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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.

At a glance

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.

Key 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.

Check first: Confirm recent sponsored-post performance, availability, lead time, rate, and product access.

Main ideas
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
Audience
8,680 LinkedIn followers · Not in posts Newsletter subscriber or follower count
Read first
A beautiful website can still be crap
Ways to work together
Sponsored newsletter deep dive · Sponsored multi-part series with an agency partner
Sources for this section

What they are known for

Tom Davies is a startup marketer and writer known for practical advice on positioning, brand, growth and leading a marketing team.

  • They write the Marketing is Hard! newsletter, drawing on experience at Monzo, Wise and Yonder, where they were a founding team member and VP of Marketing.
  • They are also building Brandingo and its free What's My Brand Score? tool.
  • Follow their work for grounded explanations of how marketing decisions play out, from making a website clear enough to test with real people to diagnosing rising acquisition costs and turning brand measures into a useful conversation with leadership.

Tom Davies connects marketing ideas to things a team can make, test or change.

  • In “A beautiful website can still be crap,” they replace a taste-led redesign with a clear test: decide what the right visitor should understand, believe and do, then see whether five people can describe the product after 30 seconds with the page taken away.
  • In “Frameworks are not work,” they argue that a positioning document is a starting point, not the finished job, and suggest building the website, writing the email or drafting the press release to see whether the message holds up in a real format.
  • Their practical advice also covers uncomfortable operational choices: in the DOJO AI review, they question optimistic performance projections, while the ad-spend series explains how click-through rates can distract from acquisition and why holdout tests matter.
  • For readers looking for more than marketing slogans, Davies shows their reasoning, offers concrete exercises and flags where a tool or familiar metric may mislead.
  • Their work also covers team development, hiring, strategy and career progression, including in the 2025 roundup.
Sources for this section

Ideas and priorities

Tom Davies’s writing returns to a practical test: does the marketing help a customer understand, choose, or use something?

Read more

They argue for clear customer-facing work over visual polish or strategy documents that never reach customers, and apply the same skepticism to marketing metrics and AI tools.

Judge a website by what visitors understand, not how it looks

Davies argues that polished effects can distract from a page’s job.

Read more

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.

For Brandingo, Davies filled in the two-minute website test: a marketing leader should understand that the product tracks brand growth against competitors, believe its method is credible, and be ready to apply for early access. They also recommend showing a page to five people for 30 seconds, taking it away, and asking what the product does.

Read original · Original 2 · Original 3

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.

Read more

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.

Instead of stopping at a messaging hierarchy, Davies suggests writing an email.

  • They point to an Ōcura email that leads with one concrete benefit: its ring is waterproof to 100 metres.
  • The limited space forces a choice about what matters most.

Read original

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.

Read more

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.

What's My Brand Score? combines share of search, branded searches, social reach and engagement, positive reviews, and owned audience into a 0–500 score. Davies gives the example of an emerging brand at 145, with branded search as its biggest gap, as a clearer starting point for a board discussion than saying brand feels as though it is working.

Read original · Original 2 · Original 3

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.

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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.

In a sponsored DOJO AI review, Davies says they would be surprised by a claim of 30–40% more conversions within a couple of weeks. In a separate paid-media article, they recommend holdout experiments to test whether ads are actually generating incremental conversions.

Read original · Original 2

Sources for this section

Start with their work

A beautiful website can still be crap

This is the clearest statement of what Davies thinks marketing is for, applied to their own site rather than someone else's.

Read more

Newcomers wondering whether Davies is a trends writer or a working marketer should start here.

Davies argues that much modern site design is performative — parallax, floating shapes, products spinning on the page — and visitors can reach the bottom still unsure what the company does.

  • They set out a test: fill in the sentence "after the right person has spent two minutes on our website, they should understand X, believe Y and be ready to Z." They then assess Shopify, Vercel and Zapier against it, showing where a logo, customer count or product screenshot does specific work.
  • They also describe deliberately rebuilding Brandingo's own site into a "glorified Google Doc" to make the explanation visible.
  • To reduce risk, Davies advises showing a page to five people for 30 seconds, taking it away and asking them to describe the product; if they are close, the proposition is landing.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful when a brand is weighing a redesign, homepage test or launch landing page. Davies brings a repeatable comprehension test and specific reference sites, not taste-based opinions, so they can brief design and copy around a measurable job for the page.

