The L&D brand strategy shift that’s driving growth in 2026
LONG READ
The L&D brands that will win aren’t selling training. They’re selling what training changes.
For thirty years, things seemed straightforward.
You built up your expertise and then packaged it into a course, a framework, or an assessment. Customers paid you for it because that expertise took years of graft, the R&D investment was big, and you were good at it. The quality of what you delivered was high, and people saw great results – your business was key in helping others make business decisions around hiring, developing and training that added real value to culture and retention.
But something has changed in the L&D and the B2B market in general and it’s not just because of AI (although that’s part of it) but in what buyers are actually looking for, and who they want to buy it from.
We’ve spent the last few years working closely with some of the world’s leading people development businesses, and a pattern keeps emerging. The brands that are growing aren’t necessarily the ones with the best content or the most sophisticated frameworks or even the vocal AI-enabled firms. They’re the ones that have got clear on something more fundamental: what they actually mean to the people they serve.
That might sound soft, but it isn’t. It’s one of the sharpest commercial questions a brand in this space can ask right now.
Why standing out in the L&D market is harder in 2026 (despite sector growth).
The global psychometric assessment market is projected to reach $5.8 billion by 2033 according to DataHorizzon Research. That’s showing a sector in growth – great! But growth brings its own challenges. There are more providers, more off-the-shelf tools, and increasingly capable AI-generated content are all entering the space at pace.
The result is a market where it’s genuinely harder to stand out, not because the quality isn’t there, but because the positioning looks the same. When we mapped the sector, we found brand after brand occupying the same territory: process-heavy, product / tool-focused, and framed around what the organisation delivers rather than what the client experiences. The creative execution of the client-first, benefit-driven, bravely different space is, for the most part, still wide open.
As with all sectors, AI has accelerated this pressure of course. When a machine can produce a passable version of your training content on demand, the argument for paying a premium has to come from somewhere else. The brands navigating this well aren’t panicking about AI they’re asking a more useful question: if the content or tool itself is no longer the differentiator, what is?
The answer, consistently, is the relationship – that human touch paired with the rigour behind the result. And critically, the ability to articulate all of that in language that the right people actually understand.
Examples of this in action
Move one: from syllabus provider to transformation partner
Lloyd’s Maritime Academy is a good example of this shift done well. Fifty years of heritage. A genuinely respected name in maritime education. And a growing sense that heritage alone wasn’t enough to hold a position in a market that was changing faster than it ever had before.
The instinct in that situation is often to defend what you have; you might feel drawn to investing in promoting the catalogue harder, reminding people how long you’ve been around. However, what we found, when we dug into the audience research, was that the learners themselves had moved on. A more diverse, faster-moving generation wasn’t shopping for a course provider. They wanted a partner in their own progression, a respected brand that understood where they were trying to get to, not just what they needed to study.
So the work we did together wasn’t about enhancing the courses. It was about changing what the brand stood for to a younger demographic. We repositioned Lloyd’s Maritime Academy around the learner’s ambition rather than the institution’s catalogue. A new value proposition and visual language that expressed forward motion. A brand that earned its heritage rather than resting on it.
Lloyd’s Maritime Academy
Move two: Why L&D brands need to speak to the C-suite, not just HR
Here’s the second shift, and it’s one we see a lot of L&D and assessment brands wrestling with.
Most of them are very good at talking to HR practitioners and talent teams. That makes sense, as those are the people who understand the tools, have the technical fluency, and feel the day-to-day problems the products are designed to solve.
But they’re rarely the people who control the strategy or sign off the budget!
Deloitte’s 2025 Global Human Capital Trends research which is drawing on nearly 10,000 business leaders across 93 countries found that only 16% of organisations currently use skills data to a significant degree in workforce decisions. The science is there, and the tools are there. The gap lies in how the value is communicated upward to secure budget allocation.
This was exactly the challenge facing Delta, a team of leading DEI experts who were doing genuinely important work with organisations at the highest level. The problem wasn’t their expertise, far from it. It was that their brand looked and sounded like a traditional (dare I say dated) B2B consultancy, and they weren’t cutting through with the C-suite audiences they needed to reach.
What we found was that DEI awareness had never been higher at CEO level. Those leaders didn’t need educating; they wanted an expert partner who could meet them as peers, speak with authority, and make the complex feel accessible without dumbing it down. We helped Delta shift from speaking expert-to-practitioner to speaking expert-to-decision-maker. Then, pairing it with a brand that looked very different to its competitors. Leading with the business outcome the leader actually cares about, rather than the methodology that produces it and a business that drives recall rather than looking like everyone else.
