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 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 Jack Foraker

Image by Emily Zheng

We’re proud to say that two customer stories we wrote made Google Cloud’s list of most-read blogs in 2025! Given how much Google Cloud published—and launched—last year, it was encouraging to see our Target and Waze customer stories resonate so strongly. Turns out, people are as interested in smarter retail search and traffic data as we are!

Both stories focus on practical, real-world use of Google Cloud products. To us, that’s the whole point. Even in a year packed with attention-grabbing AI news, B2B audiences still want to understand how cloud and AI show up in real systems, real workflows, and real decisions. Customer stories do that in a way few other marketing assets can.

Going great with Google

We’ve worked closely with Google Cloud for years, and part of that partnership is understanding how their customer stories are meant to work:

• Clear without oversimplifying
• Technically credible without being inaccessible
• Grounded in what actually happened

When those pieces are in place, even a deep dive into databases or infrastructure can hold a reader’s attention.

That’s the approach we bring to every customer story we write at 2A. We focus on the details that matter and write in a way that reflects the customer’s voice. When stories are handled like that, they feel real. And hey, sometimes they even end up on a cool list.

By Mike Lahoda, Jack Foraker

Image by Emily Zheng

Back in 2016, writer Kyle Chayka coined the term AirSpace to describe the distinct look that every coffee shop—whether independent or corporate, in Seattle or Tokyo—had somehow settled into. You’ve probably already seen it: The coffee shop has minimalist furniture and industrial lighting and free WiFi. The internet, he argued, gave everyone access to the same ideas and inspirations, which was homogenizing our tastes. This got us thinking: Is poorly applied generative AI having a similar effect on marketing today?

We use AI every day at 2A, and we regularly help clients promote their own AI solutions. But when every brand has access to the same tools, sameness can creep into the messaging without a careful hand. And when content feels interchangeable, it’s easier to forget.  

To fix that, you need marketing assistance that goes beyond the brief and acts as a creative partner. 

Co-creating the concept 

Strong assets start with a conversation: We like to kick off a project by asking what message will move the audience and what form will deliver it most effectively.  

This can often mean spending extra time with subject-matter experts (SMEs) for insights that might otherwise stay buried in a slide deck. We helped Dataiku—recently recognized in the 2025 Forbes Cloud 100—create industry-specific ebooks that did exactly this. By interviewing multiple SMEs, we uncovered quotable insights about how AI was reshaping industries from manufacturing to finance. This grounded the content in real expertise rather than broad trends, which gave the ebooks a voice and specificity that was very relevant to Dataiku’s audience.  

Upfront discovery work shapes the content, but it also defines structure, tone, and audience. When we facilitate early discussions, clients often find new clarity about what their story should be—and what makes it worth telling now. The result isn’t a faster version of the expected deliverable, but a stronger and more thoughtful one that reflects expertise rather than algorithmic polish. 

Designing for impact 

Once the story takes shape, the challenge becomes visual: How do you make complex information easy to grasp while keeping it on brand? Many marketing assets begin with dense resources. Our role as a creative partner is to find the structure—and the spark—that helps the message shine through clearly. 

For Microsoft recently, that meant transforming a slide deck full of marketplace and process details into a cohesive sales enablement ebook. We built the ebook concept around a cookbook, framing each stage of building a marketplace channel practice as a “recipe”—complete with ingredients and methods. This approach replaced cluttered visuals with a clear, modular layout that guided readers step by step in an engaging and approachable way.  

Moving beyond the box 

When creative ideas are built through collaboration between subject experts, creatives, and AI tools, the final asset feels different. It carries a sense of intent—a point of view that connects with audiences because it was shaped by real dialogue.  

That’s our goal for every project: to help clients create B2B marketing content that’s engaging and effective. You’re already the expert on your audience. A creative partner brings the storytelling, design, and market knowledge to make sure whatever you put in front of them sticks. 

By Liz Mangini, Jack Foraker

Image by Suzanne Calkins

In cloud and SaaS marketing, no one wins alone. Partnerships are everywhere—and only getting more intricate as technology continues evolving. At 2A, we’re increasingly seeing cloud providers team up with three (or more) partners for co-sell motions and joint GTM efforts. 

It’s a smart play: Power-of-3 messaging and deliverables amplify reach, showcase end-to-end value, and create a unified story that sellers can rally around. It’s also crucial as organizations push AI initiatives and expand industry solutions. But three brands means three tones, three agendas, and three sets of priorities. What should be a simple, powerful story can easily become complicated and hard to follow without the right marketing support. 

