Every scale-up and SaaS company now uses technology to accelerate B2B marketing and sales. The upside is real. So is the downside.

For people working brand/retailer/corporate side, it’s worse than ever:

• More unsolicited approaches (social, email, calls, etc..)
• More irrelevant approaches (timing, fit, sector, type, etc..)
• Less clarity on what is good/bad, works/won’t work

Some of the best SaaS/Scale-Ups we work with, (and some we don’t), are succeeding because they take care to develop genuine partnerships and relationships with the verticals and the target audience they serve. We've built our business around it.

So we approach things differently

• Most people are NOT in buying mode when you try to speak to them
• But when they are, people still buy from people
• People are busier than ever executing, delivering and trying hit targets

We focus on ensuring we maintain a regular dialogue with corporates to understand  their pain points and immediate challenges, whilst keeping a watchful eye out for solutions, services and approaches which will resonate. We do this in a way which is both honest and adds value - bad advice or pushy “salesy” tactics result in doors rapidly closing.

This is why we run “behind closed doors” events which brings corporates and our community together. No attacks by vendors, just a cornucopia of candid commentary from industry execs coupled with a showcase of the best tech delivering rapid impact for limited effort.

We’ve worked our socks off to build a network that helps both corporates and scale-ups, with an approach that uses experience, honest perspectives and hands on practitioners to help both sides.

Creating and working with networks and real people is an essential, when so much is being automated and driven by tech.

A meeting should deliver two-way benefits - is asking someone to use Calendly (or similar) repectful, efficient or just plain lazy?

You know what’s getting our goat.... using scheduling software as the de facto standard for arranging meetings.

Here’s the situation: you email someone, perhaps as a result of an introduction, perhaps because you already know them, and instead of a reply that reflects any effort whatsoever, you get "Here's my Calendly, you can find a time that works." or even worse, “sounds good, you’ll see my calendly link at the bottom of my email, please use that”.

It just feels, rude and disengaged.

We’re anything but anti-technology at greyhairworks, and we know that Calendly (other calendar tools are available) has its place (eg: High-volume inbound, recruitment screening, demo bookings, fine). But when someone sends you a link in place of actually looking at their diary, it feels more like: my time is more valuable than yours, so I’m relying on you to do the admin for me, rather than, I’m looking forward to spending time with you, let’s find some time.

That's not relationship-building. That's outsourcing courtesy.

Surely, if we want to build good professional relationships, we should start by doing things that show we value the other person's time, and crucially that the meeting is worth the effort arranging it.

Then, if you get stuck trying to find a time after minimal manual effort, then chuck a calendly option for simplicity.

First impressions matter, and "navigate my scheduling software" feels like a poor one.

Relationships are built on small signals. Effort is one of them.

In a world where lots can be automated, it doesn’t mean that you should. Especially if it erodes values or intentions that are important to you - like building good relationships and being courteous.

Article by Natalie Shiels , Founding Partner at sister company Greyhound

AI Is Not the Transformation. Work Design Is.

The current conversation around AI in organisations is misframed.

HR and People leaders are being asked to “implement AI,” as though adoption itself is the objective. But across organisations, a different pattern is emerging: the primary constraint is not technological capability. It is the design of work itself.

Most organisations don’t have an AI problem. They have a work design problem.

Most enterprises are attempting to apply a transformative technology to an operating model that has remained largely intact for over a century: one built on jobs, hierarchies, and static role definitions. These constructs were designed for coordination and control in an industrial context. They persist today in how organisations structure roles, allocate accountability, and measure performance.

AI, by contrast, operates at the level of tasks, decisions, and workflows.

The mismatch is becoming increasingly visible.

AI is being deployed into existing systems of work: chatbots layered onto service models, copilots embedded into individual tasks, automation introduced into discrete processes. Yet the underlying architecture remains unchanged. Workflows are fragmented, decision rights unclear, and accountability anchored to roles rather than outcomes.

In this context, it is unsurprising that productivity gains have been uneven.

In many cases, organisations are simply accelerating existing inefficiencies or using AI as a more sophisticated search layer, rather than rethinking how work should be done.

Fundamentally, most organisations are still earlier in this journey than they assume. Many functions have yet to meaningfully examine their workflows, identify where automation will deliver the greatest return, or redesign work around those opportunities, let alone engage with more advanced concepts such as agent-based orchestration.

