By Nora Bright

Image by Jenni Lydell

Clients are increasingly asking me how our recruiters use AI at 2A Recruiting & Staffing.

The truth is, AI is making it easier for candidates to apply to more jobs, leading to a surge in applications, and recruiters need good tools to sort through them. However, the reality of how we use AI is more nuanced than many people assume.

We use AI to make our process more efficient, but we don’t use it for making decisions about which candidates to phone screen, or which to pass along to our clients. To better understand what AI recruiting tools we use, it helps to differentiate between automation and AI:

Automation: Ways to improve efficiency and organization, but not evaluate candidates.

• Calendaring
• Email templates
• Knockout questions in our ATS (multiple choice questions that filter candidates, like “Do you live on the West Coast?” if a PT time zone is required)

AI: A synthesizer of information, a thinking partner, and a speedy writer

• Drafting job descriptions with inclusive, effective language, using our 2A template
• Getting us up to speed on new industries or roles
• Brainstorming candidate profiles and sourcing strategies
• Drafting or refining candidate summaries sent to clients

Do you use AI for resume screening?

The answer is no, not yet. AI tools for reviewing resumes just aren’t that good right now. Our ATS has an AI resume screening tool that I’ve piloted, and I’ve often found myself disagreeing with it. Beyond sometimes failing to see a basic match between role and candidate, the tool also doesn’t know everything I do about a particular team or a manager that I may have gained from years of experience working with them. For creative roles, it doesn’t work well at all. For example, it can’t review a graphic design portfolio or watch a video reel. And many resumes we get are unreadable by our ATS.

Of course, the potential for bias in AI looms heavy in my mind as well, and I’m mindful of not perpetuating inequities that already exist in hiring. There’s growing research showing that AI resume screening tools can reflect and even amplify historical biases in hiring data. And as a recruiter, the idea that I might miss the perfect candidate is enough to keep me up at night. Ultimately, it doesn’t seem that the benefits outweigh the risks.

AI can’t replace the human side of recruiting

I certainly don’t use any AI tools to interview candidates on our behalf. I see a big part of my job as building relationships with our candidates, so these tools seem counterproductive. I have tried out AI notetaking tools during phone screens, especially for technical roles where there’s lots of technical details. Generally, we avoid them because being recorded and transcribed can make candidates feel awkward, and can make it harder to build real relationships.

So much of what makes a great recruiter is their relationships with candidates. The best recruiters I’ve worked with know their candidates deeply. At a previous firm, we used to joke that one of our senior recruiters could tell you not just a candidate’s career history, but the names of their kids—and their pets. When it comes to negotiating a tricky deal, or getting a candidate to lay their cards on the table when it matters, candidate relationships are extremely important.

I really believe in 2A’s focus on kindness and taking care of our people, and for me that starts with the candidate experience. I’m a “helper” at heart, and giving one job seeker, who might be navigating a brutal job search, a good experience, makes me feel I’ve done something meaningful that day. And it’s also the part of the job that’s hardest to replicate with technology.

Automation and AI can speed things up, but ultimately the human touch is still just as essential in our recruiting process.

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.

By Abby Breckenridge

Image by Nicole Todd

“Violence against women affects me as a human being—my message shouldn’t be a feminist message. It’s a universal message.” — Bad Bunny

Is it a cheap trick to open with a Bad Bunny quote? Probably. Am I above it? Certainly not.

As a women’s studies minor and lifelong feminist, I have spent a lot of time mulling over feminist issues, and I firmly believe in the concept behind what Bad Bunny is highlighting here. Most things we call women’s issues are just human issues and segmenting them off usually does their cause a disservice.

I feel the same way about parental leave. It’s on all of us to help make sure folks can have and raise kids, and adequate parental leave is part of that.

In the staffing agency world, benefits like parental leave are rare. Most staffing models treat staffing consultants and contract workers as temporary resources: deliver the work, finish the contract, move on. Benefits are minimal, and life events are often treated as inconveniences to the system.

But having children isn’t an inconvenience. It’s how societies continue. If we want thriving communities, people must be able to have and raise children without sacrificing their careers. That responsibility has not been picked up by our government, so for now it belongs to all of us, including companies.

That’s why we provide paid parental leave to our staffing consultants.

Our team is made up of experts who help our clients ship campaigns, launch products, and scale content programs. They’re professionals with careers and lives. Supporting them through major life moments is good policy. And it’s good for business.

People do their best work when they know they’re valued as humans, not just as billable hours. And by respectfully handling our consultants’ parental leave needs, including temporary replacements and overlap time for handoffs, we’re also helping our clients. Win/win.

By Guy Schoonmaker

Image by Nicole Todd

If you’re a marketer in big tech right now, you’ve probably heard the question: “Can you use AI to build this instead of hiring an agency?”

It usually comes up when you’re asking for budget for a pitch deck, a gated asset, or maybe a case study.

The honest answer is: AI can help a lot. But it can’t replace the process.

AI is useful and saves time at several points across the content creation lifecycle. It’s great for accelerating research and summarizing source material, and it can help surface possible angles for a story. It can assist with early drafting, tightening language, and generating variations of messaging. Used well, it can speed up the mechanics of content creation. (Used poorly, it can suck up the user’s time in a different way. Or worse, create a terrible asset.)

Making the story matter

Moving from an idea to a finished asset still takes skilled humans. And maybe that tech marketer has the skills to guide the AI. But do they have the time?

Good marketing content requires judgment. Someone has to define the point of view. Someone has to decide what’s actually interesting to the audience. They also have to ensure the story supports the brand and helps differentiate it from competitive solutions in the market.

And when it comes to visual design—especially for assets with strong, recognizable brands—AI tools can assist with ideation and photo editing, but they’re not yet producing the kind of story-driven design that represents a major tech brand.

So when someone asks whether AI can build the asset, the right answer is: AI can help. And it still takes skill and time to make something great.

Helping teams move faster

That’s where we come in. At 2A, we combine experienced storytellers, consultants, and designers with modern tools to meet the pace of today’s tech teams. When it makes sense, we use AI to accelerate brainstorming and streamline drafts. It also helps us explore design directions more efficiently. That allows us to spend more time refining ideas with you and delivering work that’s thoughtful and precise.

Because the goal is to make content that resonates. And we can help.

By Nora Bright, Andrea Swangard

Image by Nicole Todd

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)
• Partner marketing (how to activate demand)
• Enablement (how sellers and partners execute)
• 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!

By Andrea Swangard

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

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.