Marcel Eberhardt writes about employer branding, workplace culture and People & Culture. Eberhardt's posts also cover how B2B professional-services firms can make sales proposals more persuasive.
Marcel Eberhardt writes about employer branding, workplace culture and People & Culture, and shares ideas on selling B2B professional services.
Their central argument: a credible employer brand starts with a real workplace identity, expressed specifically—not generic recruiting claims or more campaign output.
They connect clear thinking about culture and communication to business outcomes, from hiring and retention to proposals that help clients make decisions.
Eberhardt makes abstract business problems concrete with memorable frameworks and examples.
In a post on “cultural debt,” they map how a poor hiring fit can affect a team over time, estimate the costs, and link prevention to honest employer branding and better hiring decisions.
The figures are an illustrative calculation, not a universal benchmark.
[Read their post on cultural debt]
Their employer-branding posts press for substance over polish.
They argue that claims such as “we value innovation” may be true but are too broad to help candidates decide, and that AI can multiply generic language without fixing the lack of a clear offer.
They also make the case that workplace identity and culture shape reputation before campaigns can amplify it.
They apply the same practical lens to People & Culture, arguing for dedicated employer-branding roles rather than treating the work as an add-on to recruiting.
In a separate post on B2B professional-services sales, they describe proposals as decision tools, outline a detailed proposal structure, and report improved sales results based on their firm’s experience.
This sales material offers a counterpoint to their mainly employer-branding and workplace-culture writing.
They also describe a People & Culture playbook as the product of more than a year’s work, outline its subject areas and scale, and present it as a way to connect HR with sales and marketing. Read their post about the playbook
Marcel Eberhardt’s posts connect employer branding to the reality of a company’s culture: campaigns and polished claims cannot make an indistinct or unhealthy workplace convincing.
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They argue for honest, specific messages, clear ownership of employer-branding work and treating hiring mistakes as costs that compound. In a separate strand, Eberhardt presents the sales proposal as the main decision-making document for B2B professional-services work.
Build the culture before buying the campaign
Eberhardt argues that employer branding should follow from a real employer identity, not substitute for one.
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Without a culture people value, companies keep paying for campaigns, videos, consultants and media while struggling to retain hires. A strong culture, by contrast, can generate pride, belonging and word of mouth.
One post sketches a funnel of 1,000 clicks, 10 applications, one hire, and that hire leaving after eight months. It closes with the claim that culture builds reputation, reputation builds brand, and brand builds magnetism.
Say something specific instead of scaling generic copy
Eberhardt’s criticism of AI in employer branding is not a rejection of the technology.
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They argue it can multiply interchangeable messages when a company has not worked out what it genuinely offers candidates. Familiar claims may not be false, but they are too general to help someone decide.
Eberhardt cites phrases such as “we are a dynamic, collaborative team” and “we offer growth opportunities” as polished language that may not distinguish one employer from another. They make a related case against claims like “we’re like a family”: honest positioning may put some people off, but can attract those who are a better fit.
The AI post extends Eberhardt’s recurring case for honesty: the issue is not just whether a claim is true, but whether it gives candidates a meaningful reason to choose.
Eberhardt frames the damage from a poor cultural fit as more than recruitment and onboarding costs.
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A team may compensate for the mismatch, lose performance and risk losing other employees; the effects can remain after the hire leaves. They recommend honest employer branding and interviews that assess cultural fit to reduce that risk.
In a post built around a conversation with a CEO, Eberhardt estimates a mis-hire’s cost at more than €265,000.
The post traces team irritation, compensation and frustration, then itemises salary, recruiting, onboarding, lost productivity and the possible departure of a strong employee.
These figures are Eberhardt’s illustrative calculation, not a general benchmark.
Eberhardt argues that employer branding loses focus when it is simply added to a recruiter’s workload.
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They imagine a team divided among specialisms such as content strategy, positioning, copywriting, analytics and employee experience, with recruiting and administrative tasks remaining distinct. This is a direction to test, not a model every company can adopt immediately.
Eberhardt’s proposed 2030 team includes roles for talent demand generation, nurturing, employer-brand copywriting and direction. They also list work those roles should not have to absorb, including interviews, HR administration and employment-law tasks.
