Alex Martinez

Building Brands That Connect

Connecting Brand, Campaigns,
and Data to Drive Revenue

Essendant, Inc. | Director, Marketing / Director, Creative Services / Creative Director

Challenge

Essendant’s marketing produced strong work, but the channels operated in silos. Brand campaigns, email programs, sales collateral, and print each had their own creative direction. A single product launch could hit four channels and tell four different versions of the story. Sales teams were building their own materials because what marketing delivered didn’t connect to their customer conversations. And when leadership wanted to know what was actually driving results, there wasn’t data to point to. The business needed one approach where brand storytelling and campaign performance worked together across every channel.

My Role

Evolved from directing the creative organization to leading a full rebuild of how Essendant went to market. Brought marketing, sales, and creative into shared campaign planning so every launch carried one story across digital, email, print, and sales channels. Built the KPI framework that connected creative decisions to acquisition, retention, and revenue outcomes for the first time.

Impact

Transformed a siloed marketing operation into an integrated model where brand storytelling and campaign performance reinforced each other. Campaigns went from fragmented, channel-by-channel efforts to coordinated launches with one voice across digital, email, print, and sales. The measurement framework I built gave leadership actual data on what was driving growth, replacing the gut-feel reporting the organization had relied on.

This work taught me what happens when you stop treating brand and performance as separate priorities. When the strategy connects brand storytelling, demand generation, and sales enablement, the marketing operation stops producing isolated pieces and starts building something that compounds. Every channel works harder because the story is consistent. Every campaign is measurable because the KPIs are part of the plan from the start. That’s the model I built at Essendant, and it’s the approach I carry into every marketing organization I lead.