The Changemakers

Shaped By
  • 4.0 (1)
  • Marketing
  • Monthly

The Changemakers is a podcast about how the world’s most authentically bold B2B brands are built and grown. Brought to you by the team at the B2B creative agency Shaped By. Find out more about Shaped By on our site, and follow us on LinkedIn.

  1. Oct 20

    Building brands at breakneck speed (and knowing when to pause): Alan Roll, LinkedIn

    Alan Roll has built a career across culture-defining brands, high-growth tech, and deliberate time away. In this episode of Changemakers, he joins host Dave to reflect on a journey that began with fine arts and filmmaking at Washington University in St. Louis, and led to creative leadership roles at Gap, MTV, Interbrand, LendingClub, Opendoor, Airtable, and Deel.  Now Senior Creative Director of Brand at LinkedIn, Alan has a strong track record of building up brands from the agency side, from the inside, and at breakneck speed. And he’s learned that sometimes, stepping away matters as much as pushing on. In this episode, he unpacks: The creative edge: Why judgment, taste, and courage will always outlast technical skill.Agency vs. in-house: Eight years at Interbrand, then brand turnarounds from the inside - what each experience taught him, and how that experience compoundedCreating at speed: What hyper-growth at Airtable and Deel really demands of a creative leader.The case for taking a break: Why intentional sabbaticals aren't a career pause, but a career move.Starting out now: How to build a creative career when the old playbook no longer applies.Whether you’re starting out in your creative career or ten years in, this is one to make time for. Listen today🎧  Timestamps 00:00 - Introductions01:47 - Forging a self-taught path in fine arts and motion design at WashU05:34 - Dynamic in-store media at Gap during the Mickey Drexler era10:17 - Run-and-gun filmmaking, 9/11, and production detours12:30 - Systems, technology, and early dual-screen experiences15:30 - Interbrand: An 8-year masterclass in strategy, identity, and UX21:24 - Embedded teams and LendingClub's post-IPO turnaround27:15 - The art vs. science of team building34:36 - Using sabbaticals to unpack lessons and avoid burnout40:18 - What really makes a great creative45:30 - Creative entrepreneurship, multi-threaded paths, and networkingSend us a message if you enjoyed this episode If you enjoy the chats then there are more ways to quench your thirst for creative inspiration in the world of B2B tech. 👉 Watch episodes on YouTube 👉 Follow us on LinkedIn for regular snippets in your feed 👉 Visit our website for more in-depth thinking on topics 👉 Subscribe to Beyond our monthly collection of insight, opinion and inspiration And finally please rate our podcast on Apple if you enjoyed it! ✌️

    Building brands at breakneck speed (and knowing when to pause): Alan Roll, LinkedIn

  2. Sep 14

    A tech brand built with care, effort and craft: Sara Lundberg, Clay

    Few B2B brands earn the kind of reputation Clay has built. A lot of that comes down to Sara Lundberg and her team. Sara is Manager of Brand & Web Creative at Clay, where she leads the team behind Clay’s super-distinctive, instantly recognisable brand identity. In a first for The Changemakers, Dave sits down with Sara live in London to trace how Clay built a brand people recognise before they even see the logo. Sara walks through her own route into the role, via design school in San Francisco and a stint building Webflow University as a sub-brand within Webflow. She talks about the early decision to hire an illustrator, Hudson Christie, before Clay had a salesperson or a line of revenue, and why founders Varun and Karim have stayed close to Clay's storytelling from day one while leaving the finer creative calls entirely to the team. They get into: Why finding people who care about craft, not just speed, shapes what Clay's design team ships each weekThe thinking behind the homepage rebuild, and how a data enrichment tool became a full revenue-system story told through a Rube Goldberg machineWhere AI fits into a design process built on human effort, and where Sara draws the lineSculpt, Clay's own conference, and why sub-brands are where the team gets to break its own rulesThis one is a must-listen for anyone building a brand inside a fast-moving firm, and proof that a small, trusted design team can build something that bigger companies spend years chasing.  This episode was recorded live in London, watch the full episode here.  Send us a message if you enjoyed this episode If you enjoy the chats then there are more ways to quench your thirst for creative inspiration in the world of B2B tech. 👉 Watch episodes on YouTube 👉 Follow us on LinkedIn for regular snippets in your feed 👉 Visit our website for more in-depth thinking on topics 👉 Subscribe to Beyond our monthly collection of insight, opinion and inspiration And finally please rate our podcast on Apple if you enjoyed it! ✌️