In a separate strand from Eberhardt’s employer-branding posts, they argue that a B2B professional-services proposal is more than a short recap of a pitch.
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It may be the main document a client uses to make a decision, so it should explain the client’s situation, the approach, risks and success factors before presenting the commercial offer. Eberhardt says preparation and analysis matter more than writing it quickly.
Eberhardt describes a proposal structure that runs from a management summary and project understanding through approach, timeline and risk analysis to work examples and the commercial offer. They report that the firm’s offer-to-win rate rose from under 10% to 87% while average revenue per proposal increased from about €10,000 to €68,000; these are results from their personal experience.
Answers the question “does culture have a price tag, and how do I argue that to a budget holder?”
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Start here for the clearest example of Marcel Eberhardt turning a soft HR topic into a cost model.
Marcel Eberhardt retells a conversation with a CEO who hired someone in October, watched them leave in March, and described the six months in between as "difficult."
The post gives that difficulty a name — cultural debt — and a line-item cost model: 60,000€ salary, 15,000€ recruiting, 20,000€ onboarding, roughly 80,000€ of lost productivity in a five-person team over 18 months, about 90,000€ for one strong employee who leaves because of it, and leadership trust damaged on top.
It walks through four phases — irritation in months 1–3, the team compensating in 4–6, frustration and resignation thoughts in 7–12, relief when the person finally leaves in 13–18 — and argues the interest keeps accruing after the person is gone.
The stated remedies are honest employer branding that filters earlier, cultural-fit interviews, and the willingness to say "doesn't fit" even when the CV is strong.
For brands planning a campaign
The line-item model is reusable for recruitment-marketing clients who need a financial argument for culture work: it turns a “bad hire” into a spreadsheet figure, suited to content for founders and HR leads. The post also offers counter-arguments and remedies, so a campaign can pair the cost story with a prevention offer.
Answers the question “what does this person say about B2B sales rather than HR?”
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Read this for the professional-services proposal argument and the numbers behind it.
A three-year account of rebuilding how proposals are written at a professional-services firm.
It lists six false assumptions held at the start — that sales works the same in SaaS, DTC and B2B services; that a proposal only summarises the pitch; that proposals must be short; that follow-ups save deals; that a proposal can be written "quickly"; and that the client will build the argument themselves.
The jump to an 87% offer-to-win rate came from treating the proposal as the primary sales tool, with a fixed structure: 00 management summary, 01 project understanding with scope in and out, 02 approach built on the "stråling" method, 03 success factors, risks and prevention, 04 the world of stråling, 05 work examples, 06 commercial offer.
The stated results: offer-to-win rate from 10% to 87%, average revenue per proposal from 10k to 68k, about eight times more time spent per proposal, but the same effort per win and six times more value per project.
For brands planning a campaign
A ready-made outline for sales-enablement content at a professional-services agency: a proposal template, the six assumptions as a diagnostic checklist, and a before-and-after metrics story. Readers can check the figures against the original rather than take them on trust.
Answers the question “how should employer branding be staffed, and where does it sit next to recruiting?”
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Useful when deciding what to sell or hire for.
Marcel Eberhardt argues that employer branding remains a cost centre because it is treated as an add-on to recruiting roles (“a good employer branding manager can also recruit”).
The alternative is a set of roles defined by discipline: talent demand generation, talent nurturing and talent-pool/CRM work, employer content strategy, employer-brand copywriting, employer-brand positioning, employee experience design, employer-brand analytics, and employer-brand direction.
The post also specifies what those roles should not cover: recruiting interviews, HR business partnering, labour law, HR administration, and contract design.
Eberhardt says the split is being tested in current projects and is not yet realistic for every company.
For brands planning a campaign
Offers an agency both a service catalogue and an org-design argument: the eight role names can become content pillars, while the list of “what employer branding should not do” positions the agency against generalist HR consultancies.
Answers the question “where does this person stand on AI-generated recruitment content?”
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Read it before deciding whether AI writing fits an employer-brand programme.
The post pits two camps against each other — AI as rescue and AI as threat — and rejects both.
