It’s part of the fourth major strategic shift I’ve been building behind the scenes - and it changes the shape of what an agency should look like.
Why I am hiring more client side leaders to run Rise at Seven
Over the last 12 months, I’ve been intentionally - and quietly - building around a shift that I believe will fundamentally reset the agency model that has existed for decades.
There’s a growing, strong opinion among senior marketers that agencies who are staffed primarily with “career agency operators” struggle to truly operate at board level. And the agencies gaining traction are the ones deliberately bringing in senior client-side talent.
I agree.
If agencies want to survive - and lead - the next decade, we need to start behaving less like service providers and more like embedded strategic partners.
That means the next generation of agency talent must be the smartest people in the room at diagnosing business problems - not just delivering channel outputs.
To do that - we need to start hiring:
People who have managed multi-million-pound budgets.
Integrated paid, earned, owned and shared channels inside complex organisations.
Advised boards.
Carried the weight of performance targets on their shoulders.
Because strategy looks very different when you’ve lived the consequences of it.
And right now, that perspective matters more than ever.
The future agency won’t win by doing more. It will win by thinking better.
Here's why:
The shift - what AI is actually doing to agency models…
The economics of agencies are already shifting.
The insight:
Job ads in agencies are down 41%.
More than half of UK agencies didn’t hire a single graduate in 2025.
Why?
Because AI can now do a significant portion of what junior teams were historically hired to do.
Copy drafting. Design iterations. Research synthesis. Reporting. Production workflows.
Much of it can now be automated faster and cheaper than ever before.
AI is not the threat.
Commoditised execution is.
If your agency’s value is built purely on volume of output, that model will struggle.
The future agency won’t win by doing more.
It will win by thinking better.
That's why we are welcoming…
Our Executive Director of Integrated Strategy
Today, I’m proud to appoint Matt Holmes as Executive Director of Integrated Strategy at Rise at Seven.
Matt brings over a decade of senior brand-side leadership across PrettyLittleThing, British Gas, Card Factory, Chill Insurance, Thomas Cook and Emirates.
He has managed multi-channel marketing ecosystems. He has integrated paid, earned, owned and shared media under commercial pressure. He has presented to boards and justified marketing investment in real business terms.
He has also hired Rise as an agency - more than once.
At BrightonSEO with Matt, Rise at Seven team and RedBull team.
He knows our execution is exceptional.
But more importantly, he understands how to connect that execution to integrated, commercially grounded strategy.
He joins us alongside Phil Clark, my managing partner of product and performance who also comes from client side after running the Global Direction of Digital Performance at Canada Goose. Previous to that Phil worked many years agency side at Reprise/Kinesso in a client centric role.
"He's hired us as an agency. Multiple times. And now becomes a Riser."
Read Matts words about why he's gone from some of the biggest brands in the world to joining Rise at Seven
Matt’s role is not to change who we are.
It’s to elevate what we do.
To ensure our creativity is consistently powered by insight - search insight driven by human truth
To ensure our execution is guided by commercial judgement.
To ensure our integration across channels drives measurable growth.
Because the future agency will not be defined by output alone.
It will be defined by the quality of its thinking.
And this appointment is a deliberate step toward building that future.
At the heart of all of this is one ambition: To build a client-centric business led by strategic consultants.
We all know, I've spent all my career agency side. It started at Stickyeyes, then Branded3 and then building my own here at Rise at Seven. I am not afraid to admit my gaps in experience and knowledge, and I know to get where I want to go - I want to not just build a great agency, but a great agency for the best brands in the world.
The biggest gap in marketing today isn’t creation. Brands don’t struggle because they can’t find agencies to “do” things.
Late last year I wrote down 3 words in my Iphone notes that I think will be the makeup of great marketing agencies of our future. They must have:
Insight - understanding not just data, but context, experience and human behaviour. Humans are moving faster than ever and Rise brings search intent (human truth) at the heart of the marketing mix
Empathy - knowing what people care about, why they choose one brand over another, and how cultural currents shape choices. Knowing when to join cultural moments or lead them.
Strategy - Knowing where to invest, where to cut, and how marketing decisions translate into measurable business growth and connecting owned, earned, paid and shared media into one coherent system that drives both demand and discovery.
So what are we doing at Rise at Seven…
We are delegating repeatable activity to automation.
We are redesigning roles around consultative value.
We are hiring leaders who have sat client-side, managing PESO channels and understand board-level pressures.
Because brands don’t just need more “doing.”
They need strategic partners who:
• Understand budget constraints • Understand performance expectations • Understand internal complexity • And can architect growth systems across demand and discovery.
And the agencies that survive the next decade won’t be the busiest ones.
They’ll be the ones whose people are indispensable. That’s the model we’re building.
This client centric shift all started last year. You will have noticed…
Why? Because what brands need right now isn’t another silo.
They need a bridge.
A partner that connects channels instead of competing within them.
We believe search is not longer a channel, but a behaviour. And search insight can fuel some of the best performing content on the internet - because it's bedded in human truth. What people want because they're telling us, in search bars every single second of the day.
We believe content marketing sits at the centre of modern growth.
My second initiative
moved from service led positioning to outcome led positioning.
We stopped leading with SEO, PR, creative and content as outputs. We started leading with what we actually build, the outcome of working with Rise:
Category leaders.
That’s a value outcome positioning shift.
Not because we’re moving away from execution - it's about elevating it. Into a strategic value based position. What our customers get from working with us.
Execution is what made us famous. Over 80 awards. Campaigns that genuinely shape conversation. Creative work that