When Andrea is not road-tripping or reading the latest fiction with the cat who came with her house, she is creating and building—both DIY home projects and stellar client assets.
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.
For many B2B tech organizations, building a partner program feels like a natural next step as they look to expand their go-to-market strategy. Partnerships, integrations, co-sell motions, and marketplace participation can extend your reach and unlock new revenue without requiring you to expand your core product. For many companies, this becomes a key part of their partner ecosystem strategy.
What’s less obvious at the outset is how quickly the team structure behind a partner program needs to evolve. Early on, partnerships are primarily about building relationships. As the ecosystem grows, the work becomes more operational and programmatic, and the partner program structure often needs to evolve with it.
Early stage: One person, many hats
At the beginning, partner programs are relationship-led. One person, sometimes a founder, builds alliances, negotiates integrations, supports sales conversations, and experiments with light co-marketing.
Processes are informal with loosely-defined incentives, and pipeline influence isn’t always tracked in a rigorous way.
Hiring focus: Hire for versatility and ownership. You need someone comfortable operating without a playbook, who can move between strategy and execution without friction. Over-specializing too early can slow momentum when scaling a partner program.
Growth stage: Complexity starts to surface
As your ecosystem grows to a meaningful portfolio of partners, team needs evolve. Sales wants clearer co-sell guidance and marketing sees repeatable campaign opportunities. Leadership asks for reporting and marketplace programs introduce new requirements.
This is often the point where organizations expect one person to manage relationships, marketing, enablement, and reporting simultaneously, and that structure rarely holds up as the program expands.
Hiring focus: Before adding headcount, define what’s actually breaking. Is it enablement? Campaign execution? Reporting? Hiring without clarifying ownership usually recreates the same bottleneck in a slightly different form as partner ecosystem management becomes more complex.
Mature stage: Partnerships become a growth channel
When partnerships begin influencing a material portion of pipeline, informality stops working. Revenue targets emerge, incentives formalize, and the work that once sat with a single generalist begins to separate into more defined functions:
Strategic alliances (which partners to prioritize)
Operations (how performance is tracked and measured)
At this stage of partner program maturity, organizations typically move toward a more clearly defined partnership team structure.
Hiring focus: Define scope and revenue accountability clearly before hiring senior talent. Strong candidates will expect clarity around authority, KPIs, and decision rights before accepting the role, especially when revenue is involved.
Structure enables alignment and scale
As partner programs grow, structure is what allows teams to keep moving quickly instead of getting stuck in ambiguity. The organizations that get the most from their partner ecosystems are usually the ones that redefine roles just ahead of complexity, not in reaction to it. Taking the time to scope those roles clearly helps organizations make the right hires and ensures new team members are set up to succeed.
If you’re evaluating your next partner hire or thinking about how your ecosystem team should evolve, it can help to talk through the structure before opening a search. If you’d like an experienced perspective, reach out!
AI is everywhere in marketing right now. A common assumption is that designers using AI type a prompt, magic happens, and the creative work is done. Sounds easy! And risky. The reality is more nuanced, and far more interesting. To ground the conversation in real-world experience, I spoke with 2A designers Aaron Wendel, Evan Aeschlimann, and Guangyi Li about how AI fits into their creative process.
Getting to a first draft faster
Inside 2A, AI isn’t replacing designers, but it’s becoming a fast, surprisingly capable assistant. The design team uses it most heavily in early concepting for things like generating layout variations, exploring infographic structures, experimenting with illustration styles, and prototyping interactive experiences. Tools like Figma Make, Gemini, and Adobe Firefly help accelerate the “blank page” phase and bring ideas to life faster.
Where AI really shines is efficiency. Background removal that once took 20 minutes now takes 30 seconds. With a quick prompt, AI can help turn a static image into a video and rearrange a rough wireframe into a more logical flow. Designers can test alternate angles, lighting, and visual treatments, all before committing hours of production time.
The difference between fast and finished
Here’s the critical distinction with AI: it can get you to early concepts quickly. But it doesn’t reliably maintain brand consistency and it struggles with typography and detailed layout logic. The more complex the brand system, the more human oversight is required. In experiments with training custom agents to generate fully on-brand visuals, the results were either generic or oddly off-base. Sometimes the output was decent, but rarely client-ready.
That’s where expertise matters. The designer’s role isn’t shrinking; it’s evolving. AI enables faster experimentation and cross-disciplinary thinking—designers can prototype motion, imagine interactivity, or explore UI behaviors without writing code. However, judgment and brand integrity still require a trained eye.
