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

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

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