By The 2A Team

By Jack Foraker, Olivia Witt

Image by Jenni Lydell

Olivia Fiero, 2A senior consultant and video practice lead, has a reputation for bringing a sharp creative eye to client projects—and for having what can only be described as a small animal kingdom at home. Her workday moves between client calls, video planning, creative reviews, and the occasional backyard reset with her chickens.

We sat down with Olivia for a look at what keeps her day moving, from her sunny home office to an inbox that must, by end of day, reach zero.

How would you describe your role at 2A and what does a typical day look like for you?

I am a senior consultant and video practice lead at 2A. My typical day consists of a lot of meetings, reviewing content, strategizing creative approaches for projects, and scoping video work! It varies a lot day to day but you’ll often find me living out of Outlook, Teams, and Frame.io.

What’s one thing you do before you really start working?

Breakfast! It is the most important meal of the day. I usually start my mornings off on the couch with a bowl of granola and berries, hanging out with my pups. Shockingly, coffee comes later once I make it to my desk.

Where do you do your best work?

In my office. I’ve created this cozy little plant haven where I spend most of my time. I have really great sunlight in my office so it feels very energizing to work here. Also, I’m not sure how people only work off a laptop. I need to have my dual monitor to be productive.

What’s one part of your workday that’s uniquely yours?

All the video work! I have the great pleasure of being the video practice lead at 2A which means I get to run all video projects that come through our door. As such, I do a lot of the initial preproduction planning, overarching video concepting, and work closely with our motion team to ensure the videos we produce are hitting the mark.

What do you do when you hit a wall or have a tough task ahead of you?

I love going for a little walk in the afternoon with my pups. Usually, my mornings are a wall of calls and once I get through them, I realize just how much work I still have to climb through. So before I dive in, I try to prioritize a short walk with my dogs to get some fresh air and reset. If I don’t have enough time for a walk, I usually go to my backyard to feed my chickens.

How do you know when you’ve had a good workday?

When my long list of to-dos are all checked off! And also, when we close more deals to do more awesome work with our clients. 😊

And how do you know when it’s time to log off?

I think I’m in the minority here, but I need to make sure my inbox is at zero before I log off every night. With that done and my to-do list completed, it’s time to log off and go hang out with my little zoo.

By Michelle Najarian, Andrea Swangard

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

Think about the last event you attended.

You likely don’t remember the full keynote or every conversation, but a few moments probably stand out. That’s because memory doesn’t work like a recording device. We remember fragments: emotions, standout visuals, short phrases, and moments that felt different from everything around them.

So instead of trying to make everything memorable, it’s more effective to focus on designing a few moments that people will carry with them.

What people hear sticks when it’s repeatable

The ideas that last aren’t the most detailed, they’re the ones people can easily repeat. At the Geekwire Agents of Transformation event, a fireside chat panel member described using AI to reduce internal friction as “removing paper cuts.” That simple phrase made a complex idea instantly relatable, and it quickly showed up again in later conversations. Most people probably won’t remember every point from the session, but they’ll remember the phrase because it made the bigger idea instantly understandable. When a message is easy to say out loud, it’s far more likely to spread.

What people see helps ideas land

Visuals help people process information quickly, especially when attention is already stretched. In crowded event environments, the right visual helps people understand something instantly instead of making them work for it. People remember visuals that simplify a complex idea, create emotional recognition, or immediately clarify what matters. Whether it’s a clear architecture diagram or a short, human video, the right visual can make an idea click without extra explanation. Think quick customer clips sharing a real outcome, or a speaker stepping out of slides to tell a story in their own words. Those moments feel less like content and more like connection, which makes them easier to remember.

What people engage with creates memory

The most memorable booths and sessions may not be the most polished, but they’re the ones where something is happening. Interactive demos, small activities, or even thoughtful swag can turn a passive experience into something participatory. And when people participate, they’re far more likely to remember the moment and talk about it later.

At a recent event, one booth drew a crowd by printing logos onto the foam of attendees’ coffee. It was simple, but it created a shared experience and sparked conversations while people waited (free coffee and networking that feels natural? A win-win). In a space where every brand is competing for attention, those small moments of interaction are often the things that stay with people the longest.