At 2A, AI accelerates the process, and our designers define the outcome. AI tools can generate options, but only experts can turn those options into assets that are on-brand, intentional, and built to drive results.
The Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals Reportis packed with essential data on how AI is transforming professional services, with a particular focus on the legal industry. But as with many in-depth reports, its richness and detail can be a double-edged sword: great for insight, but harder for time-strapped readers to absorb and act on quickly.
Thomson Reuters partnered with us to create two new content pieces that made key findings from the report easier to engage with and more directly useful for their legal audience. By distilling complex research into a targeted infographic and a focused whitepaper, we helped bring clarity to professionals at different stages of their AI journey.
Getting started: The infographic for AI readiness
For professionals still shaping their AI strategy, we built an infographic that functions as a readiness checklist. It walks readers through the foundational steps needed to prepare for agentic AI, from building strategy to empowering individuals, with practical prompts and data points drawn from the report.
The visual format makes the information easier to scan and share, while still grounding every recommendation in the original research.
Going deeper: The whitepaper on maximizing AI value
For legal leaders further along in their AI adoption, we developed a six-page whitepaper that offers concrete strategies to turn AI investments into measurable results. Drawing from the report’s legal-specific insights, the guide covers four key focus areas: strategy and leadership, trust, enablement, and measurement.
Rather than reiterating technical features, the whitepaper keeps the focus on real-world applications, like how to embed AI in workflows your team already uses and track outcomes that align with your business priorities. It positions Thomson Reuters as both a thought leader and a trusted advisor for legal professionals navigating AI transformation.
One report, two assets, many outcomes
These assets demonstrate the power of repackaging research to meet audiences where they are. By creating content that’s aligned to different levels of AI maturity, we helped Thomson Reuters extend the reach of their research and support their customers in taking the next right step.
Looking to turn your insights into action? Let’s talk.
A client recently came to us with a familiar request: they wanted a sizzle video to improve the effectiveness of a product landing page. After adding one of our sizzle videos, they noticed a lift in performance and wanted to repeat the approach.
They’re not alone in turning to video to boost engagement. Including video on a landing page can increase conversion by as much as 80%. Sites with video also tend to convert at higher rates overall, with one benchmark showing a 4.8% average conversion rate for sites using video, compared to 2.9% for those without.
So, what type of video should you use—and when? Here are three formats we recommend, each suited for different goals and stages of the buyer journey.
Sizzle videos: Build excitement and boost engagement
Sizzle videos are short, energetic, and designed to get attention. They’re great for product pages, campaign rollouts, or events where you want to create momentum and drive action. These videos usually combine animation, sound design, and fast pacing to create an emotional connection quickly.
That’s what our client experienced: after adding a sizzle video to their product page and seeing a clear lift, they came back to request more. It’s no surprise—when visitors stay longer and feel more emotionally invested, they’re more likely to take the next step.
Explainer videos: Clarify and convert
Explainers go deeper and often include common customer pain points, topline product benefits or features, and UI snapshots. They’re especially effective when addressing a known challenge or objection, like demonstrating cost-saving features or what’s changed in an update.
We’ve partnered with enterprise teams to create explainer videos that highlight key functionality and reduce friction during the decision-making process. These videos are a great fit for users further down the funnel who need reassurance before they commit.
Testimonial videos: Build trust with firsthand perspective
For buyers evaluating complex solutions, credibility is key. Testimonial videos let viewers hear directly from the source about the impact your solution had. They’re especially effective when paired with written case studies, giving added dimension to performance metrics and making success stories more relatable.
These videos work well on product pages and in sales enablement content, where they help build trust and spark engagement. Like this one, where the team at Lumen Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks, shows how a partnership with Amazon took the fan experience to the next level.
Video works because people remember it
Studies show that viewers retain about 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to just 10% when reading text. Pages with video also hold attention longer, which correlates strongly with higher engagement and conversion rates.
If you’re considering ways to drive conversion with your audience, we’re well-versed in video and would love to show you what’s possible.
Contract roles are foundational to how large tech companies operate: entire teams and initiatives depend on contractors doing high-impact work. Yet despite how mission critical these roles are, many companies rely on vendor management systems (VMS) to find talent, often with subpar outcomes.
On the surface, these contractor hiring portals promise scale and speed. But in practice, they often strip away the context and care that good recruiting depends on. What you get is a system optimized for volume, not for finding the right person for the work.
Where VMS-driven hiring starts to break down
When roles are posted in a portal, staffing firms are competing against dozens, sometimes hundreds, of other agencies. With such low odds of placement, recruiters are naturally incentivized to move fast and submit often. Spending extra time deeply vetting candidates or digging into the nuances of a role rarely pays off.
