VENTURE DOSSIER

Tonic Agency

Name: Tonic Agency
Brand: Merlin Studio

An agency with a product partner inside it

Tonic builds talent brands for large employers. Leantonio Nelson has worked inside Tonic since 2018 as its digital consultant: pitching, auditing, designing and building the digital side of its client work, and now building Tonic's own products.

DOSSIER

01Why it works as a partnership
02The partnership
03Client work, via Tonic Agency
04What Leantonio built for Tonic
05Product decisions
06How it is built
07Evidence and progress

01 · WHY IT WORKS AS A PARTNERSHIP

An agency has the clients, the method and the creative. What it rarely has is someone who can take an idea from a pitch to a working product, then keep it running. Leantonio is that person for Tonic, and Merlin Studio is how he does it.

02 · THE PARTNERSHIP

A personal relationship, offered through Merlin Studio. Tonic owns its clients, its method and its brand. Leantonio brings digital strategy, UX, design and engineering, and stays with the work after launch. Every client below was Tonic's, and the work was delivered through Tonic.

01Inside Tonic since 2018, as its digital consultant
02Around two dozen client engagements, delivered through Tonic
03Tonic's own website, Trust Centre and Talent Mirror

03 · CLIENT WORK, VIA TONIC AGENCY

via Tonic Agency

Pitch, audit, technical onboarding and build, then ongoing management, security patches and SSO.

via Tonic Agency

Audit, wireframes, design direction and the build on Phenom.

via Tonic Agency

Large audits, sitemaps and wireframes for UK, US and Global, alongside the AEM development teams.

via Tonic Agency

The Room to Grow concept, designed and built, plus a careers audit.

via Tonic Agency

Audit, user journey, sitemap, wireframes and the AEM implementation.

via Tonic Agency

Audit, sitemap, wireframes and project management, plus global IT landing pages.

04 · WHAT LEANTONIO BUILT FOR TONICtonicwebsite.netlify.app

A new smart website for Tonic itself, proposed, designed and prototyped by Leantonio. It answers a visitor's real question, adapts to who they are, and shows the plan behind every page. Alongside it, a Security and Trust Centre, and Talent Mirror.

See the website prototype

The Tonic website prototype: We build talent brands people want to work for, with a question bar under the hero — The new Tonic website. The bar under the hero takes a real question.

Ask, don't browse

One question bar on every page. The answer names the problem, where Tonic would start and the work that fits.

Make this relevant

Role, scale and priority, chosen in two taps, reorder the page around the visitor.

A guided assessment

Six short questions for people who would rather be asked than ask.

The experience map

Eight audiences and seven needs mapped to every page, built into the prototype for Tonic's team.

Security and Trust Centre

Twenty-five policies, effective 8 October 2025, turned into one readable page with search.

Talent Mirror

Tonic's AI audit of employer brands, which Leantonio built and runs. It has its own dossier.

Read the Talent Mirror dossier

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CAPTURED FROM THE LIVE PROTOTYPE AND A LOCAL BUILD OF THE TRUST CENTRE

The assistant answering: graduate applications are down, with focus areas, where to start and relevant work — Ask it anything. Answers come from Tonic's own work and pages.

The Tonic website on a phone, with Personalise yes or no and the question bar — On a phone, the same bar sits under the hero.

The assistant on a phone: focus areas, where we'd start and a piece of relevant work — An answer, a starting point and the work that proves it.

Make this relevant: choose what describes you and what matters most right now — Two quick choices and the site lines things up around you.

A guided assessment, step one of six: what are you trying to improve? — A six-step assessment for visitors who would rather be asked.

How we think about the talent journey: Enable, Define and the chapters that follow — The talent journey as chapters: what breaks, and how Tonic helps.

The experience map: the sitemap shown by audience, need and context — The plan ships with the site: every page by audience and need.

The journal: writing we stand behind, filtered by topic and audience — A journal that filters by topic and by who is reading.

The Tonic Security and Trust Centre: security you can check, 25 policies, MFA, AES-256 and 72 hour breach notice — The Security and Trust Centre: the whole policy suite in plain terms.

Governance and accountability: named owners for security, data protection and every policy — Every policy has a named owner and a review date.

The Trust Centre on a phone, with a search bar that takes questions — On a phone, with a search that takes a question.

05 · PRODUCT DECISIONS

01

Answers from Tonic, not the internet

The assistant only draws on Tonic's own pages and work. Answers follow a fixed shape, and every link is checked before it is shown.

02

Personal without tracking

What a visitor chooses stays in their own browser. Nothing is sent anywhere to make the page relevant.

03

The plan is part of the product

The experience map sits beside the prototype, so Tonic can see why every page exists before signing it off.

04

Say what is not certified

The Trust Centre states plainly that Tonic holds no ISO 27001 or SOC 2 of its own, and explains what it relies on instead.

05

Tonic's name on every client line

The clients are Tonic's. Every piece of client work here is credited through Tonic, and none of Tonic's creative is claimed.

06 · HOW IT IS BUILT

Next.js 16
React 19
Tailwind 4
Gemini
HubSpot
React Flow
Netlify
Static HTML

Three weeks to a prototype

Fourteen commits from 21 April to 13 May 2026, with 54 components built for Tonic.

One omnibox, three doors

Ask, a guided assessment and Make this relevant share one state, from the hero bar to the modal.

Models that fall back

If the preferred Gemini model fails, the assistant steps down to an older one instead of showing an error.

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07 · EVIDENCE AND PROGRESS

The website is a working prototype, live for review but not yet Tonic's public site. Talent Mirror is live, with clients invited audit by audit. Client results belong to Tonic and its clients, so no outcome figures are claimed here.

Run an agency that needs a product side?

If you have the clients and the method, the evaluator will work out what a partnership with Leantonio could look like.

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