Design for moments, not volume

In overstimulating event environments, trying to make everything memorable often has the opposite effect. When every booth is loud, polished, and demanding attention, people stop processing the differences altogether. What actually creates recall are moments of contrast.

That’s why the goal shouldn’t be maximizing visibility at every touchpoint. Instead, focus on creating a small number of moments that people can easily remember, describe, and share after the event is over.

By Abby Breckenridge

Image by Guangyi Li

Subject matter experts can be B2B tech marketers’ most persuasive storytellers—and they can also be their biggest bottleneck. SMEs—we’re talking engineers, product owners, key customers, strategic partners—have the insights your audience craves, and they’re also busy doing the actual job. Accessing their knowledge and getting their sign-off can take weeks, and that’s time that neither the marketer nor the SME has to spare.

That’s where we come in. Here are three ways we can help you build effective, voice-of-the-expert content without burning your relationship with your SMEs, or impacting your schedule.

1. We’re already ramped, so we don’t need much of their time

Nothing drains goodwill faster than asking an SME to brain dump everything. We come in pre-loaded on your solutions, your space, and your audience. That means we ask sharper questions, need fewer meetings, and can translate rough input into something polished. Your SMEs stay focused on their day jobs, and still sound brilliant.

2. We run the process, so you don’t have to

Scheduling, follow-ups, wrangling feedback—it adds up fast. And it usually falls on marketing to manage it all. We take that off your plate. As active project managers, we coordinate directly with SMEs, adjust to accommodate their needs and preferences, and make sure deadlines don’t slip. You get progress without the overhead.

3. We turn expertise into assets that work

Great insights are only half the equation. The real win is packaging them into content your audience needs and your SMEs are proud of. We shape raw takes into clear, compelling assets—eBooks, videos, case studies, whatever you need—that land with your target audience and reflect well on the experts behind them.

Bottom line

You don’t need more time from your SMEs—you need to make better use of it. That’s how you get stronger content, faster timelines, and happier experts.

By Jack Foraker, Mike Lahoda

Image by Guangyi Li

Consider the cloud. 

It’s one of the most effective metaphors in tech marketing. Distributed infrastructure isn’t exactly intuitive, but “cloud” computing is. It doesn’t explain how the technology works, but it captures how it feels. Accessible. Airy. Always there. 

That kind of clarity doesn’t happen by accident. It results from deliberate storytelling, like we do at 2A. In B2B marketing, especially cloud and infrastructure, the actual products are often dense. Think architecture diagrams and latency benchmarks. But we speak from experience when we say that behind the specs is often a simpler story of a team solving a problem that mattered. 

For example, take our work with a major cloud provider. In a recent case study, a financial infrastructure firm re-engineered core systems, cutting total cost of ownership and reducing latency across its index engine. On paper, this is a story about compute instances and architecture. But in practice, it’s about innovation in a market where milliseconds matter. 

How did we get there? Here’s our approach to working with technical and business stakeholders to create work that a broader B2B audience can follow. 

Start with the problem, not just the product 

Product messaging is a great place to start with a new project, but we prefer to go one step further. 

Our process typically starts with a structured intake to establish the baseline, followed by conversations with the people closest to the work. Engineers bring the implementation details—the tradeoffs, constraints, and things that didn’t work the first time. 

Sometimes the technical details can be a bit hard to grasp, but that’s to be expected. (We’re marketers, not developers!) We ask questions to encourage translation: What surprised you about the solution? What changed once this was live? Those answers tend to surface what actually matters to a broader business audience. 

Decide what matters, skip the rest 

Good technical storytelling isn’t simplification. What we’re trying to do is prioritize. What actually moves the story forward? What belongs in a diagram versus a headline? What’s critical for a developer audience versus what resonates with a CTO evaluating infrastructure investments? 

A lot of technical content breaks down when it tries to say everything. Detailed architectures, full timelines, every feature and workload—all of it might be true, but not all of it will be useful in a marketing context. 

Part of our job at 2A is shaping the narrative by being selective. When it works, the result earns engagement from both crowds, the technical experts and the business decision makers. Because the goal isn’t to make complex technology simple. It’s to make it clear.