Frameworks are not work

Answers what Davies means by "the work" — the phrase running through everything else they write — and gives readers three concrete substitutes for a strategy document.

Read more

The argument is that positioning, messaging and strategy documents are the thinking layer, not the finished thing: the job is done when the site is live, the email is sent and customers are using what you made.

  • Davies suggests three exercises to get marketers out of the document — build the website instead of a positioning framework, build the email instead of a messaging hierarchy, or write the press release.
  • They use Geoffrey Moore's positioning template, the Granola site, an email from Ōura that leads on a single selling point (waterproof to 100m), and the discipline of a press release to show what each exercise exposes that a document does not.

For brands planning a campaign

For a brand with positioning or messaging work stalled in documents, this offers a route to shipping something testable. Davies is likely to steer a campaign aimed at a specific audience towards an asset in the market rather than a strategy deck, suiting teams that need momentum more than another round of alignment.

What's all the hype around DOJO AI?

The clearest account of how Davies handles AI tooling: they tie the tool to a real job they personally had, test it against several marketing functions and separate what works today from what is on the roadmap.

Read more

In this disclosed sponsored review of a marketing AI platform, Davies says the sponsor cannot change what they write.

  • They start with a problem, not the technology: the loneliness of being the most senior marketer in a company, with nobody senior to pressure-test strategy.
  • Davies describes briefly onboarding the tool at Yonder, scores it by function (growth marketing 7/10, brand marketing 6/10), reports CMO feedback by name and includes a call with a founding team member about features not yet shipped.
  • They are sceptical of specific numbers, saying they would be surprised if conversions moved 30–40% in a couple of weeks, and argue that most of the current AI excitement is wonder at the mechanism rather than delivered value.

For brands planning a campaign

For a marketing team adopting AI, Davies can frame the tool as an answer to a named workflow gap and give an honest read on its limits. Davies runs disclosed sponsorships and still criticises, so partners need to accept an unflattering score alongside the placement.

Scale ad spend without blowing up: when CAC goes the wrong way

Shows the operational side of Davies's marketing knowledge — paid acquisition, agency versus in-house, and what to do when costs rise — which performance-focused readers can pressure-test fastest.

Read more

This is the third in a series written with Josh Lachkovic, managing director of the performance agency Ballpoint, disclosed at the top.

  • Davies treats rising customer acquisition cost as inevitable and lists causes with a fix for each: creative fatigue, optimising for click-through rate when clicks do not pay the bills, assuming all conversions are incremental, audience saturation, seasonal effects, platform algorithm changes and competitive pressure.
  • Recovery actions include holding out a group that sees no ads to measure real channel CAC.
  • Davies also relays Lachkovic's view that a brand can build a £25M revenue business on Meta alone, arguing against rushing into new channels while still small.

For brands planning a campaign

Relevant to a paid-media campaign where the team already spends and wants a diagnostic. Davies names causes and tests, and is willing to recommend pulling back during expensive periods — a call that changes budget timing, not just creative.

My most popular posts of 2025

Newcomers looking for a way into Davies's newsletter can use this index of the pieces they consider most useful and the ones readers actually opened and shared.

Read more

It is the fastest way to pick a thread before committing.

Davies groups a year of writing into positioning, messaging and strategy; setting up a marketing team; changes in the world of marketing; and career progression.

  • They flag one piece, on what to do at every level from intern to CMO, as their most impactful and widely shared.
  • Davies also confirms two facts about the year: they spent half of it on sabbatical and used part of it to build a free brand-measurement tool, What's My Brand Score?.
  • The roundup names specific posts so readers can move from the shortlist to the originals.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful as a campaign scoping document: brands can see which of Davies's ideas have the widest reach and match their needs to a proven thread, such as hiring and team structure, budget-setting or brand measurement.

What's My Brand Score? — a free brand-measurement tool

Shows that Davies not only writes about marketing but also builds things, and how they would approach brand measurement when a buyer cannot justify a large research budget.

Read more

Davies describes the problem plainly: marketers know brand drives long-term growth but cannot prove it because measurement tools cost £15–30k, and leadership conversations turn into "is this actually working?"