The brands that learn to make that translation of psychometric science into board-level relevance or L&D investment into business transformation will win the conversations that matter. The ones that don’t will keep producing excellent work for audiences who aren’t actually empowered to act on it.
Delta
What B2P means for L&D brand strategy (and why it outperforms traditional B2B)
Both of these repositioning stories point in the same direction.
Away from the product, towards the person.
Away from the method, towards the meaning.
This is what we mean when we talk about B2P (business to people). Not a softer way to do business, but actually a smarter one. The evidence is pretty compelling on this: human-centred companies achieve twice the revenue growth, says McKinsey. Human-led transformations are up to twelve times more successful explains EY and Saïd Business School research and seventy-three percent of consumers actively avoid businesses that fail to show empathy, Zurich research.
The L&D sector is arguably better placed than almost any other to own this conversation. The work these brands do in developing people, building capability, and making organisations more human is exactly what the future of work is calling for. The challenge is making sure the brand reflects that, rather than leading with the process that delivers it.
The L&D brand positioning opportunity that’s still wide open in 2026
What we see in this market, right now, is a genuine opportunity. The brands that are willing to ask who they are beyond what they deliver, and to answer that question with clarity and courage, are finding that the ground they can move onto is largely unoccupied.
That won’t be true indefinitely of course. As commoditisation bites harder, more brands will look to reposition, and the space that’s available today will become more crowded. The brands that move with intention now, before the rush, are the ones who get to choose their territory rather than fight for what’s left.
If you’re working through where your brand stands in all of this, it’s exactly the conversation we’re built for. Reach out to Vicki, our founder, if you’d like a deeper conversation on the sector and how we can help you.
FAQ
L&D brand strategy: Your Questions Answered
We’ve gathered the most common questions people ask about this topic and answered them clearly and simply below. Hopefully you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for.
Is AI replacing L&D and training providers?
AI is replacing one specific thing: the commodity production of training content. Models can now generate competent modules and screening tools instantly, which removes the advantage of brands that competed purely on delivery. But it is not replacing the providers who own a transformation rather than a catalogue. At Nalla, we have seen brands like Lloyd’s Maritime Academy stay relevant by repositioning around the change they enable, not the content they ship.
How can a training company stay relevant as AI commoditises content?
Stop selling what you deliver and start owning what you change. When AI clones your content for free, the course itself stops being a differentiator. What survives is the relationship, the outcome, and the trust around a human verified result. The practical move is to reposition the brand around the learner’s progression and the client’s business outcome. That is the shift we made with Lloyd’s Maritime Academy, taking a fifty year old provider and giving it a partner’s voice.
What does it mean to reposition from a content provider to a transformation partner?
It means changing what the brand is for. A content provider sells access to material and competes on quality and price, both of which AI is rapidly eroding. A transformation partner sells the change that material creates for a person, a team, and an organisation, which AI cannot replicate. In practice it touches the value proposition, the messaging, and the visual language. The catalogue becomes the proof, not the pitch.
Why should L&D brands market to the C-suite instead of HR?
Because the C-suite controls the strategy and the budget, and most assessment brands still aim everything at HR and talent teams. Deloitte found only 16% of organisations use skills data significantly in workforce decisions, largely because nobody translates the science into board level language. The brands that learn to speak to decision makers as people win the deals that matter. Nalla helped DEI experts Delta do exactly this, repositioning them to engage the global C-suite with authority rather than lecturing practitioners.
Is the psychometric and assessment market actually shrinking?
No, it is growing. The global psychometric assessment market is projected to reach 5.8 billion dollars by 2033. The risk is not decline, it is noise. Growth is drawing in more providers, more off the shelf tools, and more AI generated products, which commoditises the category and makes differentiation harder. Validated, human verified rigour is becoming more valuable as a trusted anchor in automated pipelines, but only for brands that position it as meaning rather than method.
Other insights by Vicki
About Vicki Young
Vicki Young (she/her) is Founder and CCO of Nalla. After working for two of the most respected creative agencies within the industry, she set up Nalla as a tribute to her late father, Allan.
A thought-leader in the branding space, Vicki’s insights are regularly featured in publications such as The Times, Creative Review and Transform Magazine.
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