A Digital Strategy Podcast

Tennis

A Digital Strategy Podcast explores how design, technology, and business intersect to shape the way organizations grow and adapt. Through thoughtful discussions and interviews with leaders in tech, design, brand, and marketing, the show shares practical strategies, frameworks, and stories for navigating today’s digital landscape. Hosted by the team at Tennis, the podcast blends sharp takes on the industry with candid conversations about the systems, tools, and decisions that drive lasting impact.

  1. 3 hrs ago

    88% of Digital Transformations Fail. We Built HOLO as a Framework to Fix That

    💡 Key Topics:✦ The twelve percent: Bain found only 12% of business transformations achieved what they set out to do, and the failure almost never traces back to the technology itself (Bain)✦ The average user doesn't exist: why designing for a blended, middle-of-the-road user misses the real audience, and how splitting people into primary, secondary, and tertiary groups, internal staff included, changes what gets built✦ The checkout bug that wasn't a checkout bug: an e-commerce client's shipping-time complaints at checkout traced back to warehouse location and staffing, not the API✦ Why hitting the goal can still mean losing: the gap between a quarter's conversion-rate target and a company's real objective of keeping customers around✦ The floor you're not allowed to fall below: a fintech client's brand and interface looked strong but missed the accessibility and security bar competitors already clear✦ Vision outruns execution: what happens when a manufacturing company tries to add an e-commerce revenue model without the team or workflows to run it✦ The one move to make this week: run your last finished project back through Humans, Objectives, Landscape, and Organization and see where the real gaps were 📖 Chapters:0:00 — 12% Hit Their Target0:11 — Why the Same Four Gaps Repeat2:52 — Humans: The Average User Trap5:23 — Objectives: When Goals Don't Line Up7:26 — Landscape: The Floor You Can't Fall Below10:04 — Organization: Can They Actually Run It11:35 — Verdict: Run Your Last Project Back Through HOLO 🌐 Tennis web design & development services: https://www.designtennis.com/services/website-design-and-development🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7tufP8mSXC1YrLxrLzw3Ju?si=3839798c83264d9b📸 Instagram: Tennis.digital💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/designtennis/🔔 Subscribe for weekly episodes on web design, digital strategy, and building better businesses. #digitaltransformation #holoframework #discoveryphase #uxresearch #productstrategy #ecommerceux #changemanagement #digitalstrategy #adigitalstrategypodcast Links You can learn more about Tennis at our website. Be sure to follow us at LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter

    88% of Digital Transformations Fail. We Built HOLO as a Framework to Fix That
  2. Aug 28

    Your Brand Guidelines Weren't Built For This Digital Environment

    💡 Key Topics: ✦ The iceberg problem: logo, fonts, and colors are the visible tip, while the real brand lives in the ~80% below the waterline (support replies, sales emails, checkout copy, policy pages) ✦ Why brands drift years before anyone notices: every channel gets written by a different person, in a different department, with no shared source ✦ 69% of B2B buyers reported inconsistencies between a supplier's website and what the seller told them (Gartner), and that's just two channels out of ten-plus ✦ McKinsey's finding that buyers now average ten interaction channels, with 42% using more than eleven touchpoints ✦ How AI overviews compress your brand into a generic category answer: 72% of tech buyers hit Google's AI Overviews during research, only 7% went straight to a chatbot (TrustRadius) ✦ Why 19% of buyers using AI purchasing tools felt less confident because the information was inaccurate (Forrester) ✦ From brand guide to governance: why this looks less like a marketing function and more like a blend of guideline and SOP ✦ The quick diagnostic you can run today: pick one foundational question (who do you serve? what's your pricing? what do you not do?), ask your website, your last three sales emails, and a chatbot, and see where the answers split 📖 Chapters: 0:00 — Brands Don't Drift by Accident 1:07 — The Iceberg: What Your Guide Actually Covers 1:52 — Two Channels, Two Different Stories 3:28 — What Changed: When Being Found Stopped Being Enough 4:48 — The AI Layer Compresses Your Brand 6:22 — Less Guide, More Playbook 8:19 — Where the Playbook Has to Live 9:41 — Brand Guide as Governance 10:23 — The One-Question Test 11:54 — One Source of Truth, Not a New Logo 🌐 Tennis web design & development services: https://www.designtennis.com/services/website-design-and-development 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7tufP8mSXC1YrLxrLzw3Ju?si=3839798c83264d9b 📸 Instagram: Tennis.digital 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/designtennis/ 🔔 Subscribe for weekly episodes on web design, digital strategy, and building better businesses. 📖 Article: https://www.designtennis.com/insights/stop-selling-on-your-website-start-helping #brandstrategy #brandguidelines #b2bmarketing #digitalstrategy #brandconsistency #aeo #brandgovernance #adigitalstrategypodcast Links You can learn more about Tennis at our website. Be sure to follow us at LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter

    Your Brand Guidelines Weren't Built For This Digital Environment
  3. Aug 21

    Stop Selling on Your Website. Start Helping.

