VideoMy Pod

In this episode of the VideoMy Pod’s US Series, host David Macciocca and co-host Bryan Chaney, founder of People Nerd and PBC, sit down with Amy Parker, Head of Internal Communications at Valtech, to explore one of the most compelling career pivots in the series: moving from employer brand into internal comms — and what that transition reveals about how the two functions should (but rarely do) work together.

Drawing on nearly a decade at Valtech and its predecessor companies, including building employer brand through two rebrands, a major acquisition, and global scale, Amy shares how she took the targeting, segmentation, and campaign thinking of employer brand and applied it to internal communications, a function she believes is too often reduced to blasting information rather than engaging people. 

She also gets into how she structures her internal comms strategy around three pillars, why tone should be consistent inside and out, how to measure whether communications are actually useful, and the huge untapped opportunity that exists when employer brand and internal comms share their data.

For employer brand practitioners curious about internal comms, or internal comms leaders who want to think more like marketers, this episode offers a rare and practical perspective from someone who has genuinely lived both sides.

Key Topics:
02:00 – Amy’s background: building employer brand through acquisition and global scale at Valtech
06:00 – Why she made the shift from employer brand into internal comms a year and a half ago
10:00 – What she learned reporting into marketing vs. talent acquisition — and why she loved it
14:00 – How employer brand thinking (targeting, segmentation, campaigns) transforms internal comms
18:00 – Her three internal comms pillars: Unify, Optimize, and Engage
22:00 – How she captures moments that matter across a 6,000-person globally distributed workforce
26:00 – Measuring internal comms: open rates, usefulness surveys, and engagement data
30:00 – The huge untapped white space between employer brand data and internal comms data
33:00 – Crisis communications: why having an EB background changes how you handle hard news
36:00 – Advice for her earlier self: plug in internally sooner and have the hard conversations earlier
37:30 – Internal vs. external tone: should they match, and what happens when they don’t?

You can stay up to date by following us on LinkedIn, or catch up on previous episodes here. 

We’d love for you to help us spread the word about the VideoMy Pod to attract new experts and practitioners to share their activation strategies and help us continue to build this wonderful community. Please subscribe wherever you listen or give us a share on LinkedIn!

If you’re ready to level up your activation strategy, we help organisations turn moments that matter into stories that people trust. Interested in learning more? Book a walkthrough with one of our video specialists.

In this episode of the VideoMy Pod’s US Series, host David Macciocca and co-host Brian Chaney, founder of People Nerd and PBC, sit down with Carrie Corbin, founder of Hope Leigh Marketing Group and former employer brand leader at American Airlines, AT&T, Samsung and Dell, to go deep on one of the most practical topics in the industry: how to actually build and activate an employee ambassador program without starting from zero.

Drawing on two decades of in-house practitioner experience at some of the world’s most recognisable brands, Carrie shares why the best ambassador programs are built on what already exists – employee referral programs, ERGs, and the people who are already showing up and sharing. She also gets into the real reason most referral programs fail, what she learned from being inside an ERG at AT&T, how to tell the ugly side of a job and why it works, and how she recession-proofed her content team at Dell by making them strategic partners, not just storytellers.

For employer brand and recruitment marketing practitioners looking for a no-nonsense, experience-driven guide to building advocacy that actually scales, this episode is one of the most practical in the series.

Key Topics:
02:00 – Carrie’s background: from the beginning of EB to founding Hope Leigh Marketing Group
06:00 – What’s genuinely new in employer brand, and what we’re still figuring out
10:00 – Why employer brand sitting in TA limits its real impact on culture and experience
14:00 – What an ambassador program actually is and why the employee voice outperforms leadership
18:00 – Why ERGs and employee referral programs are your fastest path to existing advocates
23:00 – What most employer brand people misunderstand about ERGs from the inside
28:00 – The AT&T Twitter tribe: finding employees already talking and inviting them in
33:00 – Creating win-win partnerships with ERGs through competitions, incentives, and shared storytelling
38:00 – The Skyball story: how American Airlines turned a military gala into an EB moment
42:00 – Realistic job preview videos and why showing the ugly side of a job reduces attrition
46:00 – Why employee referral programs fail and Laszlo Bock’s “give me five” fix
50:00 – Building the business case: reducing ad spend, driving organic referrals, and improving retention
52:00 – Recession-proofing your EB team: how Dell’s content creators survived while recruiters were cut
53:00 – The biggest lesson moving from in-house to agency: stop trying to fix everything for free

You can stay up to date by following us on LinkedIn, or catch up on previous episodes here. 

