Rise at Seven Founder Joins Ride Shotgun

Ride Shotgun has appointed Stephen Kenwright to lead its strategy and digital divisions.

Since launching in 2022, the brand activation and creative content agency, has acquired two CGI businesses, Set Visions and Creative Content Works (CCW), B2B marketing agency Volume, and learning and development agency Shine. This had meant that the agency has taken it’s turnover to £15m in a short amount of time, and its total headcount to more than 200 specialists.

Stephen founded creative agency Rise at Seven with Carrie Rose in 2019 – he served as Chief Commercial Officer and taking the agency to over £7m revenue and 110 staff across the UK and US.

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 working there, Stephen was Head of Digital at the UK’s largest automative retailer Pendragon PLC, and Strategy Director at digital marketing agency Branded3, eventually merging it into Kin + Carta PLC.

Our scale means we can ride shotgun with the customer all the way from inspiration to purchase and beyond
Stephen Kenwright

Starting at Ride Shotgun, he will regain the title of Strategy Director, reporting directly to the co-founder and Chief Client Officer, Andy Weir.

Andy 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.”

Stephen said: “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 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.”

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