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Strategic Communications Advisory For Visionary Founders
Actionable
Takeaways
Draw lines in the sand on divisive issues before you're forced to:
Three weeks into his tenure, Vimeo's CEO asked their creator community whether the company could train AI on their content. The resounding "no" became policy—while competitors were backpedaling on similar decisions. Ronda noted this wasn't just values theater: "it's been a true differentiator for us." The lesson isn't to be contrarian—it's to identify the 2-3 issues where your ICP has strong opinions, poll them directly, and commit publicly before market events force reactive damage control.
Build task forces with production accountability, not just strategy input:
Ronda's customer storytelling task force included her team, production, and paid social—critically, the people who had to actually build and distribute the content. They tested multiple formats before landing on short-form video optimized for "that TikTok quick hit" attention span. Most cross-functional committees fail because they lack execution skin in the game. Include the people who will be held accountable for production and distribution outcomes, not just strategic advisors.
AEO delivers faster signal than SEO, but requires different content structure:
When Vimeo mentioned 2 Chainz in a press release about their Reframe conference, they saw "immediate uptick of the LLMs picking it up" versus SEO's "long game." Ronda's framework: AEO surfaces structured, entity-rich content (names, titles, specific claims) faster than traditional search indexing. Structure content with clear entities, credentials, and factual claims that LLMs can extract and cite. Don't just optimize keywords—optimize for extraction.
Design content refresh loops, not content creation sprints:
Customer video testimonials require significant production lift. Rather than treating them as annual recreations, Ronda's team embeds in quarterly business reviews with customer success to capture updated metrics. They then "quickly update the existing video content with some tweaks to the end of the video itself"—updating the summary statistics without full reproduction. The shift: move from content-as-campaign to content-as-living-asset with systematic refresh triggers.
Your internal ICP teams should own customer-facing programs for that ICP:
Vimeo's internal comms team leads the company's certification program development because internal communicators are a key ICP. As Ronda explains: "they are the ones we're selling to." They built an internal intranet (named "the Loop" via employee contest) that became the reference architecture for selling to other internal comms teams. If you sell to engineers, your engineering team should co-create your developer experience. If you sell to marketers, your marketing team should lead customer marketing programs.
Track narrative consistency across third parties, not message penetration:
Ronda measures success by asking: "Are you more consistently described by others?" Not whether your messaging landed, but whether disparate third parties—analysts, customers, press—use similar language to describe you without prompting. This requires systematic social listening and analyst brief analysis to track linguistic consistency, not sentiment scores. If five different sources describe you five different ways, your narrative isn't working regardless of positive sentiment.
Press releases aren't dead—they're LLM training data:
The announcement of 2 Chainz at Vimeo's Reframe conference "saw immediate uptick of the LLMs picking it up" in a way that Ronda found faster and more measurable than traditional SEO. Her take: press releases now function as structured training data for AI systems. Include specific entities (names, titles, numbers, dates) that LLMs can extract and surface in response to queries. Format for machine parsing, not just human reading.
Conversation
Highlights
How Vimeo’s VP Shifted Corporate Communications from Press Hits to Narrative Consistency
Three weeks into his tenure as Vimeo’s CEO, Philip Moyer faced a decision that would test the company’s commitment to its creator-first philosophy.
The question: Should Vimeo train its AI models on creator content?
Instead of making the call internally, Philip consulted the people who built Vimeo’s reputation—the Staff Picks community. These filmmakers have used the platform throughout their careers, some becoming Academy Award winners.
Their answer was unequivocal: no.
In a recent episode of BUILDERS, Ronda Morra, VP of Corporate Marketing & Communications at Vimeo, reflected on that moment. “He leaned into our creator community, our staff picks community, and he said, you know, we have an opportunity to train our AI on your content, but we won’t do that without your permission. What do you think about that? And it was a resounding no way, no thank you.”
Vimeo committed to the policy publicly while competitors later backpedaled on similar decisions. As Ronda notes, “it’s been a true differentiator for us.”
The lesson wasn’t about taking a stance—it was about timing. Address divisive issues before market pressure forces reactive responses.
Bridging a 21-Year Creator Platform with Enterprise Software
Ronda joined Vimeo to solve a positioning challenge: the company had been building enterprise software since 2019, but most people still only knew them as a creator video platform.
“Most people don’t even know we have that side of the business,” Ronda explains. “And that’s part of the reason I joined Vimeo was to tell that story, that greater story.”
Her background in B2B enterprise SaaS positioned her well for the enterprise narrative, but she needed to understand Vimeo’s creator DNA. The connection point: both filmmakers and enterprise internal communications professionals are creators.
“Whether you’re a creator in the filmmaking business or your creator in enterprise, being an internal comms person… all of that comes back to putting the creator first.”
Building Task Forces with Production Accountability
Ronda’s approach to narrative development centers on cross-functional teams that include the people who will actually execute the work—not just provide strategic input.
She created a task force combining her team, production, and paid social to test customer storytelling approaches. The constraint: video content needed to work within dramatically shortened attention spans.
“When you’re dealing with video, it has to be short and sweet and with the short attention span of audiences today it’s like that tick tock, quick hit,” Ronda says.
The task force iterated through multiple formats before finding their formula. The key insight: include distribution teams in the testing process, not just strategy sessions.
“This task force became an example across Vimeo of what great looks like,” Ronda notes.
Designing Content Refresh Systems, Not Recreation Cycles
Customer video testimonials require significant production investment. Most companies treat them as annual projects that need complete recreation.
Ronda’s team built a different system. They embed in quarterly business reviews with customer success to capture updated performance metrics, then refresh the summary sections of existing videos with new statistics—no full reproduction required.
“We’re going to try some new things in 2026 around collaborating with our customer success team and bringing in our team to those quarterly business reviews and getting updated stats so we can quickly update the existing video content with some tweaks to the end of the video itself.”
This approach “10x’s” content value while reducing production overhead. The shift: from treating content as campaign assets to treating it as living infrastructure with systematic refresh triggers.
The Mechanics of AEO Versus SEO
Ronda has navigated the industry’s shift from search engine optimization to what she calls AEO—AI engine optimization.
“Now you’re dealing with a whole new animal beyond SEO, which is AEO, and how we get those result, we get to the top of those results when AI is crawling our page to surface the best stories.”
The difference became clear when Vimeo announced rapper 2 Chainz would speak at their annual Reframe conference. “When we put his name into the press release, we saw immediate uptick of the LLMs picking it up.”
The speed differential was dramatic. “SEO is a long game. And aeo not necessarily at the moment, it’s not necessarily a long game. It can be much faster results.”
This changed Ronda’s perspective on press releases. “It is not dead. And it’s an opportunity that is so much faster to see a turnaround than you would see in SEO.”
The tactical insight: structure press releases with clear entities (names, titles, specific claims) that LLMs can extract and cite, not just keywords for traditional search indexing.
Matching Internal Teams to External ICPs
Ronda made a structural decision that challenges typical organizational design: her internal communications team leads development of Vimeo’s certification program.
The reason: internal communicators match a key target customer profile.
“My internal comms team has taken the lead on that because they know best with that icp, right. They are the ones we’re selling to.”
This same team built Vimeo’s internal intranet—named “the Loop” through employee voting—which serves as both the company’s narrative repository and a reference architecture for how they sell to other internal communications teams.
The broader principle Ronda calls “drinking your own champagne”: “When you use your own product in the same way that your customers do, you communicate completely differently because you’ve lived the problems that you’re solving.”
Measuring Narrative Through Third-Party Consistency
The most fundamental shift in Ronda’s measurement approach moves away from counting press coverage toward tracking narrative consistency across independent sources.
“Measure perception, not press hits,” Ronda advises. “Are you being perceived and is your sentiment in the public eye as a more trusted brand? Are you more understood? Are you more consistently described by others?”
The metric: whether disparate third parties—analysts, customers, press—use similar language to describe you without prompting.
“Because that’s how you know if your narrative is working or not.”
This requires systematic social listening. “Constantly being on the pulse of social is so important because people will let you know and they’re pretty blunt about it.”
If five different sources describe your company in five different ways, sentiment scores are irrelevant—your narrative isn’t landing.
The Role of Analyst Relations in Enterprise Trust
Beyond customer stories and press coverage, Ronda emphasizes analyst relations as a critical trust-building mechanism for enterprise buyers.
“The industry analysts like Gartner, Forrester. Those folks are really important too because on the enterprise side of our business, that’s where the enterprises go as a trusted source to give them information about the best vendors in the space.”
This third-party validation layer becomes particularly important when selling to organizations that need independent verification before vendor selection—a common pattern in enterprise software purchasing.
Preparing for 2026: AI Training as Competitive Advantage
Ronda’s team is completing AI training through Nicole Leffer’s “Foundations of Generative AI for B2B Marketing” course from Catalyst LLC. The investment extends beyond operational efficiency.
“We are in the process of doing some AI training and getting certified in some B2B AI training. And I personally am looking forward to finishing that training because it really is… making it so much easier for me and more impactful.”
The training also serves as a prototype for Vimeo’s broader certification program strategy—test internally with teams that match target ICPs before external rollout.
Three Principles for B2B Communications Leaders
Ronda distills her approach into three tactical guidelines:
First: “Drink your own champagne when you can, especially when it comes to software and SaaS… when you use your own product in the same way that your customers do, you communicate completely differently because you’ve lived the problems that you’re solving.”
Second: “Measure perception, not press hits. Are you being perceived and is your sentiment in the public eye as a more trusted brand? Are you more understood? Are you more consistently described by others?”
Third: “Keep your eyes and ears on organic social” because audiences provide unfiltered feedback about whether your narrative is working.
The through-line in Ronda’s approach: communications has evolved from message distribution to strategic operation. Success comes from taking clear stances early, building with execution teams rather than strategy committees, optimizing for AI extraction alongside search ranking, and measuring whether third parties describe you consistently without prompting.
For B2B companies navigating dual audiences, legacy repositioning, or the shift from SEO to AEO, Ronda’s work at Vimeo provides a blueprint—one built on production accountability, systematic content refresh, and measurement frameworks that track what actually indicates narrative success.