Brand activation and creative content agency Ride Shotgun has appointed Stephen Kenwright to lead its strategy and digital divisions.
Since launching in 2022, Ride Shotgun has acquired two CGI businesses, Set Visions and Creative Content Works (CCW); B2B marketing agency Volume, and learning and development agency Shine, taking the agency’s turnover to £15m and its total headcount to more than 200 specialists. Clients include HSBC, Homebase, ASDA and Amazon.
Kenwright founded creative agency Rise at Seven with Carrie Rose in 2019, serving as chief commercial officer and taking the agency to more than £7m revenue and 110 staff across Sheffield, Manchester, London and New York, before exiting in 2022.
During his tenure, Rise at Seven was named agency of the year by numerous panels and won more than 70 industry awards for work with clients including GAME, Parkdean Resorts, PrettyLittleThing, Xbox and PlayStation.
Before launching Rise at Seven, Kenwright served as head of digital at the UK’s largest automotive retailer Pendragon PLC, and strategy director at digital marketing agency Branded3, eventually merging it into Kin + Carta PLC. He will regain the title of strategy director at Ride Shotgun, where he will report directly to co-founder and chief client officer Andy Weir.
Weir said: “We’re delighted to be able to attract someone of Stephen’s calibre to Ride Shotgun and this is testament to the exciting growth journey we’re on. His leadership skills and proven track record of delivering outstanding results for big brands will help to make us even better, bringing new value to our existing clients, attracting new ones to our agency and creating even more opportunities for our team to grow.”
Kenwright added: “I chose to join Ride Shotgun partly because their content production capabilities allow me to take what I’ve started to the next level, executing campaigns across the entire search landscape – from Google to TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube – with a single in-house team.
“But I think there’s a bigger opportunity to build an agency that understands where search fits into the entire customer journey. The current economic environment means that brands can’t afford to put search in a silo, and our scale means we can ride shotgun with the customer all the way from inspiration to purchase and beyond.”