    💡 Key Topics: ✦ The 95/5 rule: at any moment, roughly 95% of your potential market isn't actively buying — Forrester says the exact split varies by category, but the shape holds up ✦ Why the "favorite vendor" is picked before you know they exist: 94% of B2B buyers rank preferred vendors before first contact, and that pick wins 77% of the time (6sense) ✦ Buyer enablement vs. "helping not selling": why the hosts prefer the plainer framing over the term Gartner and Brent Adamson popularized in 2018 ✦ The content overload trap: Gartner's original 2018 point wasn't "make more content" — it was that buyers are already overwhelmed by it ✦ Why 72% of buyers share what they find with colleagues, and 57% of those colleagues actually download and review it — and what that means for who you're really writing for ✦ The good-better-best ladder for deciding what to actually build, from a repeatable-question tool to a full interactive decision engine ✦ Why the share of buyers wanting interactive content dropped from 49% to 39% — and when a plain PDF checklist beats a flashy calculator ✦ The one move to make this week: pick one buyer, one stuck decision, and build the single thing that gets them past it   📖 Chapters: 0:00 — Built for the Wrong 5% 0:47 — Buyer Enablement, Renamed 5:24 — Everyone Builds the Wrong Thing 7:53 — The Good-Better-Best Ladder 11:50 — One Buyer, One Job, One Tool 14:10 — Tools, Templates, and What's Next   🌐 Tennis web design & development services: https://www.designtennis.com/services/website-design-and-development 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7tufP8mSXC1YrLxrLzw3Ju?si=3839798c83264d9b 📸 Instagram: Tennis.digital 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/designtennis/ 🔔 Subscribe for weekly episodes on web design, digital strategy, and building better businesses. 📖 Article: https://www.designtennis.com/insights/stop-selling-on-your-website-start-helping   #buyerenablement #b2bmarketing #websitestrategy #digitalstrategy #contentstrategy #buyerjourney #aeo #adigitalstrategypodcast Links You can learn more about Tennis at our website. Be sure to follow us at LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter

    Stop Selling on Your Website. Start Helping.
  4. Aug 14

    Building With AI. The Part Nobody Sells You

    💡 Key Topics: Why "I built it with AI" is three different builds (pure generated code, CMS with an AI layer, headless + AI front end) with three different risk profiles Path one's trap: no content layer, so editing isn't editing anymore, it's regenerating the whole site from scratch The security roll of the dice: Veracode found roughly half of AI-generated code came back secure (55% one year, 56% the next) on blind prompts with no security instructions Your website is a regulated surface: Ontario's AODA and WCAG 2 AA, the US ADA, and why "I built it in a weekend" is not a compliance strategy Path two's real risk isn't what the AI writes, it's handing a model write access to your live production site instead of staging with a human approving Why the difference was never the tool, it's the operator: knowing which defaults to override, how to isolate a change so one button doesn't rewrite the whole site "Make me a website" versus a real pipeline, and why garbage in still means garbage out The one test to run this week: can anyone in the loop actually validate what came back? 📖 Chapters: 0:00 — We lost the project: eight months, no website 0:59 — The question: what do you actually walk away with? 1:34 — Three paths, and they're not equally dangerous 1:37 — Path one: pure generated code, security and legal exposure 4:01 — Path two: a real CMS with an AI layer 5:07 — Path three: headless CMS and AI front end 6:26 — The difference was never the tool, it's the operator 8:52 — "Make me a website": what that actually means 10:52 — What to do this week: can anyone validate it? 11:31 — Where AI actually belongs 🌐 Tennis web design & development services: https://www.designtennis.com/services/website-design-and-development 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7tufP8mSXC1YrLxrLzw3Ju?si=3839798c83264d9b 📸 Instagram: Tennis.digital 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/designtennis/ 🔔 Subscribe for weekly episodes on web design, digital strategy, and building better businesses.   #buildingwithai #aiwebsite #vibecoding #aiwebdesign #webdevelopment #aitools #websecurity #adigitalstrategypodcast Links You can learn more about Tennis at our website. Be sure to follow us at LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter

    Building With AI. The Part Nobody Sells You
  5. Aug 7

    Google-Doesnt-Need-Your-Website-Anymore

    💡 Key Topics: The zero-click economy: why roughly half the clicks vanish the moment an AI summary appears (Pew, 900-adult panel) AI Overviews now on ~48% of searches, up from ~31% a year ago (Bright Edge) Why B2B queries triggering an AI Overview jumped from 36% to 82%, and why retail is the mirror image Chegg suing Google, HubSpot down 27%, Business Insider's layoffs: companies naming the traffic drop out loud Why retail structured its data years ago and B2B's positioning problems left it exposed What actually earns citations now: site structure, FAQs, schema, answering real questions by intent The one move to make this week: audit your own site before spending a dollar on anything new 📖 Chapters: 0:00 — Google reads your site and answers for you 0:33 — The data: AI Overviews and the zero-click economy 2:03 — Earnings calls and lawsuits: Chegg, HubSpot, Business Insider 4:35 — Why B2B and SaaS are the most exposed category 5:52 — Retail's windfall and why the split happened 9:08 — SEO didn't die, it changed 10:53 — What to do this week: audit your site   🌐 Tennis web design & development services: https://www.designtennis.com/services/website-design-and-development 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7tufP8mSXC1YrLxrLzw3Ju?si=3839798c83264d9b 📸 Instagram: Tennis.digital 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/designtennis/ 🔔 Subscribe for weekly episodes on web design, digital strategy, and building better businesses.   #zeroclick #aioverviews #seo #answerengineoptimization #b2bmarketing #aisearch #googleai #contentstrategy #adigitalstrategypodcast Links You can learn more about Tennis at our website. Be sure to follow us at LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter

    Google-Doesnt-Need-Your-Website-Anymore
  6. Jul 31

    Every Design Idea Is Stolen (Remixed)

    💡 Key Topics: ✦ Why everything is a remix, and why that's freeing instead of depressing (shoutout Kirby Ferguson) ✦ Why AI trends generic: it remixes the average, so it hands you the average back ✦ John Snow's 1854 cholera map: how a doctor borrowed cartography to win an argument and accidentally invented data viz ✦ Harry Beck's London Underground map: how a laid-off engineer deleted the city and every transit map since copied him ✦ Why the "Beck was inspired by circuit diagrams" story is probably a myth, and why that proves the whole point ✦ Karel Martens: the designer who dropped the problem and followed the material instead ✦ The one usable rule: you'll never out-average the average machine, so borrow from further away   📖 Chapters: 0:00 — Why all design looks the same right now 0:33 — Everything is a remix (and yes, AI was trained on us) 2:42 — John Snow's cholera map: borrowing a method 5:15 — Harry Beck's Tube map: borrowing a visual logic 8:20 — Karel Martens: following the material 10:35 — Three ways to borrow, and where design goes from here   🌐 Tennis web design & development services: https://www.designtennis.com/services/website-design-and-development 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7tufP8mSXC1YrLxrLzw3Ju?si=3839798c83264d9b 📸 Instagram: Tennis.digital 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/designtennis/ 🔔 Subscribe for weekly episodes on web design, digital strategy, and building better businesses.   #everythingisaremix #design #aidesign #designinspiration #datavisualization #designhistory #karelmartens #creativity #adigitalstrategypodcast Links You can learn more about Tennis at our website. Be sure to follow us at LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter

    Every Design Idea Is Stolen (Remixed)
  7. Jul 24

    AI Didn't Replace Designers. It Replaced the Workflow

    💡 Key Topics: ✦ Why "will AI replace designers" is the wrong question, and what it actually replaced ✦ The Figma stat that frames the whole debate: 78% say AI boosts efficiency, only 32% trust the output ✦ Why AI-generated design output is "average at best" and why the C-suite gives it a pass anyway ✦ How the old model worked (designers made the calls, tools just sped up execution) and what changed ✦ Why Zuckerberg called replacing people with AI a mistake, and what the "middle" everyone's missing looks like ✦ The return of the generalist designer, and why AI lowered the barrier to code, 3D, and tools that used to be gate-kept ✦ Why the "move your best people upstream" shift is what earns a team its future ✦ Democratization of tools vs. democratization of taste, why the floor rising doesn't lower the ceiling   📖 Chapters: 0:00 — The wrong question: what AI really replaced 1:18 — Rethinking the old model (and Zuckerberg's reversal) 3:20 — CEOs going all-in: where the pressure comes from 5:36 — "Average at best" and who actually gatekeeps quality 7:02 — What to do if your org is AI-ifying everything 8:57 — Move your best people upstream: the generalist designer 11:17 — Floor vs. ceiling: tools vs. taste 13:36 — Verdict: what's left is the hardest to teach   🌐 Tennis web design & development services: https://www.designtennis.com/services/website-design-and-development 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7tufP8mSXC1YrLxrLzw3Ju?si=3839798c83264d9b 📸 Instagram: Tennis.digital 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/designtennis/ 🔔 Subscribe for weekly episodes on web design, digital strategy, and building better businesses.   #AI #design #aidesign #designworkflow #figma #uxdesign #productdesign #aitools #designtools #generalistdesigner #webdesign #digitalstrategy #b2bdesign #designleadership #futureofdesign Links You can learn more about Tennis at our website. Be sure to follow us at LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter

    AI Didn't Replace Designers. It Replaced the Workflow
  8. Jul 17

    People Are Using AI to Sue Websites Over Bad Design

    Before you even listen to this, scan your website here to know if you're accessible:https://www.designtennis.com/design-and-business-resources/website-accessibility-guide Most businesses think an accessibility lawsuit is something that happens to someone else. Then AI hands anyone with a browser the ability to file one. In this episode, Symon and Marcello unpack the sharp rise in ADA website lawsuits in the US—and why AI is the reason the numbers are exploding. They get into how AI has collapsed the barrier to filing, why Q1 2026 nearly matched all of 2025, the DOJ's last-minute reversal that pulled healthcare back into the compliance deadline, and why the one-shot AI tools and accessibility widgets people are counting on won't save them. Plus: why e-commerce keeps taking the brunt of it, the Ontario December 31 reporting deadline nobody's talking about, and why an audit is where you start—not where you finish. A web-first look at where accessibility law is heading, for organizations that would rather get ahead of this than get a demand letter. 💡 Key Topics: How AI lowered the barrier to entry for ADA claims, turning individuals into self-represented (pro se) plaintiffs Why Q1 2026 filings (3,500–4,500) nearly matched all of 2025 in a single quarter The rise of pro se lawsuits and the digital fingerprints—hallucinations included—that reveal they're AI-generated Why ADA web cases jumped from 28% of Title III filings to 36% The DOJ's four-days-before-the-deadline reversal that folded healthcare back into public-entity compliance The new targets: April 26 2027 for large entities, April 26 2028 for small ones, both on WCAG AA Why one-shot AI remediation tools and accessibility overlay widgets create more problems than they solve Why e-commerce absorbs roughly 69% of accessibility lawsuits The Ontario December 31 compliance reporting deadline and how self-reporting puts you in the queue Why an audit is a starting indicator, not a solution—and where manual testing has to take over 📖 Chapters: 0:07 — Intro: AI plus compliance 0:43 — How AI lowered the barrier to ADA claims 2:32 — The numbers: Q1 2026 vs. all of 2025 3:20 — Pro se lawsuits and AI's digital fingerprints 5:31 — The DOJ healthcare deadline reversal 7:31 — New compliance dates and the WCAG AA standard 8:00 — Why AI tools and widgets won't save you 8:37 — Why e-commerce takes the brunt 9:36 — Weaponized lawsuits and the chilling effect on cross-border business 10:00 — What to actually do: the Ontario Dec 31 deadline and the audit 11:01 — Audit, but find an expert: where tools fall short 🌐 Tennis web accessibility services: https://www.designtennis.com/services/website-design-and-development 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7tufP8mSXC1YrLxrLzw3Ju?si=3839798c83264d9b 📸 Instagram: Tennis.digital 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/designtennis/?viewAsMember=true 🔔 Subscribe for weekly episodes on web design, digital strategy, and building better businesses. #accessibility #ADA #ADAcompliance #WCAG #webaccessibility #a11y #webdesign #compliance #ecommerce #b2bdesign #webdevelopment #inclusivedesign #digitalstrategy #websitedesign #AIlawsuits Links You can learn more about Tennis at our website. Be sure to follow us at LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter

    People Are Using AI to Sue Websites Over Bad Design

About

A Digital Strategy Podcast explores how design, technology, and business intersect to shape the way organizations grow and adapt. Through thoughtful discussions and interviews with leaders in tech, design, brand, and marketing, the show shares practical strategies, frameworks, and stories for navigating today’s digital landscape. Hosted by the team at Tennis, the podcast blends sharp takes on the industry with candid conversations about the systems, tools, and decisions that drive lasting impact.