    A tech brand built with care, effort and craft: Sara Lundberg, Clay

  3. Sep 1

    Creating scalable systems through content engineering: Josh Ritchie, Column Five

    Every now and then on The Changemakers, we like to invite our fellow agency-land buddies along for a chat about their perspective on the B2B world. On this one, Dave sits down with Josh Ritchie, co-founder of Column Five and host of the excellent Best Story Wins podcast.  Dave and Josh unpack the shifting landscape of B2B tech marketing, diving into why modern marketing organisations are shrinking into senior clusters, how AI and content engineering are redefining content production, and why rigid brand consistency is less important in today’s world (as long as you’re authentic). They also discuss the transition from traditional SEO to LLM optimisation, the secret to creating scalable content systems, and why building a powerful brand narrative is the ultimate moat in today's market. 🎧 If your content strategy needs a rethink, this is the episode for you.  Timestamps 00:00 - Introductions01:21 - From Glasgow to launching a clothing store05:41 - Building a blog and securing Intuit08:41 - Taking reps across a wide surface area to find your niche11:44 - The post-ZERP landscape and the rise of forward-deployed engineers16:06 - Moving from bloated marketing orgs to senior clusters18:34 - Encoding taste, guidelines, and Claude24:13 - Leverage, economies of scale, and self-serve decks30:01 - Brand consistency vs. brand authenticity: Are we majoring in the minors?42:01 - Best Story Wins: Content as long obedience in the same directionSend us a message if you enjoyed this episode If you enjoy the chats then there are more ways to quench your thirst for creative inspiration in the world of B2B tech. 👉 Watch episodes on YouTube 👉 Follow us on LinkedIn for regular snippets in your feed 👉 Visit our website for more in-depth thinking on topics 👉 Subscribe to Beyond our monthly collection of insight, opinion and inspiration And finally please rate our podcast on Apple if you enjoyed it! ✌️

    Creating scalable systems through content engineering: Josh Ritchie, Column Five

  4. Jul 27

    Creative leadership in the age of AI: Matt Price, tem

    Creative leadership doesn't look like it did in 2023. Matt Price would know. Matt first joined The Changemakers back in May 2023 to talk about mastering the art of creative leadership. Since then, he's left Checkout.com, landed at AI-powered energy platform, tem as VP of Brand and Creative Design, and watched B2B marketing shift under his feet.  In this follow-up chat, host Dave Corlett asks Matt what's actually changed - for him, for his team, and for the brands he works with. They get into: How Matt ended up at tem. How B2B brands are communicating differently than they were three years ago.Why Matt's approach to creative leadership has had to evolve, and what he's built himself to unlock new capability in his team.What he looks for when hiring now, and what he's stopped looking for.Why more high-growth startups are ditching the one-off rebrand for something more iterative.Where he thinks in-house creative teams are heading next.If you want to know what creative leadership actually demands right now, this is the episode for you. 🎧 Listen now Timestamps 00:00 - Catching up with Matt and his transition to tem. 03:10 - What is tem? Dissecting the B2B tech energy platform. 06:10 - Injecting emotion into B2B. 11:23 - How AI changes creative leadership from output tracking to quality raising. 13:29 - Why 75% perfection beats slow execution. 18:38 - How tem built a custom AI operating system for creativity. 25:11 - Why off-the-shelf tools aren't enough. 31:26 - Why B2B needs generalist specialists. 37:37 - Ditching the 9-month rebrand in favor of continuous brand evolution. 47:54 - The future of in-house teams, from service departments to intelligent creative systems. Send us a message if you enjoyed this episode If you enjoy the chats then there are more ways to quench your thirst for creative inspiration in the world of B2B tech. 👉 Watch episodes on YouTube 👉 Follow us on LinkedIn for regular snippets in your feed 👉 Visit our website for more in-depth thinking on topics 👉 Subscribe to Beyond our monthly collection of insight, opinion and inspiration And finally please rate our podcast on Apple if you enjoyed it! ✌️

