The Changemakers

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 compounded
• Creating 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 - Introductions
• 01:47 - Forging a self-taught path in fine arts and motion design at WashU
• 05:34 - Dynamic in-store media at Gap during the Mickey Drexler era
• 10:17 - Run-and-gun filmmaking, 9/11, and production detours
• 12:30 - Systems, technology, and early dual-screen experiences
• 15:30 - Interbrand: An 8-year masterclass in strategy, identity, and UX
• 21:24 - Embedded teams and LendingClub's post-IPO turnaround
• 27:15 - The art vs. science of team building
• 34:36 - Using sabbaticals to unpack lessons and avoid burnout
• 40:18 - What really makes a great creative
• 45:30 - Creative entrepreneurship, multi-threaded paths, and networking

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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 week
• The thinking behind the homepage rebuild, and how a data enrichment tool became a full revenue-system story told through a Rube Goldberg machine
• Where AI fits into a design process built on human effort, and where Sara draws the line
• Sculpt, Clay's own conference, and why sub-brands are where the team gets to break its own rules

This 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
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👉 Visit our website for more in-depth thinking on topics
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And finally please rate our podcast on Apple if you enjoyed it!

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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 - Introductions
• 01:21 - From Glasgow to launching a clothing store
• 05:41 - Building a blog and securing Intuit
• 08:41 - Taking reps across a wide surface area to find your niche
• 11:44 - The post-ZERP landscape and the rise of forward-deployed engineers
• 16:06 - Moving from bloated marketing orgs to senior clusters
• 18:34 - Encoding taste, guidelines, and Claude
• 24:13 - Leverage, economies of scale, and self-serve decks
• 30:01 - Brand consistency vs. brand authenticity: Are we majoring in the minors?
• 42:01 - Best Story Wins: Content as long obedience in the same direction

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!

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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!

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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 reality
• 01:27 - From journalist to agency shark
• 06:02 - The Amazon MBA: pitches vs. long-term brand building
• 09:01 - The blueprint for brand voice
• 11:51 - How do great leaders let data lead?
• 14:43 - Earning attention
• 18:30 - The Costco Nightclub: one brand voice, wildly different audiences
• 23:12 - Using AI to sell emotional copy to stubborn stakeholders
• 29:20 - How AI keeps global brands on-track
• 33:26 - The future of the copywriter

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!

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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 leadership
• making 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 fast
• why Legora avoids the "AI" label in their marketing to focus on human impact and lawyer-led storytelling
• how to prevent "brand drift" when you’re rapidly expanding around the world

Whether 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!

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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 room
• The "brand drift" danger: staying alert to the edges of your business where your brand identity usually starts to fray
• Principles 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!

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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 brand
• The 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 ever
• The 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!

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When Myra El-Bayoumi joined Redis as VP Brand and Corporate Marketing, she was handed two pretty major challenges: modernise the brand, and build a world-class internal agency from scratch. Oh, and do it all in six months.

On this episode of The Changemakers, Dave sits down with Myra to unpack how she evolved one of tech's most beloved brands without alienating its developer audience. 

Myra walks through the brief she inherited in September 2023: refresh a brand with serious heritage, build a quality internal agency, and do it all before a licensing change landed. She shares the research approach that kept developers at the table, the origins of Redis's striking new identity, and the CEO-level trust that made bold, fast decisions possible. 

A must-listen for any marketers and brand-builders out there tasked with modernising heritage-rich brands. Whether you’re driving a complex transformation or navigating high-stakes stakeholder management, Myra’s take on "direction, not directive" leadership offers a masterclass in moving fast without breaking the soul of your brand.

Timestamps

• 00:21 - Myra’s path from agency to in-house
• 2:33 - Joining Redis: why the people you work for matter most
• 03:59 - What Redis does in the real-time data era
• 04:46 - Modernizing the brand and building an internal agency
• 07:15 - Evolution vs. revolution: determining what to keep and what to kill
• 09:34 - Using research to guide high-stakes brand decisions
• 11:57 - How to rebrand a tech giant in just six months.
• 15:48 - The "Direction, Not Directive" Rule: navigating CEO and founder feedback
• 25:50 - Code is like a poem: the origin story of the Redis visual identity
• 34:36 - The Baukunst Collective: exploring the intersection of design and VC

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!

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Five years ago, we did something that felt a little like a risky move and a lot like a revolution. We moved away from our 16-year-old identity as "Workbrands" to become Shaped By, an independent B2B creative agency for the tech world.

In this very special episode of The Changemakers, Dave Corlett sits down with our Founder and CEO, Nick Farrar, to reflect on the half-decade journey of bringing bold creativity and brand momentum to the B2B tech market. Nick pulls back the curtain on why he decided to go all in on a new brand, a new geography, and a new strategy during a global lockdown.

We’re unpacking:

• The rebrand reality: Why finding a name was harder than expected and the "lightbulb moment" that led to Shaped By.
• The US market slog: How we built a reputation in the US without a physical office in the country by focusing on "Human-First" relationships.
• Values over ego: Why culture and values are entwined and how we protect our "people-first" mentality as we grow.
• The AI inflection point: Why we aren’t an AI-first agency, but rather use it to augment human creativity to help our clients differentiate.

Whether you're an agency founder struggling with your positioning, or a B2B leader curious about the agencies operating in your world, this episode is a masterclass in staying curious, being bold, taking risks and resisting the path well-trodden.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - The 16-year-old startup: why it was time to evolve Workbrands.
• 05:26 - The name-search struggle and finding the "Shaped By" identity.
• 10:19 - Handling the "wobble": investing in sales and marketing when it felt like a luxury.
• 14:27 - Why effective B2B new business is about nurturing, not quick fixes.
• 17:01 - Building a "People-First" culture as a sole director.
• 24:05 - Winning the US: why a physical office isn’t necessary, but being present is.
• 31:00 - Selling talent, not software: the motivation behind the metrics.
• 34:07 - The AI "Human Sandwich": using tech to augment, not replace, creativity.
• 42:12 - Growth pains and the secret to success: letting the "applause" follow great work.
• 47:43 - The next five years: becoming the employer of choice in B2B.

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!

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