The enemy is blandness: “dynamic, collaborative team,” “we value innovation and integrity,” and “growth opportunities” are not always false, which is exactly what makes them useless: they cannot drive a candidate decision.
Eberhardt warns that companies will produce this interchangeable language at industrial scale and mistake volume for a solved problem.
The post closes with the line that whoever had nothing to say now says it faster.
For brands planning a campaign
A strong opening for a campaign about content quality under AI pressure, and an agency positioning statement: sell what is worth saying, not more output. Pair it with the copy examples to keep the argument concrete.
Answers the question “why do employer-branding campaigns underperform when the culture is thin?”
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A short, quotable statement of the demand-side problem.
The claim: companies without a culture have to buy employer branding — campaigns, consultants, videos, paid media, awards.
Eberhardt sums up the result in a small funnel: 1,000 clicks to get 10 applications, 10 applications to make 1 hire, 1 hire who leaves after 8 months.
The alternative is what money cannot buy directly: pride, word of mouth, belonging, internal heroes and identity energy.
The chain is simple: culture builds reputation, reputation builds brand, brand builds magnetism.
The closing argument: building culture is the cheapest employer-branding hack, not campaigns.
For brands planning a campaign
A strong opening for a pitch that shifts budget from media buying to internal comms and culture work. It also sets the expectation that content alone will not fix a retention problem.
Answers the question “what tone should recruitment copy take?”
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Short and ready to use as a copywriting brief.
Marcel Eberhardt lists standard recruiting claims — “we're like a family,” “everyone can be themselves here,” “we work at eye level” — and says they prompt immediate disbelief.
The explanation is fear: that the truth is not attractive enough, that real culture is too polarising, that honesty costs talent.
The counter-claim is that honesty attracts and facade repels, summed up in the preferred line: “We are not for everyone.
But for the right ones, we are everything.”
For brands planning a campaign
A one-line brief for recruitment ad copy: replace universal claims with a specific, self-selecting message. Test the angle by writing a “not for everyone” statement for a client and comparing candidate responses.
Answers the question "is there a larger body of work behind these posts?"
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It is the nearest thing to a signature publication in the material reviewed, though the post itself is a giveaway announcement rather than a description of the book.
Marcel Eberhardt announces a giveaway of a hardcover People & Culture book created by many contributors: 750+ pages, more than 70 authors, 20 chapters on HR strategy, 11 on recruiting, 4 on onboarding and offboarding, 12 on retention, and 6 on employee development, based on a study with over 3,000 participants.
The named editors are Carsten Bode and Markus Milz, and the post states a normal price of 90€.
To enter, like the post, comment "Future HR," and follow or connect with Eberhardt.
The post is promotional.
For brands planning a campaign
Shows an existing engagement mechanic — comment-to-enter — and a possible partnership route around HR publishing. Base any book-related claims on the book or its publisher.
Eberhardt's central argument is that a weak employer identity has to be bought through campaigns, consultants, videos, paid media and awards.
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They describe the resulting loop: around 1,000 clicks produce 10 applications, 10 applications produce one hire, and that hire is gone after eight months.
An actual culture, by contrast, generates pride, word of mouth, belonging and internal role models.
The post calls building culture the cheapest employer branding measure available and treats employer branding as a consequence of culture, not a marketing input.
Contrasts an expensive, bought version of employer branding with an organic one, listing what an authentic culture produces that a campaign cannot.
For brands planning a campaign
Recruitment marketing agencies have to work with this position, whatever their pitch. It opens up content on employer brand foundations, culture audits and messaging before media spend, while proposals led by paid reach or award entries run against Eberhardt's stated view.
AI is not the problem; interchangeable language is
On the debate over AI in employer branding, Eberhardt says both camps are partly right and partly wrong.
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The problem is not the tool but using it to avoid saying anything worth saying.
The symptom is generic phrasing: 'a dynamic, collaborative team', 'we value innovation and integrity', 'we offer growth opportunities'.
Such lines are dangerous because they are not always false, but too general to help anyone decide.
Eberhardt predicts companies will produce this language at industrial scale across career pages, feeds, campaigns, outbound recruiting and interview preparation documents, mistaking volume for a solved problem.
