Ride Shotgun may have only landed on the agency scene in 2022 following the merger of independent agencies Cry Havoc and Born + Raised, but it has rapidly ascended the agency ranks thanks to five acquisitions and £15m turnover in just over three years.
Now ranked for the first time in the top 10 of Prolific North’s Top 50 Integrated Agencies for 2025, Ride Shotgun’s CEO Mark Mallinder reveals the agency’s plans to ramp up even further growth, both in the UK and globally.
“We’ve got a winning formula and we have plans to continue growing,” Mallinder tells Prolific North. “Some of that will be through acquisition, both in the UK and beyond.”
Before going into those plans, we reflect on the agency’s story so far as he explains: “the story goes back probably further than you might imagine!”
Up until 2016, Mallinder headed up the marketing for DFS and was in charge of a mega £85m budget. Soon enough, he was approached to work for the brand’s agency at the time, Hangar Seven, and joined to spearhead its succession plan as managing director.
“It happened a lot quicker than we thought,” he says. The following year, with revenues of over £15m at the time and 165 staff spread across four offices, he was already leading Hangar Seven’s eight-figure sale to the Hut Group in 2017.
After exiting the business following a 12 months integration with the Hut Group, building what is now known as THG Studios, he joined Hangar Seven’s former managing partner, Jeremy Middleton, and the duo became a non-executive director team.
Through their work supporting Northern agencies, the jigsaw pieces began to finally fall into place for what was to become Ride Shotgun.
The duo supported founder Andy Weir’s growth journey with Born + Raised, the rebrand of Visual Method into Creative Content Works and turned the agency’s fortunes around, and aligned Cry Havoc’s mission to the future of modern marketing through digital and CGI.
“This was where myself and Jeremy had the idea of what was to become Ride Shotgun and what we wanted to create,” he explains. “The idea was that those three businesses would come together, at the right point in the future.”
Following numerous conversations with chief marketing officers (CMOs), they were told about an “agency gap”.
“That was the opportunity we wanted to fulfill, because there are big multi-national network agencies that are really good at the lead thinking and crafting with big blue chip organisations, but they told us that they’re too slow and too expensive to activate at the volume, speed, and quality required.
“There are a lot of smaller specialist agencies, but that becomes a challenge for CMOs to manage and keep that brand consistency.”
Enter Ride Shotgun. After Cry Havoc and Born + Raise merged, Ride Shotgun officially launched in 2022 and just a few months later, had already snapped up CGI company Set Visions.
“Global ambitions” – and more acquisitions on the way?
In just over three years, Ride Shotgun has also acquired Creative Content Works in 2023; Volume Group, which comprises B2B marketing agency Volume and Shine; plus specialist CGI company PIX-US.
The agency now has a big presence both globally and across the North with offices in eight locations including in London, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Sofia, Silicon Valley, and more.
“We bridge that gap, and our proposition has always been really clear. We call it joined up brand journeys but it’s effectively linking up four key strategic pillars: strategy, creative, production and activation. We always make sure we’ve got solid in-house talent and teams and that delivers a joined up experience for clients.”
As a £15m turnover business that’s on track for £20m this year, Ride Shotgun has built up a “tried and tested” way of integrating the agencies it acquires seamlessly.
“Firstly, it’s about selecting the right businesses. They have to fit within our existing proposition, or add value to our proposition and our clients. Once we’ve selected those businesses, we spend some time getting to know them.
“We have to be confident of two things: Will the culture fit? And do we think we can make the business bigger and better as part of Ride Shotgun? Once we’ve qualified that, and get to know the team properly, we integrate them internally and with clients and the relationship continues to build from there.”
With more than 160 staff based across Ride Shotgun’s Northern offices, it’s clear how important talent is to the agency.
“We’re always very clear about our growth objective as a business, but also really clear how that ladders to opportunities for all of our people. Growth creates opportunity, because ultimately, it allows people to develop their careers with us. It allows them to work across a range of clients and do a mix of work which is really exciting for them. We always try to promote from within and develop people up.
“We’ve recently appointed a chief technology officer who’s got really solid experience, and has just come from doing a digital transformation project at WPP. We’re attracting the right talent.”
And the agency is “close” to completing a sixth acquisition – although Mallinder can’t reveal much more than that just yet.
“It’s more of the same. We’ve got a winning formula, we have plans to continue growing,” he explains.
Eyeing its “next acquisition targets”, Ride Shotgun has had a number of early conversations and that “does include other Northern agencies to add certain skillsets”.
“We also have plans around further global growth. Some of that will be through acquisition, both in the UK and beyond.
“We already are working quite a lot in Asia, specifically with HSBC in Hong Kong, so that could be another opportunity for us, but we’re open to whatever is right for our clients and where we believe can add value to the business.”
Reflecting back on Prolific North’s Top 50 ranking and the agency’s rise into seventh position, he’d like to be “top of that list within the next two years”.
But it’s not just a wish. “We have a plan and a strategy to achieve that. We have really clear growth objectives, both in terms of developing a proposition and the work with existing and new clients that we’re attracting.”
