Summary: The employer brand industry has a quality problem, and it persists because both sides quietly let each other settle. Buyers — TA and HR leaders who inherited employer brand without ever being trained to evaluate creative — can’t always name what’s wrong, so sellers adjust downward and safe, derivative work gets approved. This piece is a confession from two decades on the creative side, and a case for naming the gap out loud: better questions, connected goals across marketing and TA, and measurement that tracks trust, memorability, and influence instead of box-checking.

How the creative side and the buying side have been letting each other settle, and what it costs.

I've wanted to talk about something that's been on my mind for a long time, and I want to be careful about how I say it because it involves the very people I admire, respect and want to work with.

The employer brand industry has a quality problem. Not everywhere. Not everyone. But broadly, the standard for what gets called "good" is lower than it should be. And I think I understand why, because I've been on one side of the equation for over two decades.

This isn't a callout. It's a confession, and hopefully the start of a real conversation. From both sides of the table.

The Career Path Nobody Talks About

If you're a TA leader or an HR executive, you got where you are by being exceptional at things for that career path. From academics to experience. This makes total sense. My career as a creative was studying and doing design, copywriting, decision-making research, brand strategy, and user experience. You built expertise in workforce planning, compliance, talent operations, organizational development. Those are hard, complex disciplines. I know a little about those because of proximity, but it's not been my career working in them.

I've heard this so often I believe it's widespread: one day, employer brand lands on your desk. Or you inherit it. Or it gets folded into your charge because nobody else wanted it and you're the one who gets things done.

And suddenly you're evaluating creative work, approving campaigns, choosing agencies, making decisions about brand voice and visual identity. The org chart says it's yours now, ready or not, here it comes.

I'd have conversations about these topics with my clients out of genuine curiosity. If I had never had any experience in workforce planning, but suddenly it was put in my hands, what would I do? Most often I'd hear, that's how it goes, that these decisions are structural, chain of command, hierarchy, assigned a responsibility vs. ready for it. Nobody designed the TA career path to include fluency in typography, brand architecture, or how to evaluate whether a campaign will honestly change behavior. Why would they? So, my job expanded to help clients, in very little time, dive into in my area of obsession so they could do their job. Some embraced it, others, not so much. Decades of study and practice for me. A first time, or second time project for them.

The Other Side of the Table

Here's my confession: the creative side of this industry hasn't helped.

I've watched agencies present work they knew was not going to help because they'd learned the client would approve it. I've seen "employer brand specialists" build entire practices around templates, because templates are easy to sell and easy to deliver. I've sat in rooms where the conversation wasn't "is this great, what will it impact?" but "will this get through?"

I fully embrace that I'm more obsessive than most. I'd make the impassioned plea, offering to be in the room with marketing, with the CMO, CEO, Board even, with anyone fighting over ego or turf instead of common goals. But my client had more to risk than I did, and I was very sensitive to that. I'd have the conversation, make the case, and then respect their decision when they said not this time. What a dilemma.

When the buyer doesn't have a framework for evaluating creative strategy and design solutions, the seller adjusts downward. It's out of necessity. Salaries at stake. One side of that is being a good partner and delivering what was asked, the other is the path of least resistance. Safe work gets approved faster. Nobody gets in trouble for it until someone, usually C-suite, asks hard questions. The agency hits its margins. The client checks the box. Everyone moves on.

The result is an industry where derivative campaigns copy from other derivative campaigns. Where the bar stays low because raising it is uncomfortable for everyone involved. Where "good enough" became the ceiling so gradually that nobody noticed it happening. And more troubling, it no one’s responsibility to study this kind of work in depth to even see it.

The Turf War Is Real.

There's another layer said in hushed tones.

With the usual caveat of "what is said in this room stays in this room," TA and HR leaders I know well would tell me they were afraid of their own marketing team. "You don't understand our Brand" was a common refrain from corporate brand guardians who saw employer brand as a threat to their territory, not as a partner in telling a connected story.

So the employer brand work stays neutral, or less. No one wanted it that way, but turf, not strategy, was driving the decisions. EVP hasn't been an effective approach to talking about a value proposition since the concept was introduced in 1997. The approach that is common now gets reduced to avoid stepping on corporate messaging. Its goal was to make a slogan for an incredibly wide array of audience types. The creative gets flattened to "stay within brand guidelines" that were never designed to account for the employee or candidate experience. And the TA leader, already stretched thin and operating outside their core expertise, doesn't often have the organizational leverage to push back and build a bridge connected by aligned goals.