We’d love for you to help us spread the word about the VideoMy Pod to attract new experts and practitioners to share their activation strategies and help us continue to build this wonderful community. Please subscribe wherever you listen or give us a share on LinkedIn!

If you’re ready to level up your activation strategy, we help organisations turn moments that matter into stories that people trust. Interested in learning more? Book a walkthrough with one of our video specialists.

In this episode of the VideoMy Pod’s US Series, host David Macciocca and co-host Bryan Cheney, founder of People Nerd and People Brand Collective (PBC), sit down with one of PBC's co-founders, Crystal Lay, to explore a topic that doesn’t get nearly enough airtime: the isolation, lack of standards, and professional fragmentation facing employer brand and people communications practitioners today — and what’s being done about it.

Drawing on over two decades in the industry, including stints in marketing, HR, consulting, and agency work, Crystal shares why employer brand professionals are among the loneliest in the workforce, why the industry is about 10 years behind traditional marketing in terms of maturity and structure, and why she and Brian set out to build something bigger than a conference or a Slack group. She also gets into what makes a community genuinely work, why PBC deliberately includes agencies, vendors, and consultants as equals, and what it would mean for the industry to finally have its own professional standards, research, and advocacy body.

For anyone working in employer brand, recruitment marketing, or people communications (whether you’re a team of one or part of a larger function) this episode will resonate deeply and might just make you feel a little less alone.

Key Topics:
02:00 – Crystal’s background: from marketing to recruiting to 20+ years in employer brand
06:00 – The epidemic of loneliness and why it’s hitting EB practitioners especially hard
10:00 – Why EB and people brand professionals are the “redheaded stepchildren” of every industry group
14:00 – The gap PBC is trying to fill: no professional home, no standards, no advocacy
18:00 – Why PBC includes agencies, vendors, and consultants as equal members — not second-class ones
22:00 – Consultant speak, individual identity, and remembering your personal value
25:30 – Who disproportionately ends up outside corporate roles — and why that matters
28:00 – What community success actually looks like: Dunbar’s theory and the deeper metrics
31:00 – Creating industry standards, original research, and a living knowledge base
33:30 – How PBC services members globally across time zones and learning formats
34:30 – Why employer brand deserves the same advocacy SHRM gives to HR

You can stay up to date by following us on LinkedIn, or catch up on previous episodes here. 

We’d love for you to help us spread the word about the VideoMy Pod to attract new experts and practitioners to share their activation strategies and help us continue to build this wonderful community. Please subscribe wherever you listen or give us a share on LinkedIn!

If you’re ready to level up your activation strategy, we help organisations turn moments that matter into stories that people trust. Interested in learning more? Book a walkthrough with one of our video specialists.

In this episode of the VideoMy Pod's US Series, recorded live in Chicago, host David Macciocca and co-host Brian Cheney, founder of People Nerd and PBC, sit down with Max Darby, Talent Attraction Manager at Hilti North America, to explore one of the most common, and most underexplored, career transitions in the industry: moving from talent acquisition into employer brand.

Drawing on over a decade of experience that started with agency recruitment in aerospace and defence in the UK before evolving into a global and then North American employer brand role at Hilti, Max shares what recruiters naturally bring to employer brand (and what they need to unlearn), how curiosity about the “why” behind applications sparked his shift, and what it really takes to build an employer brand strategy that connects to business outcomes. He also gets into programmatic advertising, talent pipelines, authentic storytelling, and why the role of employer brand is increasingly about advising the business — not just advertising it.

For recruiters considering the move into employer brand, or practitioners who want a grounded, honest take on what the role actually demands, this episode is full of hard-won insight from someone who has lived the transition.

Key Topics:
02:00 – Max’s journey: agency recruitment to global EB to Hilti North America
06:00 – The moment he realised social media and storytelling were his real superpower
10:00 – What recruiters bring to employer brand — and what they need to unlearn
15:00 – Moving from transactional mindset to strategic, persona-based thinking
19:00 – Why you can’t fix a bad employer brand with great storytelling
23:00 – Connecting employer brand to business outcomes: empty seats, lost revenue, and sales quotas
27:00 – Programmatic advertising and the split between brand and recruitment marketing
31:00 – What Max thought EB was vs. what it actually turned out to be
34:00 – The skills recruiters must develop: marketing, analytics, and strategic thinking
36:30 – Advice for anyone making the transition: take risks, stay curious, and it’ll be okay

You can stay up to date by following us on LinkedIn, or catch up on previous episodes here. 