Uses familiar recruiting slogans to show why they fail as decision inputs, framing the outcome as a years-old strategic failure that first surfaces in language.
Eberhardt does not reject AI tools: the post says people with something to say can now multiply it faster. The criticism is aimed at using AI in place of a real offer to candidates.
For brands planning a campaign
The agency can build content around voice, positioning and rewriting generic hiring copy, and credibly position itself against automated sameness. Framing AI as a rescue would run against the post's argument; framing it as a tool paired with a real point of view would not.
Eberhardt calls common recruiting claims — 'we're like a family', 'everyone here can be themselves', 'we work at eye level' — statements almost nobody means, and attributes them to fear: that the truth is not attractive enough, that a real culture polarises, that honesty costs talent.
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Their experience points the other way: honesty attracts, facade repels. The line they want companies to adopt is that they are not for everyone, but for the right people they are everything.
For brands planning a campaign
This is the copy-level expression of the culture argument and the most directly usable material for messaging projects: positioning that says who a company is not for, and recruitment copy that replaces family metaphors with specific, checkable claims. It also supports content on candidate-facing honesty as a filtering tool, not a risk.
Eberhardt recounts a conversation with a CEO whose poorly fitting hire left after six months, then builds a cost model around what they call cultural debt: salary around €60,000, recruiting around €15,000, onboarding around €20,000, a 15–30% team performance drop, roughly €80,000 in lost productivity across a five-person team over 18 months, and about €90,000 if one strong employee leaves as a result — over €265,000 in total.
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The month-by-month timeline runs from the team noticing something is off in months 1–3, to compensating in 4–6, losing key people to frustration in 7–12, and feeling relief when the person finally leaves in 13–18.
The interest remains after they are gone.
The proposed prevention: honest employer branding that filters before hiring, cultural-fit interviews alongside skills assessment, and the willingness to say 'doesn't fit'.
A staged compounding timeline and itemised bill that show leadership how the interest accrues, rather than presenting a single one-off loss.
The figures come from Eberhardt's calculation around one reported case, not a published benchmark. The post presents them as an illustration of the mechanism.
For brands planning a campaign
This gives the agency a numbers-led route to CEOs and finance leads, not just HR, and a reusable format: cost breakdowns, month-by-month timelines and retention arguments for employer branding spend. It also links hiring quality to the culture and honesty themes elsewhere in the corpus.
Another strand of the corpus covers B2B professional-services sales.
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Eberhardt describes three years spent moving from under 10% to an 87% offer-to-win rate and raising average revenue per proposal from roughly €10,000 to €68,000.
They invested eight times more time per proposal, with the same effort per win but far more value per project.
The post lists six earlier false assumptions: that sales works the same across SaaS, DTC and B2B services; that a proposal merely summarises the pitch; that shorter is better; that follow-ups save deals; that proposals can be written quickly; and that the client derives the argument alone.
It then presents a fixed structure: 00 management summary, 01 project understanding, scope and key questions, 02 approach and phases with timeline and key methods, 03 critical success factors and risk analysis, 04 the world of stråling, 05 insights into the work, 06 the commercial offer.
A named, repeatable proposal structure with a clear rationale: the document carries the full line of reasoning because it is often the only basis for a decision once the pitch is over.
The rate and revenue figures come from one agency's experience, not a market benchmark.
For brands planning a campaign
A distinct audience and content strand: B2B professional-services firms, proposal templates, offer-writing walkthroughs, and the case that preparation and analysis drive most of the result. A recruitment marketing agency selling employer branding and sales enablement content could use it to reach the commercial side of a services firm, not just HR.
Specialist employer branding roles, not recruiting side tasks
Eberhardt sketches an employer branding team in 2030, starting from today’s pattern: few dedicated employer branding managers, with many recruiters taking on the work as an extra.
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The post outlines eight specialist roles: talent demand generation, talent nurturing and community, employer content strategy, employer brand copywriting, employer brand positioning, employee experience design, employer brand analytics, and employer brand direction.
It also lists five areas those roles should deliberately leave to others: recruiting interviews and placements, HR business partnering, employment law, HR administration, and contract design.