This is the structural problem. No bad intentions. No devious Machiavellian types trying to rig the game. A system where nobody has the authority, the fluency or the life's work of evidence to demand better and get it through the building.

What This Actually Costs

This matters beyond craft pride.

When your employer brand isn't connected to the goals touching overlapping audiences, it fragments, it's like a blurry background. When it's indistinguishable from your competitors', it disappears. Either way, it doesn't work. That's not opinion, that's how brand differentiation functions. There is some formula to it all (and lots of room for innovation, too). If your EVP is read aloud to a room filled with half candidates and half employees, what do you think would happen? If it could belong to any company in your space with a logo swap, you've spent budget without building equity. Candidates don't feel it. Employees don't recognize it. The gap between what you say and what people experience stays wide open. We all know what crawls through those gaps. Lost value.

When creative standards aren't connected to creating value, every dollar you spend on employer brand or EVP works at a fraction of its potential. Companies are paying for strategy and activation campaigns that are largely background noise when the entire point of brand is to stand out and invite people into your world. EVP, if we even still prefer to use that term, should sound like a love letter to the people who create value. Why they are valued. How they are seen and heard. What being part of something special means to everyone. That's the world your brand should be inviting people into.

And when nobody in the organization can articulate why the work isn't improving any of the C-suite goals, the diagnosis defaults to "we need more budget" or "we need a new agency/EVP/Employer Brand/more storytelling." And the worst version sounds like this from a CEO: "Employer brand and EVP are HR distractions that don't help the business." None of those are the actual problem.

What Building Better Actually Looks Like

I'd like to be as clear as possible about what I'm not saying. I'm not saying TA leaders need to learn Figma or take a course in brand strategy. I'm not saying you should be able to art direct a campaign or get a degree in Design or copywriting. I'm definitely not saying go work at McKinsey, Accenture or some famous B2C for two years, then come back to EB.

What I am saying is there's disconnection, and even if it's no fault of anyone, pretending it doesn't exist serves nobody. Least of all you.

The leaders I've worked with who got the best results weren't the ones who became design experts. They were the ones who got honest with themselves, and me, about what succeeding would do for the company, for them, and for the workforce. And when they were honest about not knowing, we knew how to help. That made all the difference.

Helping usually starts with asking better questions. Not "do I like this?" but "will this change behavior? What metrics would show progress a year from now? What message do you want to get from your CEO when the work is completed? How do you want audiences to react? What are we trading off?" And then applying first principles to build from. First principles meaning what we know to be true that cannot be broken down further.

It means demanding that your agency connect the creative work to your actual business goals before they present it. They should guide you through a decision-making process that filters wants from needs and aligns your talent strategy to C-suite priorities. That context changes everything. Most agencies don't offer this because it makes their job harder. And might not have the wherewithal without bringing in two or three other external partners. That's a mess in the making.

It means bridging the turf war. Getting corporate brand, marketing, TA, and comms in the same room with shared goals before the creative work starts. Not after. The employer brand shouldn't be fighting for permission to exist. It should be connected to every other expression of who the company is. That's not a creative problem. That's a leadership problem. And HR and TA leaders are better positioned to solve it than they think.

And it means insisting on measurement that matters. Trust. Memorability. Influence. Honesty. Customer experience. Alignment of employee expectations to experience. Whether employees share their stories and experiences without being asked to. When your people genuinely recommend your products and services. When you have something special in your job, you either want to sing it from the mountaintop, or hide it afraid it'll get taken away. That's part of the bridge building too. Those are brand indicators.

The Feeling You Already Have

I believe most TA and HR leaders already sense this gap. They feel it when an agency presents and something doesn't sit right but they can't quite label it. I had a client tell me once that from RFP presentations, they couldn't tell anyone apart. They feel it when they see a competitor's work that clearly hits different and they wonder why theirs doesn't. They feel it when they approve something and quietly think, "I guess this is fine."

That feeling is data. And it's more reliable than most people give themselves credit for.

The industry doesn't need TA leaders to become creative strategists or brand designers. It needs them to trust that instinct, name the gap out loud, and demand better from the people they're paying to fill it. Including people like me.

I've been part of a system that settled. I'd rather be part of one that builds. If you've ever had that quiet moment of knowing the work could be better, do more, win across the goals, but not being sure how to push for it, you're not behind. You're exactly where the conversation needs to start.

Let's raise the standard together. It's better up there for everyone.