    Creative leadership in the age of AI: Matt Price, tem

  5. Jul 16

    How to find and express your brand voice at scale: Ryan Hammill, First Overall

    What does it actually take to build and scale a B2B brand voice that cuts through the noise?  On this episode of The Changemakers, Dave Corlett sits down with Ryan Hammill - Principal and Founder of First Overall and former Creative Director at Amazon, AWS, and ServiceNow - to talk about building a B2B brand voice strong enough to stop people in their tracks and keep them coming back for more.  Ryan opens up about surviving an Amazon MBA, the tricky balance between product features and human emotion, and the lessons behind building massive global campaigns for the NFL, Formula One, and beyond. We unpack: Fencing Creativity: Brand voice goes beyond creative freedom. It’s all about maintaining strict guardrails and knowing exactly what not to say.The "Nightclub Attached to Costco" Paradox: How to keep your creative feeling alive and emotional when it's bolted onto a massive corporate platform.The AI Shift: AI can now catch off-brand language automatically. That’s not taking away from creatives, but freeing them up for higher-value work. It may even spark a hiring boom instead of the job losses everyone expects.A Dream Team: Why visuals and words still have to move together, especially now that the internet is drowning in mediocre AI content.If you're a B2B marketer or creative tired of playing it safe, this conversation is required listening. 🎧 Get stuck in now To see some of Ryan's work, visit his website.  Timestamps 00:00 - Meet Ryan Hammill, the storyteller writing reality01:27 - From journalist to agency shark06:02 - The Amazon MBA: pitches vs. long-term brand building09:01 - The blueprint for brand voice11:51 - How do great leaders let data lead?14:43 - Earning attention18:30 - The Costco Nightclub: one brand voice, wildly different audiences23:12 - Using AI to sell emotional copy to stubborn stakeholders29:20 - How AI keeps global brands on-track33:26 - The future of the copywriterSend us a message if you enjoyed this episode If you enjoy the chats then there are more ways to quench your thirst for creative inspiration in the world of B2B tech. 👉 Watch episodes on YouTube 👉 Follow us on LinkedIn for regular snippets in your feed 👉 Visit our website for more in-depth thinking on topics 👉 Subscribe to Beyond our monthly collection of insight, opinion and inspiration And finally please rate our podcast on Apple if you enjoyed it! ✌️

    How to find and express your brand voice at scale: Ryan Hammill, First Overall

  6. Jun 9

    Leading a global scale-up through hypergrowth: Stuart Shingler, Legora

    In the latest in our mini-series of episodes focused on navigating the “scaleup inflection point”, Dave Corlett sits down with Stuart Shingler, VP Marketing at Legora, to unpack one of the most remarkable growth stories in tech. After over a decade of experience building marketing functions at category-defining companies including Klarna, Tink, and Visa, Stuart joined Legora when it was still a small (but growing) AI platform for lawyers called Leya. Under his expert guidance, they rocketed to $100M ARR faster than almost any company in history.  Approaching that critical inflection point signalled something major for the company’s founders; their brand wasn’t keeping pace with the rapid growth they were experiencing in Europe. So as they entered another huge market - the US - they took the bold step of rebranding to Legora. And they haven’t looked back since. Stuart shares how they navigated such a high-stakes rebrand whilst still very much in hyper-growth mode. He and Dave also get into: why changing their name was about signalling a new era of global leadershipmaking the bold leap straight from Swedish startup to global leader in a third of the time it usually takes, skipping multiple steps in the process why "slowing down" the brand’s evolution is actually the secret to moving fastwhy Legora avoids the "AI" label in their marketing to focus on human impact and lawyer-led storytellinghow to prevent "brand drift" when you’re rapidly expanding around the worldWhether you're a founder scaling a startup or a marketer trying to find an authentic voice in the AI noise, this conversation is a masterclass in building a brand that's as sophisticated as the technology behind it. 🎧 Listen now Timestamps 01:55 - What is Legora? Drafting, reviewing, and researching in the AI workspace.03:43 - Brand vs. product: did the founders prioritize identity from day 1?05:31 - Why trust is the ultimate currency in the legal sector.07:34 - The rebrand: moving from "scrappy startup" Laya to "global player" Legora.10:55 - Collaborative roots: building the product (and the brand) with the customers.15:01 - Scaling to $100M ARR: adapting the B2B playbook for "AI speed."18:24 - The leap: why you have to act like a market leader before you are one.22:12 - Fighting brand drift: the power of a shared onboarding experience.31:55 - The human story: why Legora tries to write blog posts without mentioning "AI."Send us a message if you enjoyed this episode If you enjoy the chats then there are more ways to quench your thirst for creative inspiration in the world of B2B tech. 👉 Watch episodes on YouTube 👉 Follow us on LinkedIn for regular snippets in your feed 👉 Visit our website for more in-depth thinking on topics 👉 Subscribe to Beyond our monthly collection of insight, opinion and inspiration And finally please rate our podcast on Apple if you enjoyed it! ✌️