The argument: employer branding remains a cost centre because it is treated as work anyone can do on the side.
Defines each role by its capabilities and explicit refusals, and says the split is being tested in current projects. The reported effect: people stop doing everything a little and find one thing they do well.
Eberhardt says plainly that the model is not implementable for every company today.
For brands planning a campaign
Strong material for HR leadership audiences on organisational design, role scoping and making the case for dedicated employer branding headcount. It also gives the agency an advisory role beyond campaign execution.
Eberhardt announced a co-authored HR reference book of more than 750 pages, drawing on 70-plus contributors.
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Its chapters span HR strategy, recruiting, onboarding and offboarding, employee retention, and employee development, and it is based on a study of more than 3,000 participants. The post presents the book’s case for treating HR as connected to sales and marketing rather than as a silo, and gives away two copies through a like-comment-follow mechanic.
Community giveaway as a distribution tactic: readers like the post, comment with a set phrase, and follow or connect to enter.
For brands planning a campaign
Two distinct opportunities: co-marketing or sponsorship around an HR reference format with a large contributor network, and a giveaway mechanic the agency could adapt for audience-building posts. The book also offers a concrete, citable work to anchor a profile or pitch.
The seven LinkedIn posts name two business connections.
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The clearest is stråling, the professional-services firm whose proposal method and project work Eberhardt describes using "we".
Ask whether they own the firm, work there or advise it.
Eberhardt also contributed to a People & Culture anthology edited by Carsten Bode and Markus Milz; its giveaway asks readers to comment "Future HR".
The other five posts comment on employer branding, culture, HR roles and recruiting language, and name no employers, clients, sponsors, agencies or vendors.
stråling
Disclosed partnership
Eberhardt describes rebuilding a B2B proposal process around the "stråling Methode", referring to "Die Welt von stråling", "Einblicke in unsere Arbeit" and "wir".
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They report raising the offer-to-win rate from under 10% to over 87% and revenue per proposal from about €10k to €68k, while spending about eight times longer on each proposal. The post does not clarify whether they own the firm, work there or partner with it; ask about their relationship to stråling.
Eberhardt contributed to a hardcover People & Culture anthology: over 750 pages, more than 70 authors and 59 chapters covering HR strategy, recruiting, onboarding and offboarding, retention and development.
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They credit editors Carsten Bode and Markus Milz. Eberhardt ran a LinkedIn giveaway of two copies (list price €90), with entry by commenting "Future HR", and describes the book as the first to treat HR alongside sales and marketing rather than as a silo.
Marcel Eberhardt writes short German LinkedIn posts in two areas.
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The larger strand covers employer branding: what a company's culture actually offers candidates, why bought campaigns cannot make up for a weak employer identity, why generic recruiting phrases fail, and what a poor-fit hire costs a team.
A separate strand covers B2B professional-services selling, including a full proposal structure and the reasoning behind it.
Start with the employer-branding posts on culture and honest hiring language; they set out the position underpinning the rest of the work.
Then read the proposal post if the sales side matters more.
The tags below group the posts by subject, specialism, format and audience; the creators alongside offer adjacent German-language perspectives on these themes.
Both write for people who run teams and hiring, and both examine AI's arrival in everyday work as a management and enablement task rather than a tool purchase.
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Heininger's posts follow a structure familiar from Eberhardt's: a blunt counterclaim, then a list of stages or checks rather than general encouragement.
Heininger writes about how companies adopt and run AI, questioning reported efficiency gains and treating a new AI agent like a new hire who needs a job description, system access, onboarding and a probation period. Eberhardt's AI post focuses on message quality in employer branding; their other work covers culture, hiring costs and proposals rather than workflow adoption.
Both focus on how employers treat people: honest communication, day-to-day leadership behaviour and whether someone stays.
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They write short, direct German posts, often built around a list or a repeated workplace situation, and address recruiters and hiring managers. Both use ordinary moments rather than statistics to make their point.
Schröder writes from inside the recruiting conversation: the sentences leaders use or avoid, and what drains motivation over years in a role. Eberhardt approaches similar ground from the brand side, covering what a company says about itself before anyone applies, alongside cost breakdowns and team-design arguments that Schröder's posts do not cover.