To make matters harder, recruiters usually have little to no direct access to the hiring team. Without meaningful context about the role or team, even strong recruiters are left guessing. Volume becomes the safest bet, while candidate fit becomes secondary.
Scale over relationships erodes the experience
VMS portals tend to favor the largest staffing firms. Enterprises can’t realistically onboard every specialized agency, so size becomes the deciding factor. Many agencies that appear boutique in a portal are actually owned by large conglomerates and operate like one.
From the client side, agencies become interchangeable. That makes it difficult to understand how one firm might support the hiring manager during the engagement, or how contractors are treated once they’re on the job. Over time, this lack of differentiation removes the incentive to invest in better experiences.
Contractors feel this quickly. Large agencies often offer the bare minimum in benefits and route support through impersonal service desks with slow response times. Talented, experienced contractors notice and choose to work elsewhere. Poor support leads to higher churn, disengaged talent, and teams that are constantly backfilling instead of moving forward.
A more thoughtful way to hire contractors
Boutique agencies, like 2A Recruiting and Staffing, take a different approach. We build long-term partnerships with our clients and our contractors because thoughtful recruiting leads to better results. That starts with strong benefits, like our fully covered health, dental, and vision insurance, 4 weeks+ of PTO annually, and 401(k) with employer match. It also means regular check-ins, personal, responsive support, and staying engaged throughout the entire contract. Because of benefits like these, in 2025 more than 85% of our contractors completed or extended their engagements.
When contract roles are truly mission critical, they deserve more than portal submissions. If you’re ready to go beyond the portal and work with a firm that treats contractor hiring like the strategic function it is, we’d love to talk.
After years of recruiting for large, matrixed organizations where employees collaborate across functions and regions, we’ve noticed a consistent pattern. While technical skills might land someone the job, they rarely determine whether that person thrives long-term. What truly sets candidates apart is how they operate in complex, fast-changing environments.
That’s why our interview process focuses on core behavioral traits we’ve found to be strong predictors of success. Here’s what we look for, and why it matters.
1. Driving self-directed execution
In complex roles, candidates need the ability to take initiative and keep things moving. We look for people who can work through ambiguity without getting stuck. They’re comfortable getting started even when the details are incomplete, and they know how to break down fuzzy goals into clear, actionable steps.
They also keep stakeholders informed without needing close oversight. And when something stalls, they don’t wait; they know when to keep going and when to raise a flag. This combination of independence and judgment keeps work momentum going, even when guidance is limited.
2. Taking proactive ownership
In fast-moving environments with shifting priorities, success often comes down to mindset. The people who thrive are those who treat problems as theirs to solve, even if they fall outside their job description. Rather than waiting to be asked, they build cross-functional relationships, seek out context, and stay curious. When something needs doing, they step in because they see the broader value in helping the team move forward.
3. Communicating with clarity and context
In cross-functional, global teams, misalignment can create major downstream issues. That’s why clear, contextual communication is essential. We look for people who tailor their communication style based on who they’re talking to and what the situation calls for, whether it’s explaining a project to a non-technical stakeholder or looping in a team across time zones.
They make sure their work connects to broader goals and that they identify conflicting priorities early, which helps prevent misalignment that can slow things down later.
4. Staying adaptable and resilient
Change is a constant in complex organizations, and success depends on being able to roll with it. We look for people who maintain focus and productivity even when priorities shift, plans change, or teams restructure.
Resilient candidates recover quickly from setbacks and keep a constructive mindset under pressure. They don’t rely on certainty and know how to move forward without it.
Looking for candidates with these traits?
We’ve spent over a decade helping enterprise teams hire professionals who have the right skills and the behaviors that lead to long-term success. Our screening process is designed to surface these traits early, so you meet candidates who are ready to thrive in real-world complexity.
It’s time to talk about our favorite albums of the year! Historically, we’d assemble a list of top picks that recently dropped, but 2025 was a little different. Some of us weren’t into the new stuff and instead reached for music that felt familiar and grounding. So our 2025 list includes both new music we discovered and not-so-new tunes we love.
The right song can work wonders: it can inspire when you’re stuck in a creative rut, calm you when you’re feeling overwhelmed, or motivate when prepping for something big (Dwight Schrute + Kickstart My Heart, am I right?!). However you’re feeling at the moment, we hope you’ll enjoy our roundup of what we had on repeat—maybe it’ll inspire some good vibes for the year ahead.
