What a 2.0 company looks like

I keep seeing the same pattern. A company has grown. Better clients, a bigger team, a product that has matured. Then you open their website. The photos are from four years ago. The company film still shows the old office. Sales is sending a deck with screenshots and stock images. The CEO has a LinkedIn profile, but the last post is from 2023.

Nothing is broken. It just stopped keeping up.

What a customer sees decides what they believe. And at most good companies, what customers see is years behind what the company has become. That gap is what I call 1.0. Closing it is 2.0.

What is a 2.0 company?

A 2.0 company looks, sounds and runs at the level it has actually reached. Not more, not less. In practice that comes down to three layers:

1. The image. Everything the company presents itself with: website, company film, photography, sales material.
2. The voice. The people who speak for the company, and whether anyone hears them.
3. The systems. The CRM, automations, booking and website underneath, so ideas turn into action in days instead of months.

Most companies work on one of these at a time, years apart, with different suppliers who never talk to each other. That is how you end up with a beautiful new film on a website nobody can update, or a LinkedIn push that sends people to a page from 2021.

Layer 1: the image

This is the first impression, and it usually lags the furthest behind. Four signals tell you it is time:

• The website shows the past.
• Sales works with old material.
• Every campaign starts from zero.
• Candidates see an empty picture of what it is like to work there.

A new company film alone does not fix this. One video is one video. What fixes it is bringing the whole first impression back up to level at once: the film, the photography, the website content and the sales material, shot and built as one coherent set. Sales gets a film and strong cases to follow up with. HR recruits faster because candidates already have a real picture. Marketing launches campaigns without asking for budget for a new shoot every time. And the company finally tells one story everywhere.

That is what we do at Majortale with Majortale 2.0. It usually takes two shoot days and two to three weeks from plan to delivery. It does not mean throwing everything away either. We first look at what is still strong, what can be re-edited, and where the real gaps are. And when one strong video is enough, we say so.

Layer 2: the voice

Here is the uncomfortable part. Even with a perfect image, a company page on LinkedIn barely gets seen anymore. I wrote about why LinkedIn now favours individual voices over company pages. The short version: people are the channel now. When a CEO shares the brand film in their own words, it travels. When the company page posts it, it mostly doesn't.

So a 2.0 company has visible people. Not everyone, and not posting every day. A few leaders who say what they actually think, consistently.

Two things make or break this. The first is honesty. A company message gets poured through each person like a sieve: for some, all of it is true, for some only part of it. Each person should share only what passes through their own filter. You can only fake a personal brand for so long.

The second is the system around them. Leaders don't have time to write, so the content has to be built from conversations with them, in their voice, and every post approved by them before it goes out. AI can draft all day. Saying yes to publishing stays human. That approval is what keeps it authentic.

That is what Ripple does: it turns a leader's expertise into a steady, recognisable presence, for about thirty minutes of their time a month.

Layer 3: the systems

This is the layer nobody talks about, and the one that decides whether the other two keep working.

A great film is wasted if the website can't be updated without an agency. A strong LinkedIn presence is wasted if the leads it brings land in an inbox and get answered three days later. The systems layer is the plumbing: a clean website you can change yourself, a CRM that holds every lead, follow-ups that happen automatically, booking without back-and-forth emails.

A few years ago this required developers, web builders and months of projects. Those are now excuses. With today's tools, the number one skill is no longer craft. It is going from idea to execution fast. About a week, not a quarter.

In what order should you fix the layers?

Image first, then voice, with systems built underneath both. Most companies do it the other way round. They spend on campaigns and LinkedIn first, then wonder why it converts so poorly. A great post or ad that sends people to a weak website with old photos is money thrown away. Campaigns are only as strong as the foundation they land on.

Once the image is right, every post, ad and sales email gets better for free, because there is finally something worth showing. And once the systems are in place, nothing the voice brings in gets lost.

Is your company still running 1.0?

A quick check. If two or more of these are true, you are probably running 1.0:

• You would hesitate to send your website to your best prospect.
• Your sales deck uses stock photos or screenshots.
• Your leadership team is invisible on LinkedIn.
• New hires say the company is better than it looked from the outside.
• Every campaign starts with a new shoot and a new budget request.
• Leads live in inboxes and spreadsheets instead of one system.

None of this is a disaster. It just means the company outgrew its own presentation. That is a good problem to have.

Where to start

For the image layer, take the free 2.0 Scan on Majortale. Two minutes, and it tells you honestly whether a 2.0 makes sense yet. For the voice layer, have a look at Ripple. And if you want to look at all three layers together, book a 1-1 with me. No pitch. Just an honest look at where the biggest gap is.

— Joost