The Changemakers

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

• Shaped By • Episode 71

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0:00 | 44:06

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.

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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.


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