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 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 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.

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.