Start with clarity 

At the end of the day, customers want clarity. Sellers need consistent, repeatable messaging that shows how partnerships solve real business challenges. Throw three parties together, and it’s easy to end up with three competing messages. 

The challenge we see most often with power-of-3 messaging is that each partner wants equal visibility and weight. That’s understandable, but it can easily lead to imbalance or dilution. One brand ends up driving the story while the others fade into the background. To avoid this, partners need to approach messaging with shared intent from the start:  

• What outcome are we solving for, together? 
• What does each partner contribute to that outcome?  

When this alignment happens, a unified story can start to emerge.  

Turn clarity into collaboration 

Once partners are aligned, storytelling becomes strategy. At 2A, we help cloud providers and partners do the heavy lifting at this stage. We lovingly call it “Tetris-ing” the story. Each partner comes with its own set of proof points and priorities. Our job is to pull those pieces into one cohesive value proposition that feels seamless, not stitched together. We know how to balance visibility between partners and weave together cross-departmental expertise. Once you’ve turned three brand voices into one clear message, the next step is to bring it to life. 

From collaboration to sales momentum 

With foundational messaging in place, it’s easy to spin up new assets and campaigns—things like ebooks, pitch decks, solution briefs, or sales kits. That’s the real win of power-of-3 messaging: It shortens the time between collaboration and pipeline momentum for all three partners. 

At 2A, we help partners find their shared voice so they can sell, scale, and lead together. And we can do it in pairs or triads—or hey, even a quad squad. 

By Jack Foraker, Michelle Najarian

Image by Nicole Todd

When it comes to tailoring marketing materials for specific industries (think healthcare, manufacturing, or financial services), there’s a quick-fix trap many teams use: find and replace. Swap “customer” for “patient.” Change “supply chain” to “retail.” Call it a day. 

There’s just one problem: your audience can tell when you’re not quite speaking their language. 

The results of this find-and-replace approach are serviceable, but we’ve seen them fall flat in the market—where every B2B product seems to be talking to everyone. Industry audiences expect more than cosmetic changes. They want tools and tech that make them better at their job. A healthcare CMO isn’t looking for a generic promise of efficiency; they want to know how your solution helps providers save time with electronic records or streamlined patient interactions. A financial services audience might be less interested in speeding up internal processes and more interested in how you maintain regulatory compliance. Without that level of specificity, your content risks sounding broad, like it’s for everyone. And when it’s for everyone, it’s forgettable. 

Try building a better burger 

The better approach is to create scalable assets that can flex across industries without losing its human edge. We think of it as building a hamburger: the buns are always the same, but the fillings and condiments can be easily swapped out to suit specific preferences. Extra cheese? Veggie burger? Just like different eaters have distinct tastes and dietary needs, different industries have unique expectations, priorities, and challenges. 

In practical terms, this means the structure of your datasheet, ebook, or webinar can remain consistent across industries, while the middle layers—the use cases, proof points, customer stories, and more—can be tailored for each vertical. 

• Bun: Intro that sets the scene and defines the customer’s challenge
• Burger: Use cases and proof point specific to the industry
• Toppings: Real-world customer success stories
• Bun: Conclusion that distills the value of your product 

This repeatability gives marketers the best of both worlds: efficiency in production and authenticity in messaging. Instead of rushing to retrofit broad assets at the last minute, you’ve got a strategic messaging plan that scales and resonates. 

Assets that adapt to every audience 

It pays to speak the industry lingo. We’ve seen this firsthand. By interviewing subject matter experts, tailoring messaging to sub-personas, and recognizing how different verticals prioritize outcomes, audiences can better see themselves in the marketing. 

We’ve seen clients get a lot of mileage out of our industry-ready approach, and the messaging and positioning frameworks (MPFs) behind it, for this exact reason. An MPF ensures each message reflects the right challenges, vocabulary, and value drivers for the audience, while scalable assets can be created quickly across verticals.  

There’s power in speaking someone’s language like this. It builds trust and gives buyers the confidence to advocate for your solution inside their organizations. For marketers, that means moving beyond quick fixes and investing in a repeatable—dare we say delicious?—framework that balances efficiency with authenticity. And, for us at 2A, it means helping teams create materials that both reach and resonate with industry audiences. 

By Jack Foraker

Image by Jenni Lydell

Program and traffic manager Marita keeps consulting, design, and storytelling at 2A running like a well-rehearsed show. Just as she charts the stars in astrology, Marita blends strategy with her arts background. She ensures every client project is aligned, both cosmically and creatively—one task, one timeline, and one perfectly curated Figma board at a time. 

Act I: Setting the stage 

Our story begins in college, where Marita majored in theater. As a playwright, she draws inspiration from legends such as Anna Deavere Smith, August Wilson, Henrik Ibsen, and Suzan-Lori Parks. Through her studies, Marita learned that theater production is about much more than a well-crafted scene: everything that happens behind the scenes is just as essential. 

While Marita continues to enjoy theater (and hopes to one day stage her own adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People), at that time, she knew there were future acts to follow—acts that would take her talents beyond the stage. Little did she know that her theater experiences would neatly set the stage for all kinds of future productions. 

Act II: Scene change to project management 

After a few years as a teaching artist, Marita moved into arts leadership and nonprofit project management. She learned that the skills she’d honed during her theater tenure were just as applicable offstage. The job titles may have changed, but the core of her work remained the same. 

“In theater,” she said, “you’re managing an actual production. But when you’re building an asset in the business world, they call that a production, too. You still have to manage a budget, a timeline, reporting, and tracking. It’s the same process, just a different medium.” 

Marita then joined the corporate world of management consulting, where she had the opportunity to bring together consultants, designers, and writers to build creative assets. She worked with world-renowned brands and nonprofits, including Goodwill, Nike, Starbucks, and Color of Change. 

She loved the visibility her role provided into every step of the creative process, serving as a crucial link between teams. As she coordinated the production of off-site meetings, keynotes, and client assets, Marita combined an artistic eye with project management expertise. The only thing better than a beautiful deliverable? A beautiful deliverable that’s delivered early. 

Act III: Keeping creatives and clients cosmically aligned 

With her interest in astrology, Marita brings a unique sense of insight to program management at 2A. Just as astrology tracks the movement of stars and planets, Marita carefully considers every moving part of a project to ensure that teams and clients are perfectly aligned. Her ability to connect the dots across timelines, project goals, and client needs means no detail goes untracked. For every 2A deliverable she manages, Marita directs production so that results align with the big picture. 

Whether you’re launching a new campaign or crafting your next case study, Marita will guide your project with the precision and clarity it deserves, sans drama. The show must go on, after all. And with Marita behind the scenes, the stars of success are aligned.

By Jack Foraker

Image by Brandon Conboy

Storyteller Dre has a knack for embedding client stories with technological expertise—and for being in the right place at the right time. As an English major, Dre happened to live below a floor of computer science folks in her college dorms. This proximity helped uncover her aptitude for not only Jane Austen novels, but also operating systems. Naturally, she tacked on a minor in computer science. Also while in college, Dre worked at a coffee shop in downtown Eugene, Oregon, which was conveniently located opposite a small magazine publisher. After getting to know the publisher’s employees (and their morning coffee orders), she landed a job as their newest assistant editor and web developer. 

Bringing language arts to coding languages, and vice versa 

After a stint in Los Angeles working for the RAND Corporation (yes, that one) and Frank Gehry (yes, that one), Dre returned to the Pacific Northwest to pursue digital marketing in the tech industry. She worked at Amazon, which was seeking someone who could write both advertising copy and XML. Then she switched to Nintendo, where the company gained over six years of her talents. In that time, Dre expanded Nintendo’s West Coast marketing team, enhancing the brand’s web presence with dynamic announcements and immersive digital experiences. 

But something was still missing. While her day-to-day work was fun and challenging, Dre sought a role that would return her to writing. So, she transitioned from digital marketing to technology storytelling—or rather, at 2A, she found a role that combines both. These days, you’ll find Dre creating client assets that link compelling copy with deep technical expertise. 

And when she’s not behind the keyboard? 

Outside work, Dre’s hobbies lean toward the DIY, from writing an arts-and-crafts column in a local Seattle magazine to acrylic painting and retiling her bathroom. “I like projects where I can say, let me just see if I can do this and then keep trying until I figure out how to do it,” she says.

Dre brings that same DIY spirit to all projects. Whether you’re after the perfect drywall mount or creative collateral that captures your vision, Dre has an answer. And if she doesn’t, she isn’t afraid to dig into the nitty gritty to find it for you.