Ready to build your own Founder-Led Growth engine? Book a Strategy Call
Frontlines.io | Where B2B Founders Talk GTM.
Strategic Communications Advisory For Visionary Founders
Actionable
Takeaways
The content volume playbook is broken — the fix is narrative architecture, not better briefs.
Indeed was producing 3,000+ pieces per quarter and hitting diminishing returns. The shift wasn't to produce less — it was to identify a small number of high-conviction, cross-channel narratives and then engineer derivative assets from each one. The goal Aidan describes: get to 3,000 assets from one core narrative instead of 3,000 separate narratives. That inversion matters operationally. It means your most expensive content investments — long-form docs, podcasts, short films — become content engines rather than one-off line items. If you're still commissioning content at the asset level, you're building the wrong thing.
Narrative discovery is a structured research process, not a creative exercise.
Aidan's team runs three inputs simultaneously: (1) commercial objectives — what story does the business need told right now; (2) proprietary data — what unique signals does Indeed own that no competitor can replicate; and (3) category entry points — the specific moments in a buyer's journey where they actually need to hear from you. When those three align, strong narratives surface without forcing them. Most B2B content teams start and end at step one, which is why so much of it reads like internal positioning dressed up as thought leadership.
Tension is the variable most B2B content is missing.
Aidan references George Saunders: "once upon a time... and stayed an is not a story." The point isn't stylistic — it's structural. If your content doesn't have genuine tension (a real choice, a real risk, something that could go wrong), it doesn't have a story, it has a sequence of claims. The discipline is in forcing that tension into the structure before a single word gets written — beginning, middle, end, and a change that actually means something.
Test narratives with real buyers before you scale them — not after.
Indeed uses a group they call the Leadership Connect Community: long-term VIP clients who have a trusted enough relationship with the team to give honest feedback on narrative drafts. The specific question Aidan's team asks: is this solving your problem, giving you new insight, or challenging conventional wisdom? If the answer is no, the story arc gets reworked before it hits production. Most teams A/B test content after launch. Aidan's team qualitatively pressure-tests narrative framing before spend. That's a different activity and a more valuable one.
Set editorial values before you set content formats.
Indeed operates five editorial values that apply to every piece of content regardless of channel, format, or team: insightful (adds something new or challenges conventional wisdom), evidence-based (proprietary Indeed data or verified third-party research), human, hopeful in the active sense Aidan borrows from Nick Cave — hope as a warrior emotion, not false optimism — and actionable. These values do the coordination work that style guides can't. When you're running eight content teams across a center of excellence, shared editorial principles create coherence without centralizing every decision.
The ROI case for long-form content is a derivative assets argument.
The historic blocker for pitching documentary or long-form investments inside a brand is distribution: where will this live, how do we measure it. Aidan's reframe is a production question instead: how many clips, articles, infographics, and social assets can we extract from this one investment? If the answer is enough to fuel your channel needs for a quarter, the unit economics flip. The long-form piece stops being a brand expense and becomes your lowest-cost content factory. The operational requirement is getting internal systems — from production to channel distribution — aligned enough to actually execute the handoffs.
Build an antagonistic relationship with your AI outputs — especially when you like them.
Aidan flags a specific failure mode: AI tools start predicting what you want to hear, not what's accurate or useful. His practice is to interrogate outputs hardest at the moment he feels most satisfied with them — explicitly asking what's wrong with the work before moving forward. He also notes the risk with synthetic audience testing specifically: the danger isn't using AI personas to pressure-test messaging, it's treating the outputs as truth rather than directional signals. Professional judgment still has to own the final call. If your AI workflow doesn't have a forcing function for that skepticism built in, the tool is flattering you, not helping you.
Conversation
Highlights
The Content Strategy That Replaced 3,000 Pieces Per Quarter
There’s a moment in most content operations when the volume stops compounding and starts working against you. At Indeed, that moment arrived with a 3,000-piece-per-quarter machine running at full capacity — and diminishing returns across the board.
Aidan McLaughlin, Senior Director of Content Marketing at Indeed, joined a recent episode of The Marketing Front Lines to explain what broke, what replaced it, and why the fix required rethinking the relationship between narrative and production from the ground up.
When the Model Breaks
Indeed’s content operation was legitimate in scale: YouTube, LinkedIn, SEM, career guides, employer thought leadership, events — each with dedicated teams, each producing constantly. The logic was sound for its era.
“In the SEO world, where search was just the dominant thing you’re trying to win, volume trumped quality in a lot of places,” Aidan said. “That was sort of the ethos for a long time. But the ground has shifted a little bit, so we had to rethink that strategy.”
The shift wasn’t purely algorithmic. LLMs changed what discovery means for content at scale — they favor rich editorial, proprietary data, and genuine point of view over optimized volume. And internally, a production system built around asset output had no mechanism for asking whether any of it was telling a coherent story.
The answer wasn’t to slow down production. It was to invert the model.
Narrative Architecture Over Asset Output
Aidan helped build what Indeed calls a Content Center of Excellence — eight teams, each owning a specific audience and channel. But the org structure was secondary to the strategic question underneath it: what are the narratives worth building everything else from?
Finding those narratives requires three inputs working simultaneously. First, the commercial objectives — what story does the business actually need told right now. For Indeed, that meant communicating a shift from “the place with all the jobs” to a matching and AI-driven platform, which required different stories for job seekers and employers alike. Second, proprietary data — the signals only Indeed owns that no competitor can replicate. Third, what Aidan calls category entry points: the specific moments in a buyer’s journey where they need to hear from you.
“As soon as you put all that stuff down and you write it down and you get teams together and you look at it, really strong narratives emerge from that,” he said. “It’s clear — the things that knitted together, what are the red threads.”
From those narratives, everything cascades. Clips, articles, infographics, social assets — all derivative, all purposeful. “If we can create 3,000 derivative assets from the one big narrative we’re trying to tell to the market, that is great. It’s like flipping the model.”
The operational implication is significant: long-form investments — a podcast, a short documentary, a filmed talk — stop being brand expenses and become content factories. The ROI case changes entirely when the question shifts from “where will this live” to “how many assets can we extract from this before we’re done.”
The Craft Problem Underneath the Strategy Problem
Volume is a production problem. Narrative is a craft problem. They require different skills and different disciplines — and conflating them is where most content operations go wrong.
Aidan is unusually specific about what separates a narrative from a sequence of well-researched facts. He references George Saunders — whose book on short story craft Aidan returns to regularly — on the non-negotiable requirement: “Once upon a time… and stayed an is not a story.” Change and tension aren’t stylistic choices. They’re structural requirements.
“It’s amazing how hard it is and what discipline it takes to lay out all of your facts and information in a three act structure, and then find the real tension and the real change,” Aidan said.
This isn’t abstract. Indeed ran a program called Rising Voices for five years — funding ten short films about work annually, debuted at Tribeca Film Festival, now streaming on Hulu. Each year the team read roughly 800 scripts to select ten filmmakers. That volume of script evaluation built something most content teams never develop: genuine pattern recognition for what creates narrative tension versus what only looks like it. The program has ended, but the capability it built into the team hasn’t.
Testing Narrative Before Spending on Production
The most counterintuitive element of Indeed’s approach is the sequence. Most content operations test performance after launch — traffic, engagement, conversion. Aidan’s team tests narrative framing before a dollar of production is committed.
Indeed uses a group called the Leadership Connect Community: long-term VIP clients with enough trust in the relationship to give unfiltered feedback on story drafts. The questions are specific: Is this solving your problem? Is this challenging conventional wisdom? Is this giving you something you didn’t already know?
“We’re told very clearly — no, you’re overpromising, you’re not delivering here,” Aidan said. “And then we can refine our story arc.”
The same skepticism applies to AI-assisted workflows. Indeed is building Claude-powered tools with embedded style guides and synthetic audience personas — testing messaging against buyer archetypes before it reaches market. But Aidan flags a failure mode that most teams haven’t named yet.
“I spend a lot of time pretty much every day in Claude building projects and trying to work on these systems. It starts predicting what I want and I have to be incredibly sensitive to that and build an antagonistic relationship with the outputs — it very easily tricks you into thinking you’re on this path of truth.”
His practice is to interrogate outputs hardest at the moment of greatest satisfaction — asking what’s wrong before moving forward. It’s a forcing function most AI workflows don’t have built in.
The Governance Layer
Running narrative-first content across eight teams without centralizing every decision requires something that holds the work together at the values level. For Indeed, that’s five editorial principles applied to every piece of content regardless of channel or creator: insightful, evidence-based, human, hopeful, and actionable.
The definition of hopeful is precise. Aidan borrows from Nick Cave’s conception — hope as a warrior emotion, not optimism. Something that gives people the energy to move forward, not reassurance that everything is fine.
“That framework is applied to any creator as they’re thinking about their work,” Aidan said. “And I think that has helped us get a coherence to what we’re trying to achieve.”
Editorial values at this level do something org charts and style guides can’t: they make judgment calls portable. When a creator on any channel faces an ambiguous decision about a piece of content, the values answer the question without requiring escalation. At scale, that’s the difference between coherence and noise.
Which, as it turns out, is exactly what Indeed was trying to solve for in the first place.
Listen to the full conversation with Aidan McLaughlin on The Marketing Front Lines.
Recommended Founder
Interviews
Charlotte Dales
CEO & Co-Founder of Inclusively
Charlotte Dales, CEO & Co-Founder of Inclusively: $20 Million Raised to Transform Workplace Personalization
Erik Braund
CEO & Founder of Katmai
Erik Braund, CEO & Founder of Katmai: $30 Million Raised to Build the Future of Virtual Work
Wes Winham Winler
Founder/CEO of Woven
Wes Winham Winler, CEO of Woven: $11 Million Raised to Transform How Companies Recruit and Hire Developers
Virgile Raingeard
CEO of Figures
Virgile Raingeard, CEO of Figures: €8.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Compensation Intelligence
Lucas Mendes
Co-Founder and CEO of Revelo
Lucas Mendes, CEO of Revelo: $48.7 Million Raised to Build the Backbone of Tech Talent for the Age of AI
Kevin Busque
CEO and Founder of Guideline
Kevin Busque, CEO and Founder of Guideline: $339 Million Raised to Help More Small Businesses Offer Retirement Plans
Chris Johnson
Growth Marketing Lead of Gun.IO
Chris Johnson, Growth Marketing Lead at Gun.IO: Competing in the Future of Freelance Developer Marketplaces
Amit Bhatia
CEO & Co-Founder of Data People
Amit Bhatia, Co-Founder and CEO of Data People: $21 Million Raised to Build the Future of Recruiting Intelligence
Matt Watson
CEO and Founder of Origin
Matt Watson, CEO and Founder of Origin: Over $70 Million Raised to Make Financial Wellness the Next Big Employee Perk
Jason Radisson
CEO and Founder of Movo
Jason Radisson, CEO and Founder of Movo: Over $9 Million Raised to Build the Future of HR Automation
Mike Fitzsimmons
CEO and Co-Founder of Crosschq
Mike Fitzsimmons, CEO & Co-Founder of Crosschq: $35 Million Raised to Power the Future of AI-Driven Hiring Intelligence
Warren Lebovics
Co-Founder of Pequity
Warren Lebovics, Co-Founder of Pequity: $19 Million Raised to Build the Future of Employee Compensation
Anthony Mironov
CEO and Co-Founder of Wingspan
Anthony Mironov, CEO and Co-Founder of Wingspan: $30 Million Raised to Power the Contractor Experience of the Future
Albert Owusu-Asare
CEO & Co-Founder of Cadana
Albert Owusu-Asare, CEO & Co-Founder of Cadana: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Global Payroll Infrastructure
Sloane Barbour
CEO & Founder of engin
Sloane Barbour, CEO & Founder of engin: $4 Million Raised to Transform AI-Powered Recruiting
Sammy Singh
CEO and Co-Founder of WurkNow
Sammy Singh, CEO and Co-Founder of WurkNow: $15 Million Raised to Power the Future of Staffing
Andy Berman
CEO and Founder of Vowel
Andy Berman, CEO and Founder of Vowel: $13 Million Raised to Power the Future of Meetings
Hanna Asmussen
CEO and Co-Founder of Localyze
Hanna Asmussen, CEO and Co-Founder of Localyze: Over $48 Million Raised to Build the Leading Global Mobility Platform for Companies and Employees
Barb Hyman
CEO & Founder of Sapia AI
Barb Hyman, CEO & Founder of Sapia AI: $21 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI-Powered Recruiting
Siadhal Magos
CEO & Co-Founder of Metaview
Siadhal Magos, CEO & Co-Founder of Metaview: $14 Million Raised to Power the Future of AI-Driven Hiring
Ian White
Founder of ChartHop
Ian White, Founder, CEO and CTO of ChartHop: $74 Million Raised to Build the Future of PeopleOps
Matt Pierce
CEO of Immediate
Matt Pierce, CEO of Immediate: $15 Million Raised to Eliminate the Costly Price of Financial Stress in the Workforce
Nancy Xu
CEO & Founder of Moonhub
Nancy Xu, CEO & Founder of Moonhub: $10 Million Raised to Power the Future of AI-Driven Recruiting
Tuck Hauptfuhrer
CEO & Co-Founder of EarnBetter
Tuck Hauptfuhrer, CEO & Co-Founder of EarnBetter: $4.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI-Powered Job Search
Cristina Bunea
Head of Marketing of Paraform
From Code to Content: Building B2B Marketing That People Crave
Cindy Goodrich
Chief Marketing Officer of Empathy
Building Trust in Grief: Why Empathy Bought Their Domain Early
Nicole Fuselier
VP of Marketing of Bonusly
Revenue-Driven Marketing: Insights from Nicole Fuselier of Bonusly
Ben Zweig
CEO of Revelio Labs
Ben Zweig, CEO of Revelio Labs: $19 Million Raised to Build the Future of Workforce Intelligence
David Murray
Cofounder & CEO of Confirm
How Confirm targets HR leaders in their first 60 days to close enterprise deals faster | David Murray
Marcelo Lebre
President of Remote
Marcelo Lebre, Co-founder & COO of Remote: Nearly $500 Million Raised to Power the Distributed Workforce of the Future
Nikki Stones
VP of Marketing of Ben
Building an In-House Podcast Studio for Enterprise ABM w/ Nikki Stones (Two-time guest!)
Alex Cwirko-Godycki
How Pave is Defining and Dominating the Compensation Intelligence Category
Prem Kumar
CEO | Co-founder of Humanly
Prem Kumar, CEO of Humanly.io: $5.5 Million Raised to Build the Conversational Hiring Category
René Janssen
CEO and Founder of Lepaya
René Janssen, CEO & Founder of Lepaya: $85 Million Raised to Build the Future of Employee Training
Dirk Doebler
Founder and CEO of Parento
Dirk Doebler, Founder and CEO of Parento: $4.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Paid Parental Leave
Kian Katanforoosh
CEO & Founder of Workera
Kian Katanforoosh, CEO of Workera: $21 Million Raised to Build the Skills Intelligence Category
Tony Jamous
CEO of Oyster
Tony Jamous, CEO of Oyster: $220+ Million Raised to Build the Global Employment Platform (GEP) Category
Jaclyn Chen
CEO of Benepass
Jaclyn Chen, CEO of Benepass: $14 Million Raised to Build the Future of Employee Benefits Management
Dan Beck
Dan Beck, CEO & Co-Founder of 401GO: $14 Million Raised to Build the Future of Retirement Benefits for Small Businesses
Kelsey Bishop
Founder and CEO of Candor
Kelsey Bishop, Founder and CEO of Candor: $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Professional Relationship-Building
Ben Sesser
CEO & Founder of BrightHire
Ben Sesser, CEO & Founder of BrightHire: $36 Million Raised to Build the Interview Intelligence Category
Chandler Malone
Founder of Bootup
Chandler Malone, Founder of Bootup: $2 Million Raised to Solve the Tech Talent Crisis
Sid Upadhyay
Co-Founder & CEO of WizeHire
Sid Upadhyay, Co-Founder & CEO at WizeHire: Over $30 Million Raised to Help SMBs Hire Great Talent
Holly Tate
CMO of Leadr
Holly Tate, CMO of Leadr: Building the Future of People Development Platforms
Daniel Birkholm
Founder & CEO of TalentHub
Daniel Birkholm, TalentHub: $6 Million Raised to Transform How Organizations Measure and Improve Their Hiring Experience
Will Sealy
CEO and Co-Founder of Summer
Will Sealy, CEO and Co-Founder of Summer: Over $18 Million Raised to Help Organizations Provide Student Loan Benefits
Andres Blank
Co-founder & CEO of Fetcher
Andres Blank, CEO of Fetcher: $40 Million+ Raised to Build the Future of Recruiting Automation
Omer Glass
Co-Founder and CEO of GrowthSpace
Omer Glass, Co-Founder and CEO of GrowthSpace: $44 Million Raised to Build the Future of Employee Development
Matthew Sydney
CEO & Founder of Beanstalk Benefits
Matthew Sydney, CEO & Founder of Beanstalk Benefits: $7.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of On-Demand Employee Benefits
Karoli Hindriks
Founder of Jobbatical
Karoli Hindriks, Founder of Jobbatical: $23 Million Raised to Build the Future of Global Mobility with AI-Powered Relocation Solutions
Stephen Johnston
CEO and Founder of GoodJob
Stephen Johnston, CEO and Founder of GoodJob: $9 Million Raised to Power the Future of Human Capital Management
Tomer London
Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Gusto
How Gusto scaled to 400,000+ customers without traditional sales: The consumer-first B2B playbook ($9.5B Valuation)
Aaron Wang
CEO & Co-Founder of Alex
How Aaron Wang justified spending $500K+ on the domain Alex.com | Aaron Wang
Joseph Fung
CEO of Uvaro
Joseph Fung, CEO of Uvaro: $15 Million Raised to Build the Career Success Platform Category
John Kim
Co-Founder & CEO of Paraform
John Kim, Co-Founder & CEO of Paraform: $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Recruiting with a Marketplace for Specialized Talent
Jerome Ternynck
Founder and CEO of SmartRecruiters
Jerome Ternynck: the Story of SmartRecruiter ($1.5 Billion Valuation)
Tom Griffiths
CEO and Co-founder of Hone
Tom Griffiths, CEO of Hone: $50 Million Raised to Build the Future of Corporate Training
Barbra Gago
CEO and Founder of Pando
Barbra Gago, CEO and Founder of Pando: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Career Advancement
Jared Pope
CEO and Co-Founder of Work Shield
Jared Pope, CEO and Co-Founder of Work Shield: $12 Million Raised to Eliminate Workplace Misconduct
Hanns Aderhold
Founder and CEO of Cobrainer
Hanns Aderhold, Founder and CEO of Cobrainer: $21 Million Raised to Build the Future of Skills Data Platforms
Jeremy Johnson
CEO & Co-Founder of Andela
Jeremy Johnson: the Story of Andela ($1.5 Billion Valuation)
Josh Merrill
CEO of Confirm
Josh Merrill, CEO of Confirm: Over $11 Million Raised to End the Performance Review Nightmare
Jason Lavender
CEO of Electives
Jason Lavender, CEO of Electives: $10M Raised to Redefine Corporate Training
Rob Whalen
CEO of PTO Exchange
Rob Whalen, CEO of PTO Exchange: $5M Raised to Empower Companies to Rethink Paid Time Off
Brett Martin
President and Co-Founder of Kumospace
Brett Martin, President and Co-Founder of Kumospace: $25 Million Raised to Power the Future of Virtual Offices
Sebastian Schüller
Co-founder of HiPeople
Sebastian Schüller, Co-founder of HiPeople: $7 Million Raised to Develop Data-Driven Augmentation for Hiring Teams
Marcelo Lebre
President of Remote
Marcelo Lebre: the Story of Remote ($3 Billion+ Valuation)
Allen Narcisse
Founder & CEO of Gigs
Allen Narcisse, Founder & CEO of Gigs: $5.7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Blue Collar Hiring
Achuthanand Ravi
Founder & CEO of Kula
Achuthanand Ravi, CEO of Kula: $14 Million Raised to Build the Future of Recruiting
Deborah Hanus
How Sparrow achieved 14x revenue growth by targeting pain ownership, not pain awareness | Deborah Hanus
Nishika de Rosairo
CEO and Founder of HumanQ
Nishika de Rosairo, CEO and Founder of HumanQ: $3.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Human Development
Michael Ioffe
CEO & Co-Founder of Arist
Michael Ioffe, CEO & Co-Founder of Arist: $16 Million Raised to Build the Future of Autonomous L&D
Nitzan Yudan
Nitzan Yudan, CEO & Founder of Benivo: $30 Million Raised to Transform Global Workforce Mobility
Jennifer Dulski
CEO & Founder of Rising Team
Jennifer Dulski, CEO & Founder of Rising Team: $11 Million Raised to Build the Future of Team Performance
Laura McGee
Founder and CEO of Diversio
Laura McGee, CEO of Diversio: $6 Million Raised to Help Organizations Measure and Improve DEI
Sam Naficy
CEO of Prodoscore
Sam Naficy, CEO of Prodoscore: $4 Million Raised to Build the Future of Employee Productivity Measurement
Raghu Gollamudi
CEO and Co-Founder of Included
Raghu Gollamudi, CEO and Co-Founder of Included: $5.4 Million Raised to Build the Future of HR Analytics
Ron Gura
CEO & Co-Founder of Empathy
How Empathy landed 9 of the top 10 US life insurance carriers | Ron Gura
Rob Sadow
CEO & Co-Founder of Scoop
Rob Sadow, CEO & Co-Founder of Scoop: $8 Million Raised to Build the Future of Hybrid Team Coordination
Peter Briffett
CEO and Co-Founder of Wagestream
Peter Briffett, CEO and Co-Founder of Wagestream: $370 Million Raised to Provide Financial Wellbeing for Every Frontline Employee