sec…heyyyy.) 

Welcome to The Standard, written by storyarb.

We know firsthand how easy it is for marketers to get lost in the weeds. When you’re balancing strategy, execution, and requests from all directions, it can be hard to see the bigger picture. 

We’re here to give you a higher-altitude view of the marketing landscape, with actionable insights and frameworks from the smartest marketers in the business.

And boy, is the air up here clean.

In this issue…

📰 We made this for you
💐 To all the marketers we’ve loved before…
💬 Tell us: What do you want to know?

Rather than talk about what you can expect to read in every issue of The Standard, we thought we’d just share the brief we’re using to write it.

The below outline comes straight from our strategy docs, so you can get a behind-the-scenes look at how our team thinks about launching an editorial newsletter that is worthy of your reader’s time.

First, here’s the exact brief we wrote when scoping out who this newsletter is for and why the world needed another:

What is the specific problem this newsletter solves?

Marketing leaders at high-growth B2B companies are stuck in a cycle of reactive execution. Their teams are constantly pulled into projects at the expense of strategy—leaving little time for the big plays that actually move the business forward.

Instead of running high-impact campaigns or driving major product launches, they’re bogged down with piecing together newsletters, scrambling for social posts, and ghostwriting exec content that never gets published. Meanwhile, pressure mounts to prove ROI in an environment where internal alignment is hard, leadership buy-in is fickle, and headcount is maxed.

This newsletter helps marketing leaders take back control of their function by arming them with the systems, frameworks, and proof points to run their department with more confidence, clarity, and leverage. 

Next, we needed to figure out what the heck we were going to write about. What we already knew for certain is that we needed to religiously deliver value to our ICP’s inbox. What we still didn’t know is what exactly that value looked like to them. So, we asked. Interviewed a dozen marketers (shout out below!) who matched our ICP to hear what they’d want to get from a newsletter. Here’s what they said:

What topics we’ll cover, each answering to the ICP’s pain points:

1. Marketing team efficiency

→ Too much time spent on executional work (briefs, content requests, approvals, one-offs) instead of strategy and growth.

2. Cross-functional credibility

→ Struggling to deliver consistent assets that sales, product, and execs can actually use—eroding trust and slowing momentum.

3. Strategic content systems

→ No reliable, repeatable engine for producing high-quality, ICP-relevant content that supports both brand and pipeline.

4. Executive visibility + thought leadership

→ Lack of exec buy-in or time makes it difficult to build influential public voices that attract talent, capital, and customers.

5. Newsletter + lifecycle marketing

→ Underutilized email lists, poor segmentation, and no consistent value being delivered to prospects outside of product pushes.

6. Proving ROI

→ Difficulty attributing content to pipeline or articulating how marketing contributes to business outcomes—especially under budget scrutiny.

Only once we were crystal clear on what we wanted the newsletter to accomplish did we start to brief out the sections we were going to include in each edition:

Newsletter architecture:

Feature story: “Proven marketing playbook”

• Highlighting a newly published playbook from that week (tactical, strategic, or customer playbook)

• Newsletter-optimized format that gives readers 80% of the playbook's value right from the email

• Each story shows real implementation examples + outcomes shared by high-performing marketers, like Kyle Denhoff (HubSpot), Jess Cook (Vector), Ari Rubin (Air), and many more

Industry curation: "Signal vs. noise"

• Curation of 3 insightful items that provide value for marketers:

  1. Best campaign we saw that week: Highlight a standout and why it worked 

  2. AI tool / micro-stack spotlight: Share AI tools and processes marketers are using to simplify their workflows

  3. Saw it on LinkedIn: Shout out standout content from a marketing thought leader that got our attention

• Examples:

  1. Campaign spotlight: Notion's product launch strategy → Why their internal + external content worked in perfect harmony

  2. AI spotlight: Veo 3 video model → It’s worth trying out for yourself  

  3. Thought leadership: Katelyn Bourgoin on buyer psychology → The framework every content engine should start with

Poll section: “Strong opinions”

• Weekly question that lets readers interact and share their approaches to common B2B content challenges

• Each issues asks a new question and shares anonymized insights from the previous week's response

• Example: What's your biggest content production bottleneck right now?

And that’s what we’re doing! Each week, in your inbox. 

Are we on the right track? Missing anything? Do you do something similar for your own newsletter(s)? We want to hear it all.

In the ramp up to this newsletter, we interviewed a bunch of marketers that are truly setting the industry standard. We asked them everything from their biggest pain points, to go-to topics, to what they’re reading these days. We feel smarter just typing about it.

Marketing is a small world, and we love being part of this community. With that in mind, thank yous and flowers to our interviewees:  

Nick Fitzsimmons (Director of Content @ 1Password)
Sarah Cascone (VP of Marketing @ Bluecore)
Etee Dubey (Head of Content and Brand @ Keka HR)
Marsha Marsh (Director of Brand + Content Strategy @ Forrester)
James Jacoby (Social Media Manager @ Notion)
Adam Offitzer (Director of Brand + Content Marketing @ Arcadia)
Candice So (Director of Communications @ Gusto)
Ari Rubin (Head of Content @ Air)
Jess Cook (Head of Marketing @ Vector)
Jess Overton (Business Growth @ Unity)
Jeff LaBonte'man (Marketing Manager @ Crocs)
Kyle Denhoff (Sr Director of Marketing @ HubSpot) — catch him in next week’s issue 👀

Tell us what you really think. We’ll share the results next week.

What topics do you want to hear from your fellow marketers about the most?  Vote here. 

Next week, we’re bringing in our first expert—Kyle Denhoff, Senior Director of Marketing at HubSpot—to tackle the classic marketing conundrum: What do you do when really great content gets really lackluster leads? 

And if there are any future topics you hope that we’ll cover—or wins you want to share with your fellow marketers—hit reply. 

We read ‘em all. 

— the storyarb writers’ room

Oh! And another thing... In writing (implement) news, over 1,000 people turned out for Minneapolis’s annual 20-foot pencil sharpening. We’d wondered where the copywriting team had gone off to…