# Tom Davies

Tom Davies writes about practical startup marketing and is building Brandingo, a tool for measuring brand growth. Davies's work draws on experience launching and growing products at Monzo and Wise and leading marketing at Yonder.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/tom-davies/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomdavies91
- LinkedIn followers: 8,680
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, leadership, paid-ads, startup, performance-marketing, product-marketing
- Based on 16 dated posts, latest 2026-10-13

## Summary

Tom Davies is most useful for practical startup marketing writing and sponsored editorial reviews for senior marketers.

- Best for: A B2B marketing-AI or martech platform wanting a disclosed sponsored review for senior startup marketers.
- Not for: A consumer packaged-goods brand wanting scripted short-form video with no editorial criticism or usage rights.
- Check first: Confirm recent sponsored-post performance, availability, lead time, rate, and product access.

### Takeaways

- Judge a website by what visitors understand, not how it looks.
- A strategy document is a starting point, not the finished work.
- Measure brand in a way that supports a real business conversation.

## Main ideas

- **Judge a website by what visitors understand, not how it looks**: Davies argues that polished effects can distract from a page’s job. They recommend deciding what the right visitor should understand, believe, and do, then testing whether the page communicates that clearly. Design should help deliver the message; removing elements is useful when they get in the way, not as a rule to make every page sparse.
- **A strategy document is a starting point, not the finished work**: Positioning and messaging frameworks can help marketers think, but Davies says they are not the outcome. The work is complete when customers encounter the website, email, or post and can use it to make a decision. They favor turning ideas into real formats because those expose what is unclear or unconvincing.
- **Measure brand in a way that supports a real business conversation**: Davies argues that marketers need a way to discuss long-term brand growth when formal measurement can be expensive. Their proposed answer is a practical score built from existing data, with different weightings for a brand’s stage and for B2B or B2C businesses. The score offers a point of reference, not proof by itself that a campaign caused growth.
- **Treat marketing metrics and tools with skepticism**: Davies asks whether a metric or tool helps answer the business question, rather than accepting an impressive dashboard or AI output at face value. In their paid-marketing advice, clicks do not establish that advertising is acquiring customers, and platform attribution can take credit for conversions that would have happened anyway. Their AI review similarly notes that access to company data can make advice more specific while questioning optimistic forecasts and lengthy output.

## Work to read

- [A beautiful website can still be crap](https://newsletter.brandingo.ai/p/a-beautiful-website-can-still-be)
- [Frameworks are not work](https://newsletter.brandingo.ai/p/frameworks-are-not-work-here-are)
- [What's all the hype around DOJO AI?](https://newsletter.brandingo.ai/p/whats-all-the-hype-around-dojo-ai)
- [Scale ad spend without blowing up: when CAC goes the wrong way](https://newsletter.brandingo.ai/p/scale-ad-spend-without-blowing-up)
- [My most popular posts of 2025](https://newsletter.brandingo.ai/p/my-most-popular-posts-of-2025)
- [What's My Brand Score? — a free brand-measurement tool](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomdavies91_one-day-id-like-to-measure-brand-awareness-activity-7402632889642827776-C-Kq)

## Brand relationships

- **DOJO AI** (sponsor)
- **Ballpoint** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Yonder** (employment)
- **Brandingo** (owned_business)
- **What's My Brand Score?** (owned_business)
- **Monzo** (employment)
- **Wise** (employment)

## Partnerships

Two commercial collaborations appear in Tom Davies's published work, both in the Marketing is Hard! newsletter. One is a sponsored product deep dive: a review of DOJO AI, labelled as a sponsored article, in partnership with DOJO AI, with a free-trial link and an up-front statement that the sponsor cannot change the verdict. The other is a sponsored three-part series on scaling paid acquisition, written with Josh Lachkovic of the performance agency Ballpoint and carrying a working link to the agency. Both are editorial-format placements inside the newsletter rather than display inventory, and both carry a named commercial partner. Ask for the rate card, media kit, sponsor policy, audience specification, inquiry route, terms, availability, lead times and pricing. Davies states they give their own honest assessment and that a sponsor cannot change what they say, so buyers should expect the editorial judgement to remain theirs.

## Alternatives

- Dan Sanchez: Dan Sanchez is the better choice when a campaign needs a hands-on AI implementation guide rather than a balance of AI and brand strategy. The posts show practical methods for building landing pages with ChatGPT, Vercel and Codex, and turning a website into a personal super app with automated podcast-to-blog conversion, surveys and split testing. Marketing directors looking to build AI-assisted marketing assets will find more direct instruction here.
- Richard Best, MBA/MA: Richard Best is the better choice when the campaign is about how AI is reshaping design and creative careers, rather than balancing AI implementation with core brand strategy. The posts argue that Figma's slow innovation risks users' careers and map how AI will shift product designers, researchers, visual designers and motion creators into new roles. Marketing directors assessing creative-team structure or design-tool adoption will find a sharper, more specific argument here.
- William Anderson: William Anderson is the better choice when the campaign is about B2B sales trust amid AI-driven information abundance, not marketing brand strategy. The posts describe a judgment revolution: buyers arrive with AI-shaped expectations, information is commoditized, and sellers must demonstrate judgment, credibility and willingness to carry risk. Marketing directors whose campaigns touch sales enablement, executive decision-making or customer trust in an AI-saturated market will find a more relevant argument here.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/