Vie—Doja Cat Doja Cat does it again! At first I was thrown by the 80s beats (and background sax?!) in many of the tracks. But on a second listen of the full album, the lyrical magic and sound that Doja is known for shines through. She’s got me embracing the 80s vibes and considering shoulder pads :-). —Katy Nally
The Art of Loving—Olivia Dean This year, one of my goals was to find a signature scent. I spent hours misting tiny paper tabs in front of perfume walls. Eventually, I landed on Etat Libre d’Orange’s I Am Trash, which a salesperson described to me as “what a trash can smells like after a wedding: wilted flowers, leftover fruit, cake, and champagne”—a hauntingly beautiful description for a very unfortunately named perfume. But I loved it. Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving captures the same bittersweet magic that made me fall in love with I Am Trash: It’s nostalgic, elegant, sweet, and somehow, still fresh. Listening to it feels like standing alone in a ballroom at the end of a wedding. Thankfully, the album has a much prettier name than my new perfume. —Emily Zheng
Dance Called Memory—Nation of Language I write for long stretches of time, go for drives in the Washington wilderness, and paint abstract landscapes while the rain pours outside. Nation of Language’s Dance Called Memory is the perfect pairing for all of these activities. Their melancholy synthpop makes me feel wistful, nostalgic, dreamy, and inspired in just the right way. —Andrea Swangard
From a Room—Chris Stapleton It’s been a year of highs and lows. Chris Stapleton’s music has always been a place of peace for me. —Tammy Monson
The Life You Save—Flock of Dimes Flock of Dimes has been one of my favorite projects over the years, a solo endeavor by Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak and Bon Iver. She is one of my favorite vocalists in indie music and I think The Life You Save is a very beautiful, chill, and personal album that’s among her best work. I’ve had it on repeat since it came out. —Wil Morrill
Suzanne—Mark Ronson and RAYE While Mark Ronson is a talented producer, the real star in this song is our girl RAYE. This song came up in my To Listen playlist this summer and has been on repeat ever since. There’s something about the jazzy vibes that I can’t seem to get enough of! And if you like this song, definitely check out more RAYE—she is amazing! —Olivia Fiero
We Go Again—Enny We love a hip hop, R&B girlie, and Enny delivers. Her 2023 release We Go Again brings an existential, soulful edge to her sound, balancing introspection with sharp, confident storytelling. “Charge It” has been on repeat since its release, setting the tone for an album that feels both grounded and expansive. Enny is real and raw in how she reflects on her experience as a Black woman, her Nigerian heritage, and her come-up through trial and tribulation. It’s an album that works at any time of day, equally fitting for slow mornings, getting ready to go out, or winding down. —Salena Hill
Hickey—Royel Otis If you’re like me, you got hit over the head with that Linger SiriusXM Session at some point last year. Thus began my love affair for this lil’ band that sits somewhere between slacker indie and romantic nostalgia. It makes me want to sip a Slurpee, windows down, sun low, cruising the Santa Monica Pier with my friends… you know, for old times’ sake. Honorable mention to their 2023 album Sofa Kings. —Michelle Najarian
Live From 33 West—Charles Yang Splitting my time between all the different forms of content available means I don’t usually have the patience to listen to a whole album for the two bangers in an hour of forgettable tracks. I’m just looking for that quick, invigorating musical fix. Instead of scrolling through music venue calendars to find new music, now I’m mostly finding those musical fixes through social media. So, when a clip of Charles Yang popped up, I was like “OH SCHNAP! This guy got pipes!… Link to the full track in the comments?… Yes, please!” Skip to that three-minute mark and enjoy. —Evan Aeschlimann
Headlights—Alex G I listened to this album for the equivalent of four business days in 2025. Headlights is full of somber, retro songs about being a dad that, for some reason, 20-year-olds like to mosh to (a real thing I witnessed). —Jack Foraker
This Better Be Something Great—Westside Cowboy The debut EP from Westside Cowboy is what I wish my band in high school had sounded like if we’d had more talent (no offense Dave, but this drummer is incredible). It’s only five songs, and each has a distinct, dynamic sound—from group vocal anthems to lo-fi acoustic tracks. A blend of 90s/2000s rock, punk, and (strangely) some alt-country that stands out in a crowded genre, this has me looking forward to their next EP coming in January. —Mike Lahoda
Make The Road By Walking—Menahan Street Band Listen to this album for the ultimate getting-stuff-done music. Warm horns, steady grooves, zero lyrics so your brain stays on task and your vibe stays groovy. It energizes without interrupting, motivates without shouting, and never asks for attention. Make the Road By Walking is your busy day bestie: cool, consistent, and calmly crushing it. —Jenni Lydell
When the AWS Financial Services team released the latest edition of its Banking on the Cloud report, it wasn’t just business as usual. It was one of the first assets to showcase a newly launched brand identity. For us, it was a chance to bring structure and creative clarity to a high-visibility moment of change.