  • Their answer is a free tool that scores brand health using data a team already has — share of search, branded searches, reach multiplied by engagement, new positive reviews and owned audience.
  • It produces a 0–500 score across five stages, with the weighting changing by stage and by B2B or B2C context.
  • Davies frames the output as a number a marketer can take to a board, such as an emerging brand at 145 with branded search as the biggest gap.
  • A separate post announces a timeline feature for tracking the score against campaigns and acquisition cost.

For brands planning a campaign

For a brand that needs to prove the value of brand investment, this offers a concrete, low-cost measurement method rather than an argument for bigger budgets. It also shows Davies ships products and features publicly, so a campaign can pair content with a build or tool-led component.

Sources for this section

Topics and approach

Posts cited for each topic
Candid newsletter essays and LinkedIn formats5
Website effectiveness over visual polish3
Brand measurement and the business case for brand investment3
Frameworks are not work: shipping over strategy documents2
AI tools and AI search, reviewed by marketing function2
Positioning, messaging and saying less better2
Distinctive consumer brand building at Yonder2
Scaling paid spend and diagnosing rising acquisition costs1
Building and running a startup marketing team1
PR, SEO, and internet visibility1
Consulting and hands-on marketing help1

Website effectiveness over visual polish

Davies argues that modern web design has become performative: parallax, motion and abstract visuals may look beautiful but leave visitors unsure what the product does.

Read more

The corrective is to define the website’s job with a fill-in line — 'After the right person has spent two minutes on our website, they should understand ____, believe ____ and be ready to ____' — then make every element earn its place and delete anything that does not support that job. They cite Shopify, Vercel and Zapier as examples of pages where each element reinforces the proposition, and recommend showing a page to five people for 30 seconds, taking it away and asking them to describe the product.

Fill-in-the-blank website job statement, five-person 30-second recall test and element-by-element deletion.

For brands planning a campaign

For campaigns about website design, landing pages or conversion, Davies can audit a page for comprehension, not taste. A brand could ask them to run the two-minute test and an element-by-element teardown, producing a specific, testable list of what to cut or clarify.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

Frameworks are not work: shipping over strategy documents

Davies distinguishes between marketing’s thinking layer and its finished work.

Read more

Positioning statements, messaging hierarchies and press releases help formulate ideas, but the job is done when the website is live, the email is sent or the post is published. They recommend building a website’s above-the-fold section from a Geoffrey Moore-style positioning statement, writing an email instead of a messaging hierarchy, and using a press release to test newsworthiness.

For brands planning a campaign

For product launches or positioning projects, Davies can test whether a message holds up in a real asset. A campaign might use them to turn strategy documents into live pages or emails, judging the messaging by how it reads to a customer, not how it looks in a deck.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Scaling paid spend and diagnosing rising acquisition costs

In a three-part series with performance-marketing agency Ballpoint, Davies explains what to do when customer acquisition cost balloons.

Read more

Causes include creative fatigue, optimising for click-through rate instead of full-funnel acquisition, assuming all conversions are incremental, audience saturation, seasonality, platform changes and competitive pressure. Fixes include making more creative, running holdout experiments to measure true channel CAC, fluctuating spend around expensive periods and adding channels only when the business is large enough.

Co-written and published in partnership with Ballpoint; disclosed agency collaboration.

For brands planning a campaign

For performance-marketing or paid-growth campaigns, Davies brings operator-level diagnosis and an agency partner’s account-level view. A brand could ask them to explain CAC inflation to a marketing team or moderate a discussion about holdouts and creative fatigue; the Ballpoint partnership means the content may also carry an agency perspective.

Examples: Source 1

Brand measurement and the business case for brand investment

Davies built What’s My Brand Score?, a free tool that scores a brand from 0 to 500 using five metrics: Memorability (share of search), Visibility (branded searches), Content Effectiveness (reach times engagement), Trust (new positive reviews) and Loyalty (owned audience such as email and app installs).

Read more

Scores map to five stages — Nascent, Emerging, Scaling, Established, Leading — with different metric weightings by stage and separate B2B and B2C benchmarks. They position it as a data point for board conversations, replacing the claim that brand feels like it is working.

What’s My Brand Score? is Davies’s own product; a campaign involving it would also promote the tool.

For brands planning a campaign

For brand-awareness or measurement-led campaigns, Davies can translate long-term brand work into a score and narrative a CFO or board can follow. A partnership could include a walkthrough of the tool, a benchmark discussion or content for marketers who need to justify brand spend.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

AI tools and AI search, reviewed by marketing function

Davies reviews DOJO AI, an AI marketing tool, through the lenses of growth, brand, content and product marketing, scoring growth 7/10 and brand 6/10, and asking CMOs how they use it.

Read more

They describe it as ChatGPT with a deep understanding of your marketing strategy and note that platform data makes its advice more specific than generic AI.

  • They also warn that projected conversion lifts look optimistic and the output can feel like a junior analyst reporting to a time-poor CMO.
  • Separately, they have written about using Profound at Yonder to improve visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI chat tools.

The DOJO AI review is a sponsored article; Davies states that the sponsor cannot change the verdict.

For brands planning a campaign

For an AI marketing tool or AI-search product, Davies can provide a function-by-function evaluation of where the tool helps and where it overpromises. A brand could commission a similar structured review or a discussion of how AI search changes discovery; the CMO network is part of the format.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Positioning, messaging and saying less better

Across the year-in-review and essays, Davies returns to the idea that marketers say too much.

Read more

Posts like Say less, better and Forget everything argue for distilling messaging to one thing done well and stepping out of your own brain to talk about products at the customer’s level. They also write about aligning marketing strategy with customer journeys and using a Geoffrey Moore positioning statement as a thinking tool, not a finished deliverable.

For brands planning a campaign

For positioning or messaging campaigns, Davies is a fit when a brand needs to cut complexity rather than add it. A campaign could use them to pressure-test a value proposition for clarity or turn a strategy document into customer-facing copy.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Building and running a startup marketing team

Davies writes about the practical side of marketing leadership: what to do at each level from intern to CMO, how to hire a first marketer end to end, how to work with product managers, founders and CEOs, and how to write marketing updates that keep the rest of the company informed.

Read more

They also cover the gap between being a good marketer and becoming an effective CMO.

For brands planning a campaign

For employer-brand, marketing-leadership or B2B SaaS campaigns aimed at senior marketers, Davies can speak to team design, hiring and internal communication. This is a different audience from consumer brand campaigns: it speaks directly to marketing leaders and founders.

Examples: Source 1

PR, SEO, and internet visibility

Davies argues that individual channels matter less than showing up where customers actually look.

Read more

They have written that people should stop stressing about SEO and think about internet visibility, described how Yonder used Profound to improve visibility in AI chat tools, and declared that the world of PR has changed forever, with the press release no longer at the centre of the job.

For brands planning a campaign

For PR, search, or AI-discovery campaigns, Davies offers a channel-agnostic thesis and hands-on AI search experience. A brand could use them to explain why discovery has moved beyond traditional SEO or frame a visibility campaign around customer attention rather than keyword rankings.

Examples: Source 1

Distinctive consumer brand building at Yonder

Davies's career update and year-in-review describe their work running marketing at Yonder, a UK rewards card.

Read more

They worked on out-of-home campaigns, trolled Heineken's marketing team, sponsored a football club, and created viral moments such as WTF is APR?! and Pint Protection at Wimbledon. Davies positions the work as carving out a distinctive brand against American Express and other incumbents in a competitive consumer market.

For brands planning a campaign

For challenger-brand, fintech, or consumer campaigns, Davies brings firsthand experience of stunts, earned media, and a brand voice that takes on bigger competitors. A brand could ask them to discuss distinctive brand-building or a campaign that needs cultural edge rather than safe corporate messaging.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Candid newsletter essays and LinkedIn formats

Davies writes in a self-deprecating, anecdote-led voice that mixes marketing analysis with jokes, personal asides, and everyday references.

Read more

Formats include long-form newsletter essays, shorter LinkedIn posts linking to the essay, sponsored tool reviews, and product-launch notes for Brandingo and What's My Brand Score?. They frame commercial content with an honest-review promise.

For brands planning a campaign

For campaigns seeking a human, candid voice with personality, Davies's style can carry a sponsored or editorial piece without sounding corporate. Brands should expect humour and personal narrative alongside the marketing substance, and confirm whether the placement is framed as an independent review.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4 · Source 5

Consulting and hands-on marketing help

In the newsletter sign-off, Davies says they do occasional one-to-one consulting, specialising in helping clients understand why a strong product is not selling itself.

Read more

The offer sits alongside their writing and product work on Brandingo and What's My Brand Score?.

For brands planning a campaign

For brands considering a consulting or advisory engagement, Davies specialises in product-market messaging friction. A campaign could start with a consulting-style diagnostic before any public content.

Examples: Source 1

Sources for this section

Brands and businesses

Tom Davies's saved posts document a small set of commercial relationships: a disclosed sponsorship of a product review (DOJO AI), a partner series with a performance marketing agency (Ballpoint), and the newsletter and brand-measurement products they say they are building themselves (Brandingo and What's My Brand Score?).

Read more

They also name past employers: Yonder, where they were part of the founding team and VP Marketing; Monzo; and Wise. Brands such as Shopify, Vercel, Tracksuit and Profound appear in their writing only as examples or comparisons, so they are not listed as relationships.

DOJO AI

Sponsor

Tom Davies reviewed DOJO AI, an AI marketing platform, in a paid post.

Read more

They explain they onboarded the tool while working at Yonder and returned to it for the review, scoring it across growth, brand and content functions. The post discloses the sponsorship and says the sponsor cannot change their assessment.

Original disclosure

This is a sponsored article, but I'll always give my honest review on how I feel about a brand or product, and the sponsor can't change what I have to say.

View example

Ballpoint

Disclosed partnership

Tom Davies wrote a three-part series on scaling ad spend with Ballpoint, a performance marketing agency they say they worked with at Yonder.

Read more

They co-wrote it with Ballpoint's managing director, Josh Lachkovic. The posts invite readers to contact the agency.

Original disclosure

In partnership with Ballpoint.

  • Work with Ballpoint at weareballpoint.com.
  • I'm writing this series with Josh Lachkovic, managing director at Ballpoint, a performance marketing agency I worked with at Yonder.

View example

Yonder

Employment

Tom Davies describes themself as part of the founding team and VP Marketing at Yonder, the rewards card, where they ran marketing and growth and worked on campaigns such as an OOH push and a football club sponsorship.

Read more

They say they stepped away for a sabbatical, decided not to return, and that someone else has since taken the VP Marketing role.

View example

Brandingo

Owned business

Tom Davies says they are building Brandingo, a brand-growth measurement product, and publishes their Marketing is Hard! newsletter under its domain.

Read more

They describe rebuilding the Brandingo website as the first time they had done proper product marketing for their own product and invite readers to apply for early access.

View example

What's My Brand Score?

Owned business

A free tool Tom Davies says they built and launched during their sabbatical.

Read more

It scores a brand from 0 to 500 across five metrics. They later announced a timeline feature for tracking the score against campaigns, CAC and milestones, and frame the tool as an affordable way for marketers to measure brand health.

View example

Monzo

Employment

Tom Davies says they worked as a mid-level marketer at Monzo before being hired to run marketing at Yonder.

Read more

They list Monzo among the UK consumer brands where they say they launched and grew products.

View example

Wise

Employment

One of the UK consumer brands where Tom Davies says they launched and grew products before joining Yonder's founding team.

Read more

View example

Sources for this section

Topics and similar creators

Tom Davies writes about startup marketing as a craft: clear customer-facing work, honest measurement, and the discipline to ship rather than keep polishing a strategy document.

Read more

Start with the 2025 year-in-review for a map of recurring subjects, then follow the website-design essays (why visual polish is not the same as comprehension), the positioning piece on frameworks not being work, the three-part paid-spend series on rising acquisition costs, their sponsored review of an AI marketing tool, and their notes on building What's My Brand Score?.

  • The through-line is practical judgment: what does the customer understand, believe, and do next?
  • For adjacent reading, Dan Sanchez writes hands-on about AI-built landing pages and site integrations, Richard Best critiques design tooling and AI's effect on design careers, and William Anderson examines buyer trust and risk in B2B sales decisions.
Startup marketing Product marketing Brand measurement Performance marketing Website design and effectiveness AI marketing tools Messaging and positioning Marketing leadership Brand growth Paid media Newsletter essays LinkedIn posts Tool reviews Startup marketers Marketing leaders

Dan Sanchez

Both write practically about using AI and no-code tools to build marketing assets, and both take a hands-on approach to websites and landing pages rather than abstract strategy.

Read more

Sanchez focuses on AI-assisted site building, CRM integrations, and turning a personal website into a super app; Davies focuses more on brand strategy, measurement, paid growth, and marketing leadership.

Read original · Original 2

Richard Best, MBA/MA

Both scrutinise how production tools and workflows shape what teams can ship, and use platform critique to argue for better decisions.

Read more

Best writes about design tools, Figma's slow innovation, and AI's effect on design careers; Davies writes about marketing effectiveness, website comprehension, and brand measurement.

Read original · Original 2

William Anderson

Both argue that a strong solution is not enough: understanding the buyer's decision—what they must defend, trust, or risk—matters more than adding information.

Read more

Anderson applies that to B2B sales conversations, procurement risk, and sales leadership around the book The Room Goes Quiet; Davies applies it to startup marketing, website clarity, positioning, and paid-media diagnostics.

Read original · Original 2

Sources for this section

Audience

A marketing director weighing Tom Davies for AI-versus-brand-strategy content should view the audience as a marketing-leader readership, not a broad consumer following.

Read more

The only measured figure is 8,680 LinkedIn followers on the profile featuring their web-design, brand-measurement and career posts, recorded 9 October 2026.

  • The newsletter is written for senior marketers at startups, and their sponsored Dojo AI review reports conversations with CMOs and performance marketers about how they use the tool day to day.
  • These details show the intended readership and who engages with the content, but not the share of readers in leadership roles.
  • The AI coverage sits within brand, positioning and measurement work rather than treating the tool in isolation.
  • Before committing, ask for recent results on comparable topics (AI implementation, brand measurement) and formats (sponsored product review, long-form essay), plus audience survey or platform demographics covering job seniority, employer, occupation, geography, age and gender.

LinkedIn followers

8,680

LinkedIn profile linkedin.com/in/tomdavies91 · 2026-10-09

Newsletter subscriber or follower count

Not in posts

Marketing is Hard! newsletter at newsletter.brandingo.ai · 2026-10-09

Measured audience demographics (geography, age, gender, seniority)

Not in posts

No platform demographic data or audience survey present for this creator · 2026-10-09

Sources for this section

Partnership options

Two commercial collaborations appear in Tom Davies's published work, both in the Marketing is Hard! newsletter.

Read more

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.

Sponsored newsletter deep dive

Buyer requirement

Expect a full editorial review in Davies's own voice, structured as a hands-on write-up with scored sections by marketing function and direct quotes from named practitioners they have spoken to.

  • They state the sponsor cannot change what they say, so plan for a verdict you do not control.
  • The partnership is disclosed at the top of the piece and the sponsor's trial link is included, so supply the link and product access they need to test it before publication.

Sponsored multi-part series with an agency partner

Buyer requirement

The Ballpoint collaboration ran as a three-part series on scaling ad spend, co-written with a named managing director from the partner agency, with a working link to the agency in the introduction.

  • Plan for a multi-instalment commitment, not a single post, and be ready to supply a named subject-matter expert to co-write and a destination URL.
  • The series sits alongside Davies's own framing and jokes rather than reading as agency copy.
Sources for this section

Campaign fit

A campaign to shortlist

Good fit: a B2B marketing-AI or martech platform wants a disclosed sponsored review aimed at senior startup marketers, delivered as one long-form newsletter piece plus a LinkedIn excerpt, and the brand accepts an honest verdict rather than a scripted endorsement.

Read more

Tom Davies is a strong match.

  • The reviewed work contains the exact format: a sponsored DOJO AI review that scores the tool by marketing function, quotes named CMOs, includes a call with a founding team member, carries a trial link, and states at the top that the sponsor cannot change the verdict.
  • The audience evidence describes a marketing-leader readership, and the newsletter is written for senior marketers at startups.
  • The topic map shows AI tools and AI search as a recurring thread, including how Yonder used Profound for visibility in ChatGPT and Gemini, so an AI-software brief lands inside their existing coverage.
  • Product access is essential: Davies tests tools and reports function-by-function scores, so the sponsor should supply an account, a named subject-matter contact and the trial URL.
  • Expect criticism in the piece and disclose the partnership up front.
  • Before buying, ask for recent sponsored-post performance, availability, lead time and rate.

When to choose a specialist

Poor fit: a consumer packaged-goods brand wants a rapid short-form video series for TikTok and Reels, fully scripted by the brand, with no editorial criticism, paid usage rights and a per-video fee.

Read more

Davies's documented commercial work is editorial newsletter content — the sponsored DOJO AI deep dive and the three-part Ballpoint ad-spend series — not video production.

  • The reviewed posts include no video, audio or transcripts, no short-form samples, and no per-video rates or usage terms.
  • The audience is marketing leaders at startups, not a broad consumer following; the only number stated is 8,680 LinkedIn followers.
  • Davies also states that a sponsor cannot change what they say and writes with jokes and criticism, which conflicts with a fully controlled positive script.
  • Their consumer-brand experience at Yonder — out-of-home work, stunts, football sponsorship — is past employment described in a career post, not a current short-form service.
  • A consumer brand could reframe its need as a newsletter essay on brand-building, but should reject the short-form video brief unless Davies provides production samples, usage terms and a per-video rate.
A worked campaign example

Worked example for a brief to launch an honest AI marketing review for an AI platform aimed at senior startup marketers: commission one newsletter deep dive and a LinkedIn excerpt that starts from the reader's actual problem — the loneliness of being the most senior marketer in a company — rather than a feature list.

  • Structure the piece as Davies handled DOJO AI: test the product across growth, brand, content and product marketing; give a score for each function; quote named CMOs or operators who use it; ask for a call with a founding team member about what works today and what is on the roadmap; and state the honest-review terms at the top.
  • Sponsor inputs: trial access, a named product contact, the trial URL, and evidence for any performance claims.
  • Expect the review to warn readers when projected numbers look optimistic, as Davies did with conversion-lift claims.
  • Pair it with a LinkedIn post that condenses one argument and links to the full piece, matching the pattern of the website and brand-score posts.
  • Deliverables: one long-form newsletter review and one LinkedIn excerpt.
  • Do not promise a positive score; the stated promise is that the sponsor cannot change what Davies writes.
  • Before committing, request availability, rate, lead time and recent sponsored-post performance.
Sources for this section

Who else to consider

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.

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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.

The tradeoff is narrowness.

  • Sanchez's posts focus on tool and workflow execution, not brand strategy, positioning or how AI choices affect long-term brand equity.
  • Davies covers AI tool reviews and brand measurement, so campaigns bridging AI implementation and brand strategy will get less on the brand side from Sanchez.
  • The posts also do not show audience, rates or sponsorship terms.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

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.

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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.

The tradeoff is that Best's argument stays focused on creative roles and design tools.

  • The posts do not address brand strategy, marketing budgets or customer-facing brand measurement.
  • Davies ties AI adoption to marketing leadership and brand growth; Best focuses on design careers.
  • Campaigns that need both AI and brand strategy would have to source the brand half elsewhere.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

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.

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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.

The tradeoff is a different buyer and subject.

  • Anderson's posts center on B2B sales conversations, a book and podcast appearances, not brand strategy, marketing channel selection or AI tool implementation for marketing teams.
  • Davies focuses on marketing leadership and brand growth.
  • Choosing Anderson means giving up the marketing-specific balance of brand strategy needed for the campaign.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Sources for this section

Build your campaign brief

Editable Markdown templates for planning a campaign with this creator.

Campaign brief: Tom Davies (blank)

Worked example: sponsored AI marketing tool review

Worked example: brand measurement tool launch

Worked example: balancing AI implementation with brand strategy

Worked example: short-form consumer video series (screened out)

Sources for this section

Research methodology

  • This profile draws on selected newsletter essays and LinkedIn posts by Tom Davies, including writing on website design, brand measurement, marketing strategy and performance advertising.
  • The material includes a career update and a disclosed sponsored review of DOJO AI.
  • It is a selected sample, not a complete archive; some posts have no publication date.

Brands they talk about