Both teach leadership and buying decisions through a concrete story, then distil it into a memorable sequence or principle.
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Levitan builds posts around a basketball coach's book or a cupcake shop; Eberhardt builds them around a CEO conversation or a badly written proposal. Both write in German for a business audience and work in other formats too: Levitan has a podcast, while Eberhardt contributed to a large HR reference book.
Levitan's examples come from sports coaching, retail and e-commerce; his conclusions focus on setting the goal first, choosing the right people and removing choice friction in shops.
Eberhardt focuses on employer branding: culture, recruiting language, the cost of a mis-hire and how an employer-branding team should be organised.
Marcel Eberhardt’s posts speak to employer-branding, People & Culture and HR professionals, with a related thread on B2B sales proposals.
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They may suit campaigns focused on employer identity, workplace culture or recruitment marketing.
The posts do not identify followers by job, seniority or industry.
Before booking, ask for recent LinkedIn audience data relevant to the campaign and, if professional roles matter, a documented audience survey or other information about followers’ occupations and seniority.
Marcel Eberhardt's posts here do not describe a sponsorship, paid placement, affiliate arrangement or media-kit offer, so no concrete partnership format is stated.
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The posts show Eberhardt publishing employer branding, workplace culture, HR organisation and B2B proposal content on LinkedIn, and promoting a 750-page People & Culture handbook compiled with more than 70 contributors and editors Carsten Bode and Markus Milz, which was offered as a giveaway of two copies in exchange for a like, a comment and a follow.
That giveaway is an audience-growth mechanic, not a documented commercial placement, and it is the only promotional exchange in these posts.
The posts end with questions to the audience rather than contact details, booking instructions or rate information, so no inquiry route is stated.
Treat sponsorship availability, format and pricing as unconfirmed and settle them directly before committing budget.
Brief A (hypothetical): a German-speaking B2B professional-services firm — a consultancy or agency of roughly 20 to 100 people — wants sales-enablement content to improve proposal quality and its offer-to-win rate. The readers are partners, principals and business-development leads. Deliverables: LinkedIn-native posts in German and one reusable working document the sales team can apply to live bids.
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Reasons
The proposal post provides a ready-made content spine: six assumptions held before the change — that sales works the same in SaaS, DTC and B2B services; that a proposal only summarises the pitch; that shorter is always better; that follow-ups save deals; that a proposal can be written quickly; and that the client builds the argument alone. Each can become a self-contained post, diagnostic checklist or workshop prompt.
It supplies a before-and-after narrative with figures readers can check in the original: offer-to-win rate from under 10% to 87%, average revenue per proposal from about €10,000 to €68,000, around eight times more time spent per proposal, and the stated result of the same effort per win but about six times more value per project.
The category match is explicit. The post singles out B2B professional services as requiring a different kind of trust from SaaS or DTC — the exact segment in the brief.
The material is already in German and suits LinkedIn: short claims, a numbered structure and a direct question to the reader at the end. It needs editing, not translation.
The published proposal structure — management summary, project understanding with in-scope and out-of-scope, approach and phases with timeline and key methods, success factors and risk analysis, the world of stråling, work examples, commercial offer — is a concrete artefact the firm can adapt. It gives the campaign something to give away, not just something to say.
Conditions
The 87% rate and revenue figures come from one agency's experience; they illustrate its results, not a market benchmark. Attribute them to that firm in any post that reuses them.
One post is the entire evidence base for this strand. There is no published template or client case study, and no evidence that the approach performed outside that agency. Present it as one firm's method, not a universal standard; ask for supporting examples before making broader claims.
The posts are opinion-led and question the reader rather than offer a service. Confirm separately whether Eberhardt will take a commercial engagement and on what terms.
Verdict
Strong fit for this brief, based on one strand of the published material. Eberhardt treats B2B proposal work as a distinct discipline, names the mistakes and publishes a numbered structure rather than a general opinion about selling. For a professional-services firm, that is directly usable as campaign copy and as an internal working document.
When to choose a specialist
Brief B (hypothetical): a recruitment marketing agency sells paid employer-branding campaigns — media buying, campaign production, video, award entries — to enterprise HR teams, and wants a creator to front its content and endorse that service mix.
