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Sharp opinions. Useful perspectives. No recycled agency fluff.
We write about branding, marketing, creative work, modern business culture and the occasional thing keeping marketers awake at night.
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Episode 4: Executive Governance of the Workforce
In episode 4 of The Talent Ledger, we talk about workforce governance, accountability and why workforce investment should probably be treated with the same seriousness as any other major business investment.
Because adding more meetings is not technically a growth strategy.
Even though some organizations remain committed to testing that theory.
Chase Grammer
May 211 min read


Episode 3: Moving HR from Activity to Outcomes
Work used to be easier to define.
You hired employees, people sat in offices, HR tracked headcount, Finance tracked payroll, everybody pretended the org chart explained how work actually happened.
Cute.
Chase Grammer
May 211 min read


Episode 2: Internal Communications as Behavior Change
Most internal comms fail for a pretty simple reason: organizations keep confusing sending information with changing behavior.
A company can publish beautifully branded updates every week and still leave employees wondering:
“Okay… but what are we actually supposed to do differently?”

Ed Davis
May 211 min read


Episode 1: Trust, Skills and AI Are Repricing Work
Most organizations are trying to deal with all three at the same time while still operating like it’s 2019 with slightly more Zoom fatigue.
Teams are overloaded. Managers are stretched thin. “Ready talent” often is not actually ready. And AI is changing the value of certain tasks faster than companies can redesign the work around them.
Which creates a bigger question: what exactly are organizations paying for now?

Ed Davis
May 211 min read


AI doesn't fix broken fundamentals: Why strategy + governance beat 'more content'
The speed of the modern market is a lie.
Growth-stage founders and multi-market CMOs are currently obsessed with a single metric: volume. The promise of generative AI has turned this obsession into a frantic race. The logic seems sound on the surface. If content is the engine of growth, then more content must equal more growth.
It does not.

Ed Davis
Apr 305 min read


Understanding why B2B isn’t the consolation prize of advertising careers
Ad Age’s recent spotlight on the rising demand for B2B marketers was an encouraging read, and has no doubt piqued the interest of many people at mainstream agencies thinking about their next career move.

Ed Davis
Apr 162 min read


Five Common “Entrepreneurial Delusions”
Entrepreneurship can be an exhilarating rollercoaster ride—one where bold ideas and big dreams can catapult a small venture to success or crash it into the ground. As a founder on my fourth and fifth businesses, I’ve experienced plenty on both sides.

Ed Davis
Apr 25 min read


Part 4 || The C-Suite's People Problem Isn't "Soft". It's Financial Negligence
Part 4 of a four-part series on the forces reshaping work — and the operating models built to survive them.
Most executive teams treat workforce decisions like weather: complain about the conditions, issue a few policies, then act surprised when the forecast doesn’t improve.
Meanwhile, “people” has quietly become the biggest investment line in the enterprise — and often the least rigorously governed.

Peter Lyall
Apr 17 min read


Part 3 || What This Means For HR & Talent: From Activity To Outcomes
Part 3 of a four-part series on the forces reshaping work — and the operating models built to survive them.
People have become the biggest investment line in most organisations — and the least rigorously managed. HR sits at the centre of that contradiction. The function built to steward talent is still running on a programme-centric, employee-only architecture, while the workforce it’s meant to manage has expanded into a sprawling ecosystem of employees, contractors, consu

Malcolm O'Neal
Mar 257 min read


Part 2 || Internal Comms Has A New Job: Make The Organization Behave Differently
Part 2 of a four-part series on the forces reshaping work — and the operating models built to survive them.
For years, internal communications has been treated like the in-house newsroom: executives decide, comms writes, employees receive. That model didn’t work brilliantly even when careers were linear, the office was the centre of gravity, and culture could be managed with a decent slide deck and a quarterly town hall.
Now it’s borderline malpractice.

Ed Davis
Mar 184 min read


Part 1 || The Three Critical Forces Reshaping Your Talent Strategy
Part 1 of a four-part series on the forces reshaping work — and the operating models built to survive them.
People have become the biggest investment line in most organisations — with their costs often the least rigorously managed.
Leaders are debating where work happens, how many days count as “hybrid”, and whether flexibility is a perk or a policy. That debate makes for good theatre. But it’s not the real issue.

Peter Lyall
Mar 116 min read


INTERVIEW: Ed Davis, International Client Relationships, BBN International
In this interview, we aim to uncover the key initiatives that have propelled BBN's success and know how his utilization of AI changed the traditional marketing strategies into an advanced, successful one.

Ed Davis
Feb 25 min read


For gen Z creatives graduating into chaos, B2B is a smart first move
If consumer advertising is Hollywood, B2B is more like YouTube

Chase Grammer
May 5, 20254 min read


6 ways to harness Gen Z’s intensity at work
Gen Zers want to add an extra touch, extra emotion, extra creativity and extra parts of themselves into everything. It’s like a survival tactic as they search for purpose and stability, but it can be turned to benefit if harnessed the right way.
Here are some things I’ve learned as a millennial mentoring younger colleagues:

Chase Grammer
Nov 18, 20244 min read
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