Episode 34

Scaling Right: The Role of Brand Messaging

Most businesses think they know why customers choose them until they realize they’ve been focusing on the wrong thing all along.

Maartje van Krieken sits down with Orly Zeewy for a sharp, no-nonsense look at brand messaging strategy and why so many businesses miss the mark. Orly shares how companies can stop marketing what they think matters and start focusing on what actually drives customer loyalty. She breaks down a case study of a business that spent decades highlighting the wrong thing, only to turn everything around with the right message.

How do you know if your messaging still works? What if your biggest selling point isn’t what you thought? In this episode, Maartje and Orly talk business scaling tips and growth marketing strategies that help brands attract the right audience, communicate their value, and build sustainable success.


Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Introduction

01:16 Difference Between an Entrepreneur and an Inventor

02:25 Rebranding a Summer Day Camp: A Case Study

05:16 The Importance of Understanding Your Business’s Core Value

07:53 Going Back to Basics Instead of Pivoting

09:02 The Secret Sauce of Longstanding Brands

10:14 Competing Where You Can Compete

12:03 The Role of Core Values in Business

16:03 The Shift from Transactional to Relational Business Models

18:14 Communicating Core Values in a Changing World

21:12 Internal Messaging and Employee Retention

23:10 Employees as Brand Ambassadors

24:46 Competing by Differentiating Yourself


Links

Connect Orly Zeewy:

https://zeewybrands.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/orlyzeewy/


Orly Zeewy is an author, speaker, and educator known for making the complex clear. She helps startup founders and business owners define their expertise, attract ideal clients, and scale quickly. A sought-after speaker, Orly has appeared on 30+ podcasts, including BroadBand and FemCity, and has lectured at Wharton and Drexel. Her writing has been featured in Medium, The Marketing Journal, and Smart Hustle. Her book Ready, Launch, Brand (2021) was an Amazon #1 new business release, endorsed by Seth Godin. Her next book, Why NOT Me?, arrives in 2025.


Connect with Maartje van Krieken:

https://www.thechaosgamesconsulting.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maartje/

https://maartjeturnschaosaround.substack.com/



Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

About the Podcast

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The Business Emergency Room Podcast
Triage, Tools & Tactics to recover from or prevent business chaos in this VUCA business environment

About your host

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Maartje van Krieken

Maartje van Krieken is a crisis strategist, executive consultant, and your at host of The Business Emergency Room podcast, where growing businesses go when things get messy. With a career that began in frontier oil and gas and spanned war zones, boardrooms, and billion-dollar pivots, Maartje has spent over two decades helping organizations steer through chaos and come out stronger.
Now through her consulting firm, The Chaos Games, Maartje works with medium-sized businesses, especially those scaling rapidly or navigating uncertainty, to diagnose breakdowns in leadership, collaboration, and decision-making before they become business emergencies. Her signature approach blends practical triage, people-first strategy, and blunt Dutch honesty to help teams realign fast.

​The Business Emergency Room delivers high-impact insights for business leaders, board members, and investors who are tired of the symptoms, disconnection, friction, paralysis, and want the tools to fix what’s really going wrong. Maartje’s episodes cut through fluff with stories, frameworks, and metaphors that turn even the most complex chaos into something leaders can act on.
Maartje is based in New Orleans and speaks regularly on navigating organizational storms, building business resilience, and turning reactive firefighting into proactive leadership. Whether you’re scaling a business, running a team, or dealing with dysfunction, The Business Emergency Room is the place to find straight talk and smarter tools.