We meet you where you are.
Senior people on the work, at whatever stage you’re in.
Most of the companies that come to us are already good at what they do. They have the product, the people, the experience and the results. What is often missing is clarity: a sharp understanding of what makes them different, why that difference matters, and how to communicate it in a way the market immediately understands.
That is where Column 13 comes in. We help companies define what they should be known for, connect it to what their customers actually care about, and build the marketing around it. Sometimes that means positioning. Sometimes it means messaging, demand generation, a new website, a go-to-market strategy or a clearer structure for the marketing team. The work changes. The goal does not: make it easier for the right people to understand your value and choose you.
We meet companies where they are: startups finding their first market, companies building momentum, established organizations entering their next phase, and businesses that know they are capable of more than their current marketing is producing. Wherever you are starting from, you get senior attention, experienced thinking and a team willing to get close enough to the business to help make the decisions that move it forward.
Meet the team.
Alex Benavides
FounderAlex is the founder of Column 13 and a marketing leader who helps companies grow on the strength of their actual economics, not their ad budget.
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He serves as fractional CMO for multiple clients and advises several early-stage startups, owning everything from positioning and channel strategy to the operating rhythm that keeps marketing accountable to revenue. He built Column 13 as the kind of outside partner companies should be able to call on: a small group of senior practitioners who own the work and pitch in wherever it’s needed.
Before Column 13, Alex came up as an operator inside scrappy sales and marketing teams, most recently leading field marketing at Optiwatt. He loves writing about the compounding impact of customer economics, channel discipline, and the long middle that many agencies skip.
In his free time, he runs multiple Dungeons & Dragons games and volunteers with nonprofits serving people facing homelessness and chronic poverty.
Daniel Benavides
PartnerDaniel is a partner at Column 13 and a growth strategist who makes complex businesses easier to understand, trust, and buy from.
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He has led high-stakes rebrands, product launches, go-to-market programs, demand generation, and sales enablement across aviation, emerging technology, associations, and professional services. His range is unusual. He can find the sharpest market position, turn it into a compelling creative system, align the people responsible for selling and delivering it, and build the operating discipline that makes the work scale.
Before Column 13, Daniel led marketing and brand strategy at AUVSI and served as senior creative director at Elva Marketing. He writes here about growth as a craft: what compounds, what burns out, and the disciplined work between them that separates momentum from noise.
Peyton Watford
PartnerPeyton is a partner at Column 13. Her work sits where marketing meets design: the layer where strategy becomes something a customer can actually see, read, and use.
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She started her career at Column 13 and has been critical to some of our most important work, including DESC, the Diocese of St. Augustine and American Electrical.
Since then she has built hands-on brand and creative programs across both in-house and consulting roles. She writes here about the visible end of marketing: brand voice, creative quality, and why execution decides whether a strategy actually lands.
Karen Kern
Creative DirectorKaren brings deep experience with small businesses and health care companies across advertising, integrated marketing, website design, print and logo design, and holds an MBA in Marketing from La Salle University.
The facts
- 2008The year we started.
- Minority-ownedAnd proud of it.
- 40+Years of combined experience on the leadership team.
- JacksonvilleWhere we are. Clients are nationwide.
- Full stackPositioning through to demand, under one roof.
You’re better. Now let’s make you bigger too.
If you have read this far you already know whether it fits. The first conversation is short, and we turn up with a point of view rather than a questionnaire.