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Reasons
Eberhardt's stated position is that companies without a culture have to buy employer branding through campaigns, consultants, videos, paid media and awards. They describe a loop of roughly 1,000 clicks to 10 applications, 10 applications to one hire, and that hire gone after eight months. They call building culture the cheapest employer-branding measure available, explicitly 'not campaigns'.
A second post attributes hidden costs to a hiring mistake rather than insufficient reach, with an itemised model of more than €265,000 built around one reported case. The argument favours spending on fit and culture, not media weight.
The posts do not describe a commercial format: none mentions sponsorship, paid placement, a rate card or media kit. The only promotional exchange is a giveaway of two copies of a handbook. Ask for pricing, deliverables and an inquiry route before proceeding.
The posts do not state audience composition. They show what Eberhardt discusses, not readers' jobs, seniority or industries. Ask for audience analytics before claiming reach is concentrated among enterprise HR decision-makers.
Eberhardt's figures are calculations from their own experience and one reported conversation, not published research or named client case studies. Before using them as campaign proof, ask for the underlying sources and permission to attribute them.
Reframe
The same creator could suit a recruitment-agency brief reframed around culture and positioning diagnostics rather than campaign buying — for example, message audits, honest recruitment copy or the cultural-debt cost argument used to move budget toward internal culture work. This keeps the agency's advisory work in scope without contradicting what Eberhardt has published.
Verdict
Poor fit as framed. The central published argument runs against the product being sold, so an endorsement campaign would contradict material the audience can find in a few clicks. The same creator could fit a differently framed brief, described below.
A worked campaign example
Brief
Brief A — a professional-services firm's proposal-quality campaign, aimed at partners and business-development leads.
Core idea
Treat the proposal, not the pitch, as the selling document. Make the argument a diagnostic readers apply to their own last bid, not a lecture.
Measurement
Track comment threads that name a specific false assumption as a signal that the diagnostic landed, rather than the post simply being read.
Count requests for the blank structure per post to see which argument drives action.
Check after the session whether the bid team's completed structure is adopted on later bids; don't assume adoption.
Track win-rate and revenue-per-proposal movement over a stated period. This firm's numbers will not necessarily reproduce the source figures.
Risks and guards
Single-source basis: one published post carries the whole sales strand. Frame the campaign as one firm's tested method, not an industry standard, and say so wherever the figures appear.
No verified commercial terms: the partnership format, availability and pricing are undocumented. Confirm them directly before proceeding.
Positioning clash: the work argues that employer branding should be earned through culture, not bought through campaigns. A firm buying this campaign should expect that argument to surface and be comfortable with it.
Two audiences, two tracks: the employer-branding and HR-team-design material addresses HR and People leaders; the proposal material addresses commercial leads. Keep them separate rather than merging them into one series.
Sequence
Detail
Publish the six false assumptions as a numbered list, give each one a sentence explaining its consequence, and close by asking readers which one they still hold. This mirrors the source post’s rhythm without adding claims.
Step
Post 1 — the diagnostic
Detail
Show how spending more time per proposal can reduce effort per win. Use the two figures from the published account — under 10% to 87% offer-to-win, and roughly €10,000 to €68,000 average revenue per proposal — and attribute them plainly to one firm. Invite readers to calculate their own ratio from their last ten bids. Do not invent firm-specific or industry averages.
Step
Post 2 — the maths of a weak proposal
Detail
Issue a one-page outline that reproduces the published sequence (management summary; project understanding with in-scope and out-of-scope; approach, phases and key methods; success factors, risks and prevention; about the firm; work examples; commercial offer). Leave the headings empty as prompts and add a short instruction line for each.
Step
Working document — the blank structure
Detail
Take one section — project understanding — and show a vague version beside a specific one. Preserve the page’s distinction that clarity and relevance matter more than brevity. End by offering the blank structure.
Step
Post 3 — the walkthrough
Detail
Run a 90-minute internal session in which a bid team completes the blank structure for a live opportunity and compares it with their previous proposal. With client permission, publish what changed as the campaign’s proof piece.
