A New Chapter: Introducing Graf-Martin Advisory Group
By Ellen Graf-Martin
Eighteen years ago, someone asked me a simple question: “Would you start an agency?”
That question changed my path. Looking back, I am so glad I said yes.
Since that day, our team has had the honour of walking alongside more than 250 extraordinary organizations – publishers, authors, international aid agencies, anti-slavery networks, education charities, family businesses in transition, children’s healthcare advocates, mental health and child welfare organizations, disability advocates, major film studies, and more.
My favourite clients have always been the leaders who "can't not do" the work they're doing and want the right people working alongside them. The leaders who are deeply committed to making a difference.
Over these 18 years, we’ve earned trust in rooms most advisors and consultants never get invited to. That is a privilege I don’t take for granted.
The Shift in the Room
About two years ago, our conversations began to fundamentally shift. We had just delivered a major organizational rebrand, and the world was changing rapidly. The questions we heard were no longer marketing-specific things about ad costs, design tweaks, and posting frequency. They became:
How do we navigate this change?
How do we turn what we do into a story people want to join, and how do we find those people?
How do we make the most of our budget?
Can you help my team figure this out and turn it into a plan we can actually accomplish?
Leaders were asking for a trusted thinking partner. Someone to help them figure things out and actually get them done.
And honestly? That’s where we have always done our best work.
Being a traditional marketing agency was never the ultimate goal. It was just the model we based our work on. Using our gifts and experience to strengthen organizations committed to hope, generosity, and justice has always been what fueled us.
Stepping Fully Into Who We’ve Become
Today, we’re stepping fully into who we’ve already become (and it’s not a marketing agency). I’m so excited to introduce our new name: Graf-Martin Advisory Group: Faster. Further. Together.
We are a strategic advisory and communications firm dedicated to strengthening organizations committed to hope, generosity, and justice.
We know what it’s like to sit across from a board that wants momentum and answers. We understand how to equip and encourage a team that’s stretched thin. Most of all, we love to help leaders navigate the moments that matter most: when you're growing, when you're changing, when your story needs to catch up with your impact, when you've outgrown your skills or your marketing, and when the stakes are high. Navigated well, those moments lead to healthy growth and confident teams.
For many of the organizations we work closely with, that growth has averaged around 20% year over year. One client recently calculated their ROI on working with us, and I was stunned. And deeply encouraged.
It’s proof that this mission and the faithful stewardship of it still matter.
Where We Are Focusing
To help leaders move with wisdom and skill, our work centers on four core pillars:
Strategic Advisory: Executive counsel, fractional CMO support, change management, board reporting, succession strategy, and leadership transitions.
Strategic Communications: Brand, communications and marketing strategy, crisis planning, campaign strategy and media relations.
Brand & Organizational Clarity: Brand positioning, strategy workshops and learning cohorts.
Specialized Activation: High-impact strategy-based public relations, crisis response and access to a curated network of activation specialists.
Looking Ahead to 2027
Your organization may be facing a very different set of opportunities or challenges today, and this new model may be exactly the kind of partnership you need. Right now, we’re staying intentionally focused and making sure our existing clients are well supported. So, over the next few months, we’ll be taking on a limited number of new advisory relationships.
If you’re heading into 2027 thinking about growth, change, repositioning, succession, increased visibility - or simply wondering whether your organization has outgrown the way it currently approaches marketing and communications, we would love to talk.
To everyone who has worked with us, trusted us with a critical project, introduced us to someone who needed help, or cheered us on from the sidelines - thank you for being part of the Graf-Martin story.
I’m pretty excited about where we’re going next.
Faster. Further. Together.
P.S. - Curious to see this approach in action? Read the recent client case study that fully convinced me this evolution needed to happen. And delivered results that left us in awe.
