About Column 13
A Column that Runs an Agency.
Column 13 was founded as an ad agency (in it’s original form) way back in 2008. Since then we’ve grown, evolved, shrunk, refactored, and come back with a wide variety of success-driving experience.
We serve clients now as a fractional CMO consulting firm and agency, but our passion is writing about all the questions Marketing gets asked that we all don’t know how (or even if) to answer.
We’ll cover topics including:
ABM (3) Attribution (5) B2B (4) B2B2C (3) B2C (4) Corporate Culture (10) Customer Experience (5) Data Strategy (8) GTM (1) Leadership (12) Positioning (6) Remarketing (1) Sales Interfaces (6)
Why Column 13?
We often find luck where others don’t.
Thirteen is the unlucky number. The outcast. The number nobody needs (we’re looking at you hotels). That’s where we live. Not because we’re outcasts, but because we come at every marketing problem with fresh eyes. We look abstractly at topics, bring in thought processes from other disciplines, and generally try to intentionally create what outside disruptors often do by accident.
Our content often pushes agains the norm, tries to pull the curtain away to show you the man behind the wizard, and in general has fun with a slight bit of squirrel chases and stories that might not hit until the end.
What we publish
The body of work is the credential.
Twenty-five essays in ten months. Mostly Alex. Some Daniel. Some Peyton. All of it argued in public, all of it tied back to engagements we’ve actually run. We’d rather you read three of them than read a case study.
The newsletter goes out on a regular cadence. Subscribe and you’ll see the thinking we use inside engagements — before any sales conversation happens.
How we got here
“I spent more time making leadership happy through completion than doing strategy.”
Alex Benavides founded Column 13 in 2008 as a creative agency for healthcare, staffing, technology, and nonprofit clients. The agency grew. We merged in 2014 and expanded into software and digital systems.
In 2020 Alex stepped out to work in-house. Six years at growth-stage companies: Crucial Care through COVID, Optiwatt in clean-tech, Sevocity in EHR. He did the marketing leadership he used to advise from the outside.
What he saw from the inside: the basics of marketing get skipped because nobody slows down. Output demand crowds out strategy. Tactics get applied without it. Strategy stops getting applied at all. Most marketers spend more time satisfying leadership through completion than doing the work that would actually move the business.
That observation is what the publication is now arguing in public, one essay at a time. The agency exists to keep the argument tethered to real work.
The people
Who’s writing and working.
Alex Benavides
Founder, Managing Partner, primary writer. Currently fractional CMO at Sevocity. Twenty-plus years bridging strategy, technology, and creative across healthcare IT, clean-tech, telehealth, and B2B SaaS. Trained in classic marketing discipline: reach, frequency, message, objectives. He/Him.
Outside work: runs a 2.5-year Dungeons & Dragons campaign as community-building volunteer work.
Daniel Benavides
Partner. Brand, customer experience, and the relationship side of every engagement. Multi-channel integrated campaigns, retention design, performance measurement.
Alex’s brother. The person clients call.
Peyton Watford
Partner. Project management and client services. Joined in 2020 as a creative strategist; Partner since 2024. Grew a fundraising event from $30K to $350K. Leads outreach for the Diocese of St. Augustine alongside our largest engagements.
Kept Column 13 running while Alex was in-house, which is why there was an agency to come back to.
One receipt
From 30 to 90 patients per day. With no ad spend.
A multi-site healthcare provider needed to scale fast during COVID. We took patient visit volume from 30 to 90 per day across ten clinics through positioning, operational marketing, and owned channels. No paid media. The kind of work that’s available when strategy comes before completion.
Where we work.
Based in Jacksonville, Florida. Working with clients across North America. Founded 2008. Independent. Minority-owned.
Read first. Hire later.
The newsletter is the front door. If, after reading, you think we’d be useful inside your company, the conversation is thirty minutes and there’s no pitch.