My Spotify Wrapped labeled me a “Pink Pilates Princess.”
Reader, I am not.
It wasn’t a reflection of who I am. It was a reflection of what got captured. A few signals turned/ into a whole story.
That’s how internal stakeholders experience marketing.
They don’t recap your year from your strategy deck.
They recap it from what they noticed, what they heard, and what they can recall under pressure.
Which means your work can be strong, and still get summarized wrong.
So how do you make sure the recap matches reality?
You build visibility and measurement into the work while it’s happening.
How to Make Your “Year-End Wrap” Accurate
If you want perception to align with intent, you have to build measurement and visibility into the work while it’s happening.
- Decide what you want the recap to say.
Not tasks. Outcomes.
examples: improved pipeline quality, shortened sales cycles, clarified positioning. - Make it measurable in the language leadership already uses.
Translate marketing activity into business impact.
examples: revenue influenced, cost avoided, time saved, risk reduced, decision speed increased, sales confidence improved. - Leave artifacts that represent the strategy.
People remember what they can point to.
If all you leave behind are launch emails and slide decks, that becomes the story.
add: a one-page brief, a decision doc, an insight summary, a “what changed because of this” note. - Build a simple cadence that connects the dots.
A short monthly update beats a perfect dashboard nobody opens. Don’t leave it up to your stakeholders to remember the impact you want to make.
Use this format:
- What we shipped
- What it moved
- What we learned
- What we’re doing next
- Reality-check the summary before it becomes the story.
Ask in 1:1s: “When you think about marketing this quarter, what stands out?”
What they say tells you what’s being captured and what’s getting lost.
People don’t evaluate you on what you did. They evaluate you on what shows up.
So if you want the year-end wrap to reflect the “Indie Rock Archivist” you actually are, you have to make sure the system is capturing the right signals all year long.
Question: If your stakeholders wrote “Marketing Wrapped” for your year today, what do you think it would emphasize today? And what would you want it to emphasize instead.