Step
Closed-loop use
Target reader
Partners, principals and bid leads at a consultancy or agency who write or approve proposals and are judged on win rates.
Choose Heininger when throughput, rather than proposal craft, is the constraint.
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One post recounts a single focused day producing ten B2B deliverables: an executive dinner concept, a personalised email campaign reconciled against a CRM, a landing page in corporate design, a fix for an integration between two tools, a competitive-intelligence analysis that de-anonymised an M&A exposé, a consultant profile as PDF, a podcast concept with launch plan, a data study covering 12,477 companies with an interactive report, five posts and 25 graphics, and three AI-driver courses prepared.
The post attributes this output to knowing which systems, context and workflows to use, and when to think instead of trusting the tool.
A second post treats an AI agent like a new hire and asks for the things a hire gets: a job description naming one task and one accountable manager; system access with its own account and correct permissions; staged authority from suggestions to approved action to independent work; a probation on 50 real cases from last year, compared against existing staff; rules on data protection and the EU AI Act; team integration; feedback conversations; and a cost-per-completed-task figure measured before launch.
For a firm where bid capacity is the binding constraint, this is a more actionable starting point than a proposal template.
Heininger’s posts do not show proposal craft: there is no document structure, sales discipline or before-and-after win-rate account.
A proposal-quality campaign would lack its central artefact and narrative.
The ten-project day is one person’s self-report, with no account of how the outputs performed; the agent-as-new-hire post ends by saying the model is roughly as important as the laptop.
That offers adoption guidance, not a selling argument.
Choose Heininger when the campaign is about producing more with the same team, not closing more business with better documents; the audience and measurement will differ.
Schröder is the better choice when the buyer decision is about keeping people rather than winning bids.
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One post lists ten everyday sentences that show whether a manager is any good — 'good work', 'what do you think?', 'take the time', 'I was wrong', 'that was my mistake', 'you may disagree', 'what do you need from me?', 'thank you for raising it', 'I trust your decision', 'you don't have to be reachable all the time' — and grounds them in recruiting conversations where the reasons for leaving are not the job itself but 'nobody listens to me anyway' and 'my manager decides in the end regardless'.
Another argues that most people do not need motivating at work: they arrive wanting to do a good job and adapt downwards when ideas get no response, reliability earns extra load, or autonomy is withdrawn at the final decision.
A manager should examine the working day before booking a motivation workshop.
For the professional-services brief, this matters if the firm loses senior people faster than it loses bids.
For the recruitment-agency brief, it speaks more directly to the audience than a campaign-buying argument and would not contradict the product being sold.
Schröder’s list-based leadership advice, drawn from inside recruiting and closed with a repost-and-save prompt, offers no proposal or sales-enablement content, reusable bid artefact or win-rate account.
It also lacks the specific trust mechanism a campaign aimed at B2B professional services needs.
Choose Schröder for a campaign about better management behaviour, not better closing documents; the former is harder to measure and gives the sales team nothing to apply to a live bid.
Levitan is the better choice when the decision to influence is itself choice-heavy.
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One post retells a cupcake-shop story: adding flavours produced the same question from every customer — 'what can you recommend?' — and the answer 'everything tastes good, work your way through' failed them.
The lesson is that people buy orientation rather than selection, so a menu grouped by occasion or appetite works better than one grouped by flavour.
That maps directly onto a B2B proposal: a bid that lists capabilities hands the sorting work to the client, while one that frames options as decisions the client recognises is easier to accept.
A second post draws a sequence from an account of the German national basketball team under Gordon Herbert: state an ambitious goal first, then define the mentality, standards, discipline, culture and roles it needs, and only then decide who commits for the full three years.
That offers a usable frame for a firm rebuilding how its bid or delivery team is staffed and how long people commit.
Levitan’s posts offer a retail anecdote and a summary of someone else’s book, not B2B proposal practice.
They show no proposal structure, diagnostic list, figures from a sales setting or method a firm could run; the book is recommended as reading, not offered as a process.
Choosing Levitan gives the campaign a sharper argument — help the reader decide instead of presenting everything — but not the inspectable artefact or before-and-after account that make Eberhardt’s posts usable in a workshop or blank working document.
