I’m thrilled to announce I’ve joined Rise At Seven as Social & Campaigns Director, here to build the next serious agency player when it comes to social.

After nearly joining 18 months ago and following a series of positive conversations since the start of the year, the opportunity to join felt like the timing was right and it was all meant to be - bringing brand-led thinking to the heart of Rise.

The past and the future...

Carrie and I have known each other for quite some time, first meeting years ago at Brighton SEO in 2013. Ever since then, we’ve kept a close eye on what each other have done, Carrie with Rise, and myself running my own multi award-winning agency, Whalecake, for six years - named Global Small Social Media Agency of the Year 2022.

In the last decade I have worked with brands running social campaigns, creator strategies and brand led content for Mercedes Benz, Betway, LastMinute.com, Hawaiian Tropic, Wilkinson Sword, Admiral and many more. But what I see in the next decade is a cross section between social and search, how this is applied to campaigns and the creator economy and there’s no better place to spearhead this than one of the best search first creative agencies in this space.

Since joining Rise, Carrie and myself have been moving incredibly fast to further strengthen our position as the leading voice in Social Search, with a shared ambition of building the most hunted brands.

Looking ahead, there are so many areas of social I am excited to expand upon, two of them being paid social and creators - we have already begun building out the Rise Network, which now boasts hundreds of thousands of creators at our fingertips.

Joining Rise at such a pivotal moment in the agency’s journey is hugely exciting! Social is already a core offering but there’s so much I am eager to build on, both broadening and deepening our approach.

The days of being on social media are long gone! My POV of what it takes to ‘win’ on social media today requires you to be IN it. Both, in platforms and in culture - with a robust strategic approach.

I am always reassessing and asking myself, and the team, what it means to be IN social and how we can plug brands into platforms and culture, through a social-first lens. As of today, I see it like this:

The 5 Golden Rules of being IN Social

1. Informed By Culture

Everything needs to be informed by culture - making, shaping and playing in social cultural moments. Rise has famously coined “we chase consumers not algorithms” and this is where we win

2. Be Channel-Led

Become more heavily influenced by what’s happening on the platform over the annual marketing calendar. Let the shackles go and don’t be afraid to play in comms territories off the plan agreed at the start of the year/quarter. Treat each platform as its own comms channel, meaning TikTok and Instagram don’t have to look the same and do the same jobs.

3. Meet Them Where They Are

Meet audiences where they are and focus on finding the right cultural entry points.

4. Transcending Creative

Creative that exists in one platform but lives beyond it is the golden ticket. Whether that’s Reiss’ viral flash mob response to the ‘Looking For A Man In Finance’ trend, or Gym Shark’s ‘We Do Gym’ campaign.

5. It’s More Than 2-Way

Social media calls for a proactive & reactive approach, conversations that evolve beyond the original moment. Social has become less and less linear, to the point where brands have multiple daily opportunities to join conversation from very different angles; from traditional comments, to being tagged in a thread by another brand, to reacting to a conversation that poses an opportunity to name a few.

I’m hugely excited about the team we’re building at Rise and everything we have planned for 2024 and beyond. For more updates, keep an eye on my LinkedIn and future blog posts.

Carrie Rose, Founder and CEO, of Rise at Seven adds:

“We are at the very start of something exciting at Rise at Seven. 5 years ago I had a vision, a prediction, that search and culture will lead all marketing decisions and consumer search insight will be key to industry leading social strategies and campaigns.

Our social service is proudly serving clients globally already including Dermalogica, Tropic Skincare, Revolution Beauty, Shark, Ninja, Capital One, Parkdean Resorts and many more. Wes joining us is a key move in leading the category for search and social and how we integrate comms within everything we do to both drive and capture search demand.

I have been in WhatsApp DMs with Wes for a while now and I am honoured to be in a position to have him join us in the Senior Leadership Team as Social & Campaigns Director and help me scale this agency to success”.