We’d love for you to help us spread the word about the VideoMy Pod to attract new experts and practitioners to share their activation strategies and help us continue to build this wonderful community. Please subscribe wherever you listen or give us a share on LinkedIn!

If you’re ready to level up your activation strategy, we help organisations turn moments that matter into stories that people trust. Interested in learning more? Book a walkthrough with one of our video specialists.

VideoMy Pod host David Macciocca and co-host James Ellis talk to Michael Lowe, Recruitment Marketing Program Manager at a multi-state health system in Illinois and Wisconsin, to unpack one of the most practical EVP stories they've heard: building a full employer value proposition from scratch, in-house, in under six weeks – without an agency.

Just two months into his new role, Michael shares how he leveraged exit survey data, new hire feedback, AI chatbots, ERG partnerships and a healthy dose of agency-side experience to develop a validated EVP framework that leadership, marketing and HR all signed off on. He also gets into the unique challenges of employer branding in healthcare, from nursing shortages and staff burnout to building personas across wildly different audiences, and what comes next once the EVP is live.

For employer brand and recruitment marketing practitioners who want a realistic, no-budget-blown playbook for getting an EVP done quickly and credibly, Michael's story is as practical as it gets.

Key Topics:
02:00 – Moving from agency to in-house: what changes and what transfers
07:00 – Why Michael was handed the EVP brief two months into the role
11:00 – Replacing focus groups with exit data, new hire surveys and AI chatbots
16:00 – Using ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini to gather external sentiment fast
20:00 – Tapping the ERG as a built-in focus group to validate themes
25:00 – Getting leadership buy-in when the precedent was already there
29:00 – Navigating pushback: too authentic vs. too aspirational
33:00 – How healthcare's behavioural reality (nurses feeling unheard) shaped the EVP pillars
37:00 – Building personas across nursing, physicians, and corporate staff simultaneously
40:00 – What the EVP unlocks next: storytelling, advocacy, and campaign activation
42:30 – If you could do it again: what Michael would do differently

You can stay up to date by following us on LinkedIn, or catch up on previous episodes here. 

We’d love for you to help us spread the word about the VideoMy Pod to attract new experts and practitioners to share their activation strategies and help us continue to build this wonderful community. Please subscribe wherever you listen or give us a share on LinkedIn!

If you’re ready to level up your activation strategy, we help organisations turn moments that matter into stories that people trust. Interested in learning more? Book a walkthrough with one of our video specialists.

In this episode of the VideoMy Pod host David Macciocca and co-host James Ellis sit down with Amy Miller, an employer brand professional with a decade of experience in insurance and financial services, to dig deep into EVP activation – what it means, where it starts and how to make it stick across a large, matrixed organisation.

Drawing on her experience at Discover and other major financial institutions, Amy shares why activation has to start internally before it goes anywhere near an external candidate, how to build and segment playbooks so every audience gets the right message, and why ERGs are one of the most underutilised activation levers available. She also talks about the power of FOMO in getting employees to participate, how to repurpose long-form content across every channel, and how to keep the EVP alive as the business shifts, leadership changes and the market evolves.

For employer brand practitioners in large, risk-averse organisations who need practical ways to move from EVP development to real-world activation, this episode is packed with honest, experience-driven advice.

Key Topics:
02:00 – The biggest mistake people make at the start of an EVP refresh
06:00 – How to use research to sell the need for change to sceptical leaders
10:00 – What a good playbook actually contains — and how to segment it by audience
14:30 – Why internal activation has to come before external
18:00 – ERGs as a primary source of authentic employee advocates
22:00 – How to approach ERG leaders and build genuine collaboration
26:00 – Creating content efficiency: long-form to social, blogs to ads, leaders to FOMO
30:00 – Maintaining the consistent hum across multiple talent segments simultaneously
33:30 – How to know when it's time to go back and refresh the EVP itself
36:00 – Measuring activation: candidate journey tracking, heat mapping, and post-click behaviour
38:30 – How AI is changing the candidate experience and what employer brands need to do about it
40:00 – The moment the EVP truly lands: employees bedazzling t-shirts with their rally cry

You can stay up to date by following us on LinkedIn, or catch up on previous episodes here. 

We’d love for you to help us spread the word about the VideoMy Pod to attract new experts and practitioners to share their activation strategies and help us continue to build this wonderful community. Please subscribe wherever you listen or give us a share on LinkedIn!

If you’re ready to level up your activation strategy, we help organisations turn moments that matter into stories that people trust. Interested in learning more? Book a walkthrough with one of our video specialists.