By Andrea Swangard, The 2A Team

Image by Rachel Adams

People talk about the importance of taking breaks, but don’t always ‘fess up to what that looks like in practice. At a creative agency, those moments matter because fresh perspective is the work. When you’re deep in a problem, it’s easy to get stuck circling the same ideas. Stepping away can be the quickest way to reset your thinking and see the work differently. So we asked the team a simple question: when you need to hit reset, what’s your go-to move? Here’s what a few 2Aers had to say.

How we pause (and come back better)

When I need a break from staring at my computer, I love to doodle with a pen and paper. The drawings are usually silly, but sometimes they turn into something cool. And my eyes and hands appreciate the time off from screens and a keyboard.
—Andrea Swangard

Over the past year, I’ve been learning French, and it’s become my favorite way to reset during a busy workday. When I need a break, I make myself a nice pour-over coffee and listen to a Coffee Break French lesson. It’s a small ritual that helps me mentally step away, transports me back to France for just a moment, and feels like a little win in the middle of a hectic day.
—Salena Hill

When I need a reset, I go for a walk. I get to exit the building, get my blood flowing, and be reminded that the world is bigger than what’s in my head. Bonus points if there’s some sun involved, but that’s not always a sure thing in Seattle.
—Abby Breckenridge

In sunny Arizona, the best way to clear my mind is to get outside. During the spring and summer, a midday walk is often too hot, so soaking my feet in the pool and listening to a couple of songs usually refreshes my mind and fills me up with vitamin D and energy.
—Tammy Monson

Now that I’m a full-fledged gardener (I own a Plant Mom hat), if I get the chance to throw on my garden shoes and get my hands dirty, I’m in. Digging holes, moving plants around, chucking soil all over the driveway pretending to know what I’m doing… judging my neighbor for planting yet another hydrangea (like, bro, the world of plants is vast, yo). Never in my wildest dreams did I think this would be the thing that brings me peace, and yet here I am, casually knowing how big a cubic yard of compost should be.
—Felip Ballesteros

I love playing with my Maltipoo pup Maggie as a quick break. Our favorite game is called “Find It.” I hide kibble in different spots around my apartment one at a time and let her sniff each one out.
—Nora Bright

Sometimes when I need a break, I like to phone a friend (or family member). Just a few minutes talking to someone on the phone gets my mind off work and helps me reset.
—Rachel Adams

It depends on what I’m taking a break from! It might be a quick dance party to shake the stress off, or a walk with the pups and a good album to keep me company. If I’m really looking for some Zen, I might head to my snake Nori’s bio-active terrarium to play around in the dirt and check out the roly-polies and springtails. If I need to laugh, I hop on my PC and play a few games with friends—usually Arc Raiders, because I live by the goop, die by the goop.
—Ashley JoEtta

I’m a big fan of a 5-minute hammock hang outdoors. Bonus points if one of my fur babies is up for a cuddle.
—Michelle Najarian

Walks with my dog Eli, shooting some hoops, or a few minutes of rolling some putts.
—Jeff Salvado

Sometimes I just want to check off an easier task, so I can go back to work feeling accomplished. That may mean wiping down a counter, picking up dog toys, knitting a new row, or reorganizing hundreds of books in order of genre and subgenre, broken down by rating system. You know, easy things.
—Carolyn Lange

I’m a big sports fan, so I enjoy checking out the latest news and rumors about my favorite teams and watching a highlight or two. It reminds me how glad I am not to have a job where everything I do is in front of an audience and committed to video forever.
—Kimberly Mass

A lot of times I need a break from work, but I also need the gears in my brain to keep turning. That’s when I jumpstart a little adrenaline into my system by taking a typing test. I like to think my elementary school digital tools teacher would be proud. (My favorite site to use is monkeytype.com!)
—Emily Zheng

If I want to step away from the desk for a break, I’m most likely taking the doggo, Mabel, for a quick walk in the Denver sunshine (sorry to sunshine brag, Seattleites). But if I need a break and am still glued to my screen, I love scouring Google Maps and other mapping sites for hikes, bike rides, rivers, and general outside places to explore.
—Mike Lahoda

By Andrea Swangard, Felip Ballesteros

Image by Emily Zheng

Creative projects rarely go off track because of execution alone. More often, the root cause is a lack of alignment at the start. The audience or message isn’t clearly defined, or success means different things to different stakeholders. That’s where a strong creative brief comes in: not as a formality, but as a way to get everyone on the same page before the work begins.

