From Ted.
Welcome to the August issue of Tech Brand Brief—brought to you by fred&ted—perhaps the only agency that can make your brand as innovative as your technology.Enterprise buyers are moving faster. That means your brand needs to stop moving like a seven-person committee. This month, we explore what urgency really looks like inside the modern enterprise technology brand—from collapsing timelines and clarifying messaging to building internal alignment that actually speeds things up. We’re spotlighting brands that move fast not because they’re reckless, but because they’re focused—and know the cost of missing the moment. In 2025, attention isn’t handed out. It’s earned in real time.
Metrics that matter.
Enterprise urgency isn’t just about doing more—it’s about moving smarter. Agile teams are thriving. Creative teams are drowning. And first responders are closing deals. These stats prove that speed isn’t optional—it’s everything.
of marketers who use Agile methods report a positive experience, citing greater flexibility and speed. Embracing Agile frameworks for campaigns and projects helps brands execute faster and adapt to change.
—AgileSherpas
of creative leaders report their team felt burned out from the workload in the past year. This highlights the toll of high-speed campaign demands on in-house teams.
—Superside
of all sales go to the vendor that responds to a prospect first. Being the “first responder” to reply significantly boosts the chance of winning new business.
—Peak Sales (via Spotio, 2025)
10-K signals for brand leaders.
Want a peek into how enterprise tech giants are playing the game? Each month, we analyze 10-K filings from major players to reveal what they’re prioritizing in sales and marketing.
Strategic Budget Focus: Salesforce warns that more agile competitors could beat them to market—a public admission that urgency isn’t optional.
Key Takeaway: When a giant like Salesforce says, “We need to move faster,” it’s a signal: Speed isn’t just a start-up advantage—it’s a boardroom mandate.
Strategic Budget Focus: Over half of Atlassian’s team is in R&D, operating in agile pods for rapid releases—weekly updates, constant iteration, no bloated cycles.
Key Takeaway: Atlassian proves big doesn’t have to mean slow. Their development velocity is a blueprint for every brand tired of waiting six months to launch anything.
Strategic Budget Focus: IBM is undergoing internal reinvention—automating, embracing agile workflows, and driving transformation at the speed of AI.
Key Takeaway: IBM isn’t just modernizing tech—it’s modernizing itself. A legacy player rewriting its ops playbook to stay relevant (and fast).
CMO voices.
Janine Pelosi, CMO, Zoom (now CEO, Neat)
When Zoom became everyone’s office, classroom, and family room overnight, Janine Pelosi didn’t flinch. Her team moved fast—fixing defaults, shipping updates, and listening hard. It wasn’t just hypergrowth. It was hyperresponsiveness. Proof that when urgency meets empathy, brand love follows.
AI & brand.
UX copy bottlenecks? Frontitude turns chaos into clarity—fast. Streamline stakeholder feedback and speed up launches without sacrificing brand voice.
Voiceovers in minutes, not weeks. ElevenLabs brings human-like AI narration to your brand content—perfect for teams that need to sound great and move fast.
From the production desk.
Let’s be clear: Urgency isn’t panic. It’s performance. And when you work at the pace of the tech industry—where the window to make an impact is measured in weeks, not quarters—you need more than hustle. You need a system.
Here’s what that looks like in the wild:
Enterprise urgency isn’t for everyone. But for us? This is the expectation, not the exception.
What’s making headlines in enterprise tech—and what brand leaders can take away from it.
AWS isn’t just hinting at enterprise AI urgency–it’s investing $100M in it. If the world’s biggest cloud is retooling for autonomous AI, how long can anyone wait? Embedding AI agents into operations has officially become an urgent priority.
Rubrik jumping into generative AI via acquisition shows how urgent AI adoption has become–even for security vendors. Enterprises are desperate to turn AI pilots into real value. The new mandate: Get AI into production, or get left behind.
HPE’s partnership with NVIDIA shows how urgent building AI infrastructure has become. Enterprises that invest in robust, AI-ready clouds today will be the ones leading in our rapidly approaching AI-driven future.
What’s coming up.
October 13–16, 2025
Cloud, AI, and data collide in Vegas. Oracle’s flagship event brings IT and business leaders together to move faster—and smarter—on enterprise innovation.
October 20–23, 2025
Where CIOs and tech leaders gather to chart enterprise strategy. Expect insights on AI, data, and how to lead through urgency, complexity, and constant change.
November 18–21, 2025
Microsoft’s enterprise power play. A deep dive into AI, cloud, and productivity tools designed to help leaders build and scale with velocity.
fred&ted in the wild.
At fred&ted, we believe enterprise tech can be smart and fun—if you’ve got the right idea (and the right client). Case in point: Informatica’s “Sketchy AI” campaign. It’s all about what happens when bad data powers your AI. In May, we reunited with Lee Einhorn and the crew at Rough House for a second round of spots that bring humor and clarity to a big message: Everybody’s ready for AI except your data.
Thanks to the Informatica team for proving (again) that enterprise tech doesn’t have to mean enterprise boring.
From Fred.
Enterprise urgency isn’t new to us. It’s why we created ACT—Agile Creative Transformation—our creative process built for moving fast and smart. ACT gets client teams from input to execution faster, with stronger output and tighter alignment. Yes, you can have speed and quality. And when you build with the team, not for them, there are a lot fewer surprises. And you know how much you hate surprises in creative meetings.
Slow brands get outpaced. Loud brands get tuned out. Urgent brands—with focus, speed, and sharp creative—break through. Urgency isn’t panic. It’s a practice. And it’s how relevance gets built.
© 2025 fred&ted. All rights reserved.