We’ve designed the report for multiple years in a row, each time adjusting to new content, teams, and visual requirements. This year, the biggest shift came not from the updated content, but from the new look and feel. AWS had recently rolled out its new brand identity, and even internal teams were still interpreting how those changes would translate into real-world assets.
We approached this ambiguity as a design opportunity.
Planning for change, not reacting to it
Before diving into full design, we held a few preliminary meetings with the AWS team to discuss the main brand updates and we provided design samples for how it might be interpreted when applied to the report. Our visual exploration started with simplified style frames that showcased new color options, layouts, and data visualization treatments.
This helped us gauge how far the client was ready to push visually, and where they preferred to tread lightly. By showing high-contrast examples early on, we helped uncover key preferences, gather feedback, and clarify how new visual elements like color, layout, and illustration should be used in practice. The outcome was two big advantages: the AWS team gained clarity on how to apply their updated brand system, and we had the direction we needed to start designing with purpose.
Working ahead with a flexible structure
Because content was still in progress, we created a modular structure using sample copy and trend themes. This allowed us to define visual hierarchy, layout rhythm, and stylistic range without waiting for every word to be finalized.
Once content was ready, we were able to move quickly, thanks to the flexible structure we had set up early on. With clear direction already in place, additional designers were able to jump in to meet a tight timeline without missing a beat.
Building trust through creative clarity
One of the most valuable aspects of this multi-year relationship is the trust we’ve developed with the client team. That trust comes from delivering polished design and helping the client navigate ambiguity, anticipate challenges, and make strategic choices that support their brand.
From rethinking the asset’s cover to aligning visuals with evolving content themes, we brought flexibility without chaos and structure without rigidity. This latest edition of the Banking on the Cloud report shows that design-only engagements can be highly collaborative, and when grounded in the right process, they can move fast without feeling rushed.
If you’re navigating a brand update and need help translating it into real work, we’d love to help.
Animation is the espresso shot of B2B marketing: short, powerful, and guaranteed to wake people up. Done right, it can turn “just browsing” into “tell me more” in under a minute. Done wrong, it’s another skipped video in someone’s feed.
Want your animation to stop the scroll and help people remember your message? Here are our top five tips.
1. Know where it’ll live and why it’s there
Before you break out the storyboards, determine the goals for your animation and where it’s going to play.
Solving a customer headache?
Explaining a product feature?
Pumping up the crowd before a keynote?
Your goals (such as awareness, education, and sales enablement) and locations (such as landing page, event screen, and social platforms) will decide everything from length to tone to design style. That epic two-minute deep dive video might work great on your website, but folks may not sit through it at a conference.
2. Get inside your audience’s heads
Who’s watching? What do they need from you? Are they…
…a hands-on tech lead who wants the details?
…an exec who only needs the “why it matters” in 30 seconds?
…someone who has never heard of you before?
The more you know about where your audience is coming from, the easier it’ll be to maintain engagement by serving them exactly the right amount of detail (at the right length).
3. Match the design to the moment
Different animations work for different audiences. Think about:
Where it’ll play: On a big screen at an event? On your LinkedIn? Embedded in a sales deck?
What you’ve got: Are you starting with brand assets? Need custom illustrations? Going heavy on UI mockups or stock footage?
How you’ll amp it up: Voiceover? Music? Sound effects? All of the above?
An event “sizzle” might need bold graphics, fast cuts, and exciting music. A product demo? Go for clean UI animation and a voiceover that explains without overwhelming.
4. Keep feedback flowing
Animations take shape one layer at a time. Routine feedback sessions keep the creative process aligned with your brand and objectives. Expect to review:
Scripts and messaging
Storyboards and style frames
Animation previews with text, brand, and polish
Schedule regular check-ins and keep relevant people in the loop. Nothing kills momentum faster than a two-week wait for feedback.
5. Plan your timeframe…and add buffer
A high-quality animation doesn’t happen overnight. Depending on complexity, expect 6–10 weeks from kickoff to final delivery. Add more buffer if you need a complex UI, custom illustrations, or a few extra rounds of tweaks.
Plan ahead, especially if you’re targeting an event date or campaign launch, and give your team enough time to review without cutting corners.
Bring your story to life
The best marketing animations are clear, audience-focused, and designed with purpose, but they also have a spark that makes people want to watch. Nail our five tips and your animation will do more than look good—it’ll deliver results. Need some inspo? Check out our latest sizzle reel. Ready to make your story move? Let’s chat!