In this episode of the VideoMy Pod, recorded live in Chicago, host David Macciocca and co-host James Ellis chat with Billye Survis, Head of Talent at Ornua in America, to dig into one of the most important (and most misunderstood) questions in employer brand: what does it actually mean for an EVP to be a real business strategy – not just a pretty deck collecting dust on a shelf?

Drawing on years of experience building and implementing EVPs across global organisations, Billye shares what she's learned about listening to employees before putting pen to paper, getting executive buy-in at every stage of the journey, closing the feedback loop so employees see their input reflected in outcomes, and measuring impact in ways that actually resonate with CFOs, CEOs, and operations leaders alike. She also makes a compelling case for connecting your EVP to sales, and why that conversation is one most employer branders haven't had yet.

For practitioners looking to elevate their EVP from a recruitment tool to a company-wide strategic asset, this episode is packed with honest, practical, and occasionally surprising insights from someone who has done the hard yards.

Key Topics:
02:00 – Why EVPs are a business strategy, not just a recruitment tool
05:00 – What nobody tells you before you start building an EVP
08:30 – Tailoring the executive buy-in conversation for CFOs, CEOs, and ops leaders
12:00 – Keeping it real: why your EVP must reflect the actual employee experience
16:00 – Closing the feedback loop so employees see their input turned into action
19:30 – Internal vs external EVP activation and how to work with internal comms
23:00 – Connecting your EVP to sales — and why that conversation changes everything
26:30 – KPIs that matter: internal mobility, time to fill, conversion, and referrals
29:30 – Why employee storytelling is still the most powerful EVP amplification tool
32:00 – The telltale signs your company needs a new (or first) EVP
34:30 – Localising a global EVP: pulling data, building a case, and getting buy-in
37:00 – The biggest surprise when building an EVP: what you find when you open the hood

You can stay up to date by following us on LinkedIn, or catch up on previous episodes here. 

We’d love for you to help us spread the word about the VideoMy Pod to attract new experts and practitioners to share their activation strategies and help us continue to build this wonderful community. Please subscribe wherever you listen or give us a share on LinkedIn!

If you’re ready to level up your activation strategy, we help organisations turn moments that matter into stories that people trust. Interested in learning more? Book a walkthrough with one of our video specialists.

In this episode of the VideoMy Pod, host David Macciocca chats with James Ellis (author of five books and one of the world's most recognised employer brand authorities) for a wide-ranging, no-holds-barred conversation on what employer brand really is, why most organisations are getting it wrong, and what it actually takes to build something worth talking about.

James brings his signature combination of wit, provocation and deep strategic thinking to some of the most important questions in the field: How do you pitch employer brand to a sceptical CEO or CFO? What does it mean to be "choosable"? Why is employee advocacy the most underrated tool in the playbook? And where the heck should employer brand actually sit in an organisation? He also shares his honest (and occasionally biased) takes on TA, marketing and internal comms, before wrapping up with a rapid-fire agree/disagree round that doesn't pull any punches.

For anyone working in employer brand, recruitment marketing, or talent acquisition who wants to think differently about their work – and maybe pick a fight or two along the way – this one is essential listening.

Key Topics:
02:00 – The 60-second elevator pitch that reframes employer brand for sceptical CEOs
07:00 – How to talk to a CFO: value exchange, A-players and why salary premiums are a losing game
12:00 – What "choosable" actually means and why most companies sound exactly the same
17:00 – The #1 wasted opportunity on every career site (and why it makes James "murderously mad")
21:00 – Why employee advocacy is the cheapest, most impactful tool almost nobody uses properly
26:00 – The art of saying no and how to build systems that let you say yes more often
31:00 – Where should employer brand live: TA, marketing, or internal comms?
37:00 – The pros, cons and honest job security ranking of each reporting structure
41:00 – If you had a million dollars: what James would actually spend it on
43:00 – Rapid fire: EVPs are dead. Career sites are irrelevant. AI will make all content look the same. Agree or disagree?

You can stay up to date by following us on LinkedIn, or catch up on previous episodes here. 

We’d love for you to help us spread the word about the VideoMy Pod to attract new experts and practitioners to share their activation strategies and help us continue to build this wonderful community. Please subscribe wherever you listen or give us a share on LinkedIn!

If you’re ready to level up your activation strategy, we help organisations turn moments that matter into stories that people trust. Interested in learning more? Book a walkthrough with one of our video specialists.

In this episode of the VideoMy Pod's Employer Brand Series, recorded live in Singapore, hosts David Macciocca and Emma Lang chat with Wak Solis, Regional Talent Acquisition Director – Technology & Transformation for Deloitte SEA, to explore something rarely covered in the series: how a senior TA leader thinks about employer brand — and what it takes to build a genuine, data-driven partnership between recruitment and employer brand teams.

Drawing on 20+ years across banking, professional services, and BPO, Wak shares why she sees talent acquisition as a growth and advisory function rather than a seat-filling operation. She unpacks how to get business stakeholders to invest in employer brand, why quality of hire is the metric that matters most, and how recruiters can become trusted consultants to the business, even when hiring isn't top of mind. 

She also makes the case for continuous candidate feedback loops, market segmentation in talent strategy, and why shadowing between TA and employer brand teams is one of the most underutilised tools available.

For employer brand practitioners trying to build stronger TA partnerships, secure budget, or speak the language of business stakeholders, this episode offers a rare and valuable perspective from the other side of the table.

Key Topics:
02:00 – Wak's background and why she sees TA as a personal and professional mission
05:30 – How COVID shifted the power balance between candidates and employers
09:00 – Why candidate experience is employer brand's most important battleground
13:00 – Getting hiring managers to see themselves as talent sellers, not just selectors
17:00 – Segmenting your EB strategy: campus, experienced hire and C-suite need different approaches
20:30 – How to build the business case for employer brand investment using data
24:00 – Quality of hire: measuring performance and retention, not just time-to-fill
28:00 – Building a TA analytics capability from the ground up
31:00 – The feedback loop TA teams should be running but usually aren't
33:00 – Using independent focus groups to surface the real candidate voice
34:00 – Why agility and shared responsibility are the keys to TA success in 2025 and beyond

You can stay up to date by following us on LinkedIn, or catch up on previous episodes here. 

We’d love for you to help us spread the word about the VideoMy Pod to attract new experts and practitioners to share their activation strategies and help us continue to build this wonderful community. Please subscribe wherever you listen or give us a share on LinkedIn!

If you’re ready to level up your activation strategy, we help organisations turn moments that matter into stories that people trust. Interested in learning more? Book a walkthrough with one of our video specialists.

In this episode of the VideoMy Pod's Employer Brand Series, recorded live in Singapore, hosts David Macciocca and Emma Lang sit down with Anne Caron – People Strategy Advisor, Founder, Author and former Google HR leader. Anne explores what it really means to build an authentic employer brand, from the inside out, and from the very top of the organisation down.

Drawing on 10 years at Google (where she helped grow the company from 5,000 to 65,000 employees) and a decade since working with CEOs and founders of companies between 10 and 50 people, Anne brings a uniquely broad perspective. 

She shares why 90% of company culture comes from the CEO, why policies built on fear undermine trust, and why the most powerful employer brand tool available to any organisation, regardless of size or budget, is simply creating experiences worth talking about. She also gets into the "cookie effect," the magic of all-hands moments, and why preparing your best people for roles elsewhere might be the smartest brand move you can make.

For employer brand practitioners, HR leaders and founders trying to close the gap between what they say and what employees actually feel, this episode is a masterclass in building from a foundation of authenticity, trust and intentional experience design.

Key Topics:
02:00 – Anne's journey: from placing Google on the map as an employer to advising startup founders
07:00 – Why 90% of company culture flows from the CEO, and what to do about it
11:00 – The Founder Charter: articulating identity, values, and philosophy before anything else
15:30 – Mission, vision and values as the three anchors for all people strategy decisions
19:00 – The "cookie effect": creating shareworthy candidate and employee experiences
24:00 – Why trust, not policies, is the real foundation of employee advocacy
28:30 – Training employees on personal branding as a win-win for them and the organisation
33:00 – Policies built on fear vs. cultures built on trust: the Netflix "grownup adults" philosophy
37:00 – How to unlock camera-shy or hesitant leaders to tell their authentic story
41:00 – All-hands meetings, magic moments and getting people to speak on the mic
44:30 – Boomerangs, retention at all costs and why a good goodbye is good employer brand
47:00 – IKEA, Airbnb, and the creative moments that make people talk

You can stay up to date by following us on LinkedIn, or catch up on previous episodes here. 

We’d love for you to help us spread the word about the VideoMy Pod to attract new experts and practitioners to share their activation strategies and help us continue to build this wonderful community. Please subscribe wherever you listen or give us a share on LinkedIn!

If you’re ready to level up your activation strategy, we help organisations turn moments that matter into stories that people trust. Interested in learning more? Book a walkthrough with one of our video specialists.