Ride Shotgun has appointed Steve Armstrong as group finance director.
Armstrong will take responsibility for Finance and HR functions for the agency with immediate effect, reporting directly to CEO Mark Mallinder.
The new director is an MBA graduate of Manchester Business School and boasts a 15-year career spanning diverse sectors including hospitality, travel and technology.
He commenced his career on the Hilton Hotels European Finance Graduate Scheme, before later joining Jamie Oliver’s start-up stadia hospitality business, Fabulous Fan Fayre, as finance director.
Armstrong has since assumed other strategic roles, notably as chief commercial officer at Conferma Pay, a global fintech where Steve played a fundamental role in developing the business before playing a pivotal role in the sale of the company to Sabre in 2022.
A strategic thinker with international experience and a strong background in financial analysis and commercial development, Armstrong has proven effective in realising the ambitions of rapidly growing businesses such as Ride Shotgun.
Rthe agency launched in January 2022 following the merger of Leeds-based content creation and production specialists, Cry Havoc and the Sheffield-based strategic brand activation agency, Born + Raised. It then acquired CGI company Set Visions later in 2022, and CCW in July 2023 to create one of the UK’s largest CGI production houses.
March 2024 saw the acquisition of Volume Group, an award winning agency group, boosting Extended Reality and People Performance capabilities. With the addition of locations in Reading in the UK, the US, and Sri Lanka to its existing locations in Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, and London in the UK, as well as Portugal and Bulgaria, the company continues to expand its global presence.
Ride Shotgun’s assets include a Leeds-based production hub with 30,000 sq ft of studio space and a production hub in Portugal. Its combined client portfolio now includes Oracle, Intuit, Virgin Media O2 Business, Vodafone, BP & LNER as well as HSBC, Homebase, Asda, Dreams, John Lewis, Akzo Nobel and Amazon.
The Ride Shotgun team has a wealth of experience across B2B and B2C, as well as sector expertise across financial services, FMCG, retail, utilities, manufacturing, education, health & beauty and now technology & telecoms, comprising over 200 specialists across strategy, creative, digital, production and learning & development.