I sat down with 2A consultant Felip Ballesteros to unpack what actually makes a creative brief useful and how it changes the way teams work.

Q: Let’s start simple. What is a creative brief, really?

Felip: Most people think of a creative brief as a form or a process. That’s where things go wrong. A creative brief is a point of view. It’s your perspective on what you’re building, who it’s for, and why it matters. It pulls from the client’s goals, the team’s experience, and most importantly, the customer’s reality.

Q: Who should own the creative brief?

Felip: It’s a shared process, but it needs a clear owner.

On the client side, you want one stakeholder who’s accountable for aligning internal perspectives. That doesn’t mean they work alone—they should bring input from marketing, sales, and SMEs. But too many voices directly shaping the brief usually leads to something vague that tries to do too much.

On the agency side, we often end up driving the process. In many cases, the brief doesn’t exist when a project starts, so we build it based on the SOW, early conversations, and what we know.

Q: What makes a strong creative brief stand out?

Felip: Two important things! First, it defines how the asset should feel. Not in abstract terms, but in a way the team can actually interpret and execute. Second, it defines what not to do. A good brief narrows the path forward without having to list constraints. It gives direction. That’s what makes it powerful. It’s simple, but it drives decisions.

Q: What are the most important elements to include?

Felip: The specifics matter, but what matters more is how clearly you define them. A strong brief gets very precise about the audience and why they should care right now. Not just who they are, but what’s happening in their world that makes this asset relevant.

It also anchors the work in a real moment. For example, where does this animation show up? What’s happening right before someone sees this first call deck, and what do you want them to do next? If you can clearly connect the audience, the moment, and the outcome, the rest of the brief tends to fall into place.

Q: How does a strong brief impact the creative process?

Felip: It speeds everything up, because the brief forces early decisions. It clarifies the full story up front, not just the asset, but the transformation we’re trying to create. With that clarity, the team isn’t debating direction later. Feedback becomes sharper, revisions are faster, and you get to a solid first version sooner.

It prevents expensive mistakes, too. If you miss something early, you might be reworking design or animation later, and that’s where timelines and budgets start to slip.

Q: Do creative briefs need to be perfect before you start?

Felip: Not at all. A brief is inherently imperfect. Waiting until you have every detail figured out is one of the biggest reasons teams don’t create one. Even if it’s incomplete, it gives you direction. And even if it’s wrong, it’s something you can react to and refine. That’s much better than starting with nothing!

Q: Any advice for teams that struggle to make briefs feel useful or inspiring?

Felip: Focus on conviction, not creativity. A brief doesn’t need to sound bold or innovative, it just needs to make sense. When the brief has a strong, believable point of view, that’s what makes it useful. That’s what gives the creative team something to build on.

Q: Thanks for these insights, Felip! Any final guidance for teams building a creative brief?

Felip: If you’re not sure where to start, focus on asking the right questions to make sure the brief is doing its job:

• Who is this for, specifically?
• Why should they care right now?
• Where and how will this asset be used?
• What are the 2–3 key messages?
• What tone and energy should this have?
• What do we want the audience to do next?

If you can answer those questions clearly, you’re already ahead of most teams. And if you need some expert guidance, we’re here to help.

By Michelle Najarian, Kimberly Mass

Image by Rachel Adams

Wine and cheese? A classic. Wine and chocolate? A reward on a Tuesday. Wine and… french fries? Surprisingly, yes. The salt, the fat, the acidity—each balances the other out. One cuts through, one smooths things over, and one keeps you coming back for the next bite.

The best pairings aren’t always obvious. They’re the ones where each makes the other just a little bit better.

Turns out, that idea holds up beyond the glass. Here are three unexpected asset pairings we’re enjoying right now:

• Messaging + animation: A messaging framework gives you the 100-word version of your story: clear, consistent, and ready to use across internal teams. Animation brings that language to life visually for an external audience. Take the core message, build it into a short sizzle, and layer in specific use cases viewers relate to.
  
• Email + first call deck: When you pair an email with a first call deck from the beginning, the story doesn’t restart—it continues. The same consistent message shows up again, with more depth. Adding a slide in an email gives a glimpse of what’s next. A phrase in the deck recalls what first sparked interest. The journey feels connected, because it is.
  
• Playbook + video explainer: Playbooks are built for depth—all the details teams need, all in one place. Video adds a human layer, with short explainers keyed to critical moments: a quick walkthrough to get oriented, a step-by-step for the parts that matter most, a summary with just the highlights.

Like any good pairing, it’s not about more—it’s about what works better together. At 2A, we help teams find those perfect combinations and bring them to life.

By Abby Breckenridge

Image by Guangyi Li

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. While it’s true that our creative agency helps tech marketers make effective marketing content, there’s a secondary value that runs alongside the standout assets like animations and messaging frameworks that we offer. We help our clients look good—really shine at their organization and out in the world.

And we’re here for it. As a service company, we love to help our clients look sharp. So we’re kicking off a new series called Made ya look good, where we break down the real, practical ways we help our clients win.

First up: we know your visual brand

When you’re a marketer at a big tech company, brand is a big deal. It’s a complex system with rules, tools, and defined patterns. Entire teams are responsible for making sure it’s executed consistently and correctly. It’s a thing of beauty when it’s done well, and it takes work.

Walking into that world unprepared slows everything down.

That’s why our design team does the work to get up to speed and stay current. We come in already fluent in your typography, your layout logic, and your visual tone. We know how your brand flexes and where it doesn’t.

How does this help our clients look good?

• Their internal brand team is delighted instead of skeptical
• Feedback cycles are faster and more focused
• Most importantly, assets get approved and perform in the field because they look exactly like they belong

Recently, we were closing out a handful of assets for a client at Azure. Like most brands at enterprise organizations, they have a rigorous internal brand review process, the kind that can result in detailed, line-by-line feedback and multiple rounds of revisions. It’s a necessary step, but it can slow things down and create extra work for already busy marketing teams.

The brand team came back with a couple small suggestions and some praise. One comment summed it up: “This eBook looks fantastic! It really reflects the brand, while aligning with style guide points.”

Our client built trust with their brand team without needing to become a brand expert, moved their asset forward faster, and saved meaningful time in their day. Looking good! Want to experience something similar? Let’s talk!

There’s more to come in our series, Made ya look good. Stay tuned.

By Michelle Najarian, Andrea Swangard

Image by Nicole Todd

Recently, we worked with an enterprise data platform company navigating a major market shift. Like many tech organizations today, they were evolving their positioning for the AI era and trying to tell a bigger story about the role their technology plays in modern data infrastructure.

But the messaging kept expanding because the core framework wasn’t built around the audiences or their specific pain points. One asset tried to speak to executives, while another layered in technical details for architects and engineers. Sales teams wanted quick pitch materials, and content teams needed deeper educational assets. The story was trying to check too many boxes, and it wasn’t landing clearly with anyone.

In complex categories like cloud and AI, the technology is sophisticated and the audience is diverse, and it’s easy for messaging to stretch until it tries to satisfy everyone at once.

Start with the audience

To solve this, we stepped back and defined the core personas the company needed to reach, along with their priorities and motivations. Executives were focused on strategic outcomes like building an AI-ready data foundation and driving measurable business impact. Technical decision makers cared more about development efficiency and how new capabilities would integrate into their existing tech stack.

Once those differences were clear, the gaps in the narrative became obvious. The messaging assumed a level of technical understanding that some decision makers didn’t yet have. The story was starting too far downstream for part of the audience.

From there, we built a narrative framework the entire organization could use. It mapped the core story to each audience and clarified what mattered most to them, from strategic business outcomes to technical proof points. That framework gave teams a shared foundation for everything from executive messaging to developer content.

Clarity creates alignment

When the audience is clearly defined and the narrative framework is shared across teams, the story becomes much easier to scale across campaigns, assets, and channels.

Markets will keep evolving, especially as AI reshapes how companies think about their data strategies. The organizations that adapt most effectively aren’t constantly rewriting their story, they’re using frameworks built around the people they’re trying to reach. And when that foundation is in place, the rest of the messaging becomes much easier to build and evolve as the company and its solutions grow.