    Leading a global scale-up through hypergrowth: Stuart Shingler, Legora

  7. Jun 1

    Protecting your brand voice as you grow: Justin Ballantine, Shaped By

    In this episode of The Changemakers, Dave Corlett sits down with Justin Ballantine, Associate Creative Director of Messaging at Shaped By, to discuss a critical inflection point for high-growth B2B tech businesses, and how it affects their verbal communication. As startups grow into scale-ups, they often dilute (or even lose altogether) one of the things that customers bought into during those early days: their brand voice.  Dave and Justin explore how firms navigating this stage can keep that voice strong and relevant, as they transition from a founder-led brand to a more mature market-driven one. In the process, they unpack: Voice versus tone: your voice is who you are, but your tone is how you read the roomThe "brand drift" danger: staying alert to the edges of your business where your brand identity usually starts to frayPrinciples over guidelines: how "27 pages of rules" kill creativity, and why three guiding principles are all you actually need.The human connection: how enterprise audiences are still humans who want to feel something powerful when you speak to them Don’t miss this deep dive into the verbal side of branding, from a true master of the craft. Follow Justin on LinkedIn. 🎧 Listen now Timestamps 00:00 - The scale-up inflection point.  02:45 - The Founder's dilemma: transitioning from personality to brand.  05:39 - Brand voice is just brand strategy given breath.  07:54 - Spotting "Brand Drift" on the edges of your business.  12:00 - Voice vs. Tone: how to flex without losing yourself.  16:45 - "Brand Principles" over "Brand Guidelines"  20:49 - Finding the sweet spot in storytelling.  26:45 - Do you really need to be "buttoned up"?  32:25 - Being the zero when everyone else is an X.  35:57 - One tip for CMOs: evolution, not revolution. Send us a message if you enjoyed this episode If you enjoy the chats then there are more ways to quench your thirst for creative inspiration in the world of B2B tech. 👉 Watch episodes on YouTube 👉 Follow us on LinkedIn for regular snippets in your feed 👉 Visit our website for more in-depth thinking on topics 👉 Subscribe to Beyond our monthly collection of insight, opinion and inspiration And finally please rate our podcast on Apple if you enjoyed it! ✌️

    Protecting your brand voice as you grow: Justin Ballantine, Shaped By

  8. May 13

    Build your own brand, not someone else's : Alex Waite, Shaped By

    In this episode of The Changemakers, Dave Corlett is joined by Alex Waite, Strategy Director at Shaped By, to tackle a common hurdle in the B2B tech world: the "imitation trap".  As startups achieve product-market fit and move into scale-up territory, this inflection point often necessitates a brand evolution to power their next phase of growth. But the pressure to “grow up” at this point often leads founders and leaders to mimic how successful brands have done this, rather than digging into their own authentic truth to find the real story. Dave and Alex unpack: The surface level trap: why looking at other brands’ identities is reductive and ignores the thousands of internal decisions that actually build a brandThe attribution danger: how imitating established brands is more likely to confuse people than lead to success The rise of agentic buyers: why AI and LLMs make brand clarity more vital than everThe Ferrari factor: moving beyond cold specs to build emotional bias and become the human choice in a world of automation.If you’re a startup marketing leader or founder feeling the pressure to do what others are doing, this conversation is your permission to stop looking afar and start looking within. 🎧 Listen now Timestamps 01:12 – the "imitation" challenge: why clients often want to copy successful brands.03:03 – why it’s natural (but dangerous) for scale-ups to look for external reference points.05:15 – the Wizz example: you only see the "outer layers" of a brand’s success.06:12 – the danger of defaulting to category norms and boxing yourself in.07:49 – attribution risk: why mimicking a bigger brand helps them, not you.09:42 – chasing moving targets: you don’t know what your competitors are fixing internally.15:03 – the "AI Native" myth and the pressure of moving too fast.17:50 – why clarity is the ultimate defense against the rise of agentic (AI) buyers.22:49 – real talk: can you ever be truly original in a world of "remixes"?39:58 – advice for CMOs: how to handle a founder who wants to copy another brand. Send us a message if you enjoyed this episode If you enjoy the chats then there are more ways to quench your thirst for creative inspiration in the world of B2B tech. 👉 Watch episodes on YouTube 👉 Follow us on LinkedIn for regular snippets in your feed 👉 Visit our website for more in-depth thinking on topics 👉 Subscribe to Beyond our monthly collection of insight, opinion and inspiration And finally please rate our podcast on Apple if you enjoyed it! ✌️

    Build your own brand, not someone else's : Alex Waite, Shaped By
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About

The Changemakers is a podcast about how the world’s most authentically bold B2B brands are built and grown. Brought to you by the team at the B2B creative agency Shaped By. Find out more about Shaped By on our site, and follow us on LinkedIn.

Information

  • Creator
    Shaped By
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    85
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Changemakers
  • Show Website
    The Changemakers