Instead, the dominant pattern has been to layer AI onto existing roles and processes, asking individuals to incorporate new tools into how work is already done. This approach misses a more fundamental question: given what AI can do well, and what humans do distinctly well, how should work be redesigned from first principles?

The distinction matters. AI systems are highly effective at tasks that are high-volume, pattern-dependent, and iterative. Humans retain clear advantages in judgment, ethical reasoning, relationship management, and creative synthesis. The organisations seeing meaningful gains are not replacing roles but restructuring them: designing work around this complementarity rather than forcing it into legacy models.

The organisations realising meaningful value are taking a different approach. They are redesigning work from first principles: reconfiguring workflows, decision rights, and the distribution of work between humans and machines.

This requires a shift from viewing AI as a tool to be used, to understanding it as a component within a broader system of work. Increasingly, this looks less like individuals using technology, and more like humans orchestrating networks of activity across people and intelligent systems.

For Senior business and HR leaders, this reframes the mandate.

AI adoption is not, at its core, a technology agenda. It is an organisational design problem - one that sits squarely within the remit of senior HR leadership.
This is not a technology transformation. It is a work transformation.

And it raises a more fundamental question: if we were designing work today, with a clear understanding of what humans and AI Agents each do best, what would we design differently?

Few organisations have yet engaged with that question in a systematic way.

Those that do will not simply improve efficiency. They will redefine how value is created and reshape the role of leadership in the process.

And increasingly, they are recognising that this is not just a capability gap, but a design challenge, one that most organisations are not set up to solve alone.

Retail Media is no longer the unruly toddler. But we spend so little time thinking about what Retail Media should be as a fully-formed adult with a driving license and an ability to buy booze. What might a well-adjusted adult version of Retail Media look like (if we, as its parents do our job properly)?

Article by Viv Craske , Partner at sister company Grace & Co & podcast host of Retail Media Therapy

Quick re-cap:

Retail Media is the reincarnation of Shopper Marketing. Shopper Marketing was invented in the late 1990s by Procter & Gamble as a strategic approach to influence purchasing behaviour at the point of sale by understanding their mindset and path to purchase.

I worked in a Shopper Agency 2013-2016, then managed a 'retail media' business in 2017-2019. We talked about cardboard POS in store, about online ads, and about translating above-the-line creative to a below-the-line proposition. At best it was about making sense of a messy shopper journey – omnichannel and spaghetti-like – and at worst it was printing a load of shelf barkers to tick the 'shopper marketing' box. What it was never about was any of the current obsessions of many in the retail media space: It was not about putting Sponsored Products at the centre of the universe. It was not about iROAS.

Retail Media is a different youngster to Shopper Marketing's snotty adolescent desperate for attention. Retail Media is the doted-upon nepo baby of our media culture. And, as always when we're raising kids, time flies by so bloody fast, that before you know it you hardly recognise the little rascal. So before Retail Media becomes bigger than TV, destroys the global media agencies and turns every retailer into a media powerhouse, perhaps it's time to ask:

"What do we – as responsible grown ups – want Retail Media to be when it's all grown up?"

Here's some thoughts to consider of how we might want to influence little Retail Media before our little child stops calling us "Mummy" or "Daddy" and starts calling us "bruh":

