Celebrating Gold at the British Podcast Awards: The making of a stand-out corporate podcast

Updated July 2026 to include latest award wins

The British Podcast Awards puts every major broadcaster, independent studio and production house in the country up against each other, judged by people who listen to podcasts for a living. It's one of the toughest rooms in UK audio to stand out in.

The Third Angle, PTC's engineering podcast, has been nominated for Best Business Podcast three years running, up against some of the biggest names in British and international media each time: the FT, The Economist, Bloomberg, the BBC. It won the gold award for Best Business Podcast in 2023, Bronze in 2024, and Bronze again in 2025. In 2024, it also won Gold at the Corporate Content Awards.

It's proof that a podcast made by a brand can go up against the best business podcasts in the country, and hold its own, in a category that gets more crowded every year.

When the Gold win was announced, the judges said:

"This is how to do a corporate podcast, it's a perfect example of how business podcasts can tackle subjects beyond the usual productivity buzzwords with style and depth - and the fact that it's also an excellent demonstration of the power of branded podcasts is just icing on the cake. I love the fact that they get more from the guests than just a simple interview. The tours and interactive parts bring this to a different level. It's a blend of geeky and clever - but also really accessible."

Here's some of what's gone into it.

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A Unique Perspective on Design and Engineering

At its core, The Third Angle explores the world of design and engineering. It gives the listener the chance to get inside the innovative minds behind some of the world's leading products. Produced for PTC, an industrial software company trusted by engineering and design teams at some of the world's biggest brands, this was never going to work as just another corporate show.

The challenge with a business podcast is staying on the right side of two traps: sounding like an advert, or sounding like a conference call. Neither holds an audience's attention for long.

That access is the clearest example of what a brand relationship can unlock. For a podcast episode about NASA's Artemis programme, PTC's own relationship with NASA got us inside Kennedy Space Center: standing in the Vehicle Assembly Building as the Artemis rocket was being built, beneath the crawler that will carry it to the launchpad, talking engineering with NASA's own programme leads. Most journalists never get that close. Businesses with the right relationships can open doors that others can only dream of.

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The Secret Sauce of The Third Angle

Every podcast we make starts with the same question: who is the audience, and why would they listen? Skip that question and a podcast ends up talking only to itself.

For The Third Angle, that meant putting PTC's technology in service of the story, not the other way round, showcasing how it's used by companies like Volvo, Airfix, M&S and Casio, told in a way that would land with curious minds in engineering and design, and hopefully beyond. The goal was always a podcast people would tell a colleague about, not just play in the background.

We deliberately avoided the well-worn format of two experts talking over Zoom. Instead, we go to where the work actually happens, with the people who use PTC's software every day, across continents and industries. A lab in Denmark. A workshop in Essex. A factory floor in Nairobi.

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From brief to episode: The importance of planning and research

Telling a story like this well starts long before recording. For The Third Angle that means meticulous planning, proper research, and a pre-interview process we treat as essential, not optional. With producers working across different countries, everyone needs to be fully briefed: a fact-finding call scopes out the guest, what drives them, the product itself, and crucially, where we can go, who we can talk to, and what we can see (and if we're lucky, demo).

Back in the edit, that immersive audio and interview material gets shaped into a narrative that puts the listener there, experiencing the product alongside the guest.

Every part of The Third Angle, from the artwork to the social assets, is built to give the show its own identity. We even commissioned an original soundtrack, briefed to sound futuristic, a little pop-science, and fun.

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Not Just Another Corporate Podcast

Three years of recognition at the British Podcast Awards backs up something we believe strongly at 18Sixty: a corporate podcast can be genuinely insightful and entertaining, while still doing its job for the brand behind it.

The business podcast category is one of the most competitive in the industry, and it's getting more crowded every year. Standing out in it isn't about budget. It's about making something people would choose to listen to even if there was no brand attached at all.

If you're reading this while weighing up a podcast of your own, that's the bar. Ask how you'd make yours different, and build towards that from the start.

Get in touch with us to discuss your next podcast project.

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