1. Building Brands We've got to stop thinking small and saying what retail media is good at is lower funnel and driving sales. Being close to the shopper means we understand them and how to influence them everywhere, because commerce is now everywhere. Saying that retail media is mostly Sponsored Products and driving sales is like telling our child that they can only work in a MacDonalds drive thru rather than also work on the McDonalds head office if they want. Retail Media and Shopper Marketing focus on the shopper rather than the consumer – we can target that shopper mindset anywhere…. and drive them to the point of conversion and beyond using that special relationship.
2. Creative Solutions Retail Media – in its obsession with online and data and measurement – has forgotten the power of creative. Let's bring that back. Let's find the space for both the Shopper campaign 'Share a Coke' and Cadbury's Gorilla. Let's find space on our owned channels for creative to sing, then extend the pretty pictures and charming words to the full funnel. During my time at a shopper agency, I realised that the account management team was often just as creative as the actual 'creatives' – let's also encourage taking a brief and finding novel solutions to brand activation and driving attention in the last mile.
3. Shopper Insights Let's put shopper insights centre stage in Retail Media's future. Insights are not data. They are hypotheses of shopper behaviour based on data. They bring shoppers to life and give us something to test: A/B tests; creative split-tests; funnel-shortening experiments all need insights and who better to provide this than retailers?
4. Data (When it makes sense) Not everything has to use data. Audience segments are amazing. But they don't need to be inserted into everything just because you can. A screen could change its creative because 6 out of 10 people that walk past it are women. Or you can show a creative to a mass audience in your store front and use the creative itself to resonate with shoppers. Much like a teenager with a new car, just because you can drive really fast, doesn't mean you have to. Data can supercharge ads, but they can also make them crash and burn from showing them to too few people.
5. Measuring what matters Many expect that retail media networks should be perfect at measurement (hilarious when TV ad measurement is based on a panel of 5,100 people in the UK; and radio ad measurement in the US uses 'Portable People Meters' and diaries!). The current obsession for iROAS is not healthy for anyone. Brands asking retail media networks for only new shoppers is like a teenager doomscrolling for new dopamine hits on TikTok when a David Attenborough documentary would be more satisfying. How about we take a leaf out of The Home Depot's Orange Apron Media and focus on Return on Marketing Objective, "a measurement framework designed to go beyond traditional ROAS by aligning with full-funnel marketing goals and long-term business impact". This retail media thing is a marathon and not a sprint.

Right now, our 5-year-old retail media child is still learning, so let's not box him into a corner. Let's not tell him he is made of data and must always be selling himself, when perhaps he has a creative heart, a data brain, an instinct for shopper needs and empathy for human connection.

And if you think I've stretched this 'growing up' anecdote too far…? You're right. Retail Media is not a kid. It's not even a real thing. It's just stuff that we do in our jobs. We get to guide and influence what retail media means to both the retail and media industries, so let's work with intention about the narratives we tell each other...

Now I've got to go and discuss with little Retail Media what their favourite dinosaur is…

We work really hard to build a network that helps both scale-up and corporate sides with this, and to preserve an approach that uses experience, honest perspectives and hands on practitioners to help both sides.

Creating and working with networks with real people is an essential when so much is being automated and driven by tech.

This short clip is taken directly from the event, where Grace & Co shared how AI is starting to move from theory to tangible business impact.

• Insight-led.
• Grounded.
• And focused on what actually works in the real world.

His point was simple and it resonated strongly with the room.

We’re moving away from big, monolithic AI projects that look impressive in pilots but struggle to scale… towards more agentic systems that can genuinely execute tasks and automate the work that eats up time.

What follows is where the real shift begins:

• Use becomes practical.
• Trust builds.
• And teams start handing off real chunks of work, not just experimenting on the sidelines.

As Rob explained during the session, AI is evolving from “impressive pilots” to genuinely useful capability inside organisations. The kind that amplifies talent rather than replaces it.

The shift isn’t just search engines anymore. It’s answer engines, AI discovery, and agent-led commerce - where product pages need to be structured for how AI tools interpret intent, not just how humans browse.

What landed with the community:

If algorithms can’t properly read your product data, your customers simply won’t find you.
And manual content models cannot keep pace with the refresh and scale AI search now rewards.

For corporates with large catalogues, this becomes a capability gap - not a marketing tactic.

Practical insight shared:

Structured attributes, use cases, and regularly refreshed product content are becoming critical for visibility across AI search, marketplaces and traditional channels. In short, catalogue optimisation is now a commercial lever, not just an ecom hygiene task.

A sharp, solutions-led session for leaders thinking about discoverability, capability and the future of digital shelf performance.

...And he didn’t do it alone. Other Grown-Ups stepped in to help build and deliver parts of the content - bringing different expertise, perspectives and energy to the series.

What looked like “just 15 minutes a day” took serious work:

• planning
• promotion
• tech hiccups
• rehearsing
• refining

(and yes — AI helped with structure and checklists).

But the real value wasn’t just in doing it. It was in bringing the learning back to the group, openly sharing what worked, what didn’t, and what he’d do differently next time.

And that’s the point.

Grown-Ups don’t figure things out in isolation. They test, learn, build together and help each other move faster by sharing real-world experience.

Those shared lessons didn’t just help the room they helped Matthew too.

His series generated real conversations, real leads, and real momentum.

That’s how greyhairworks works - Experienced people doing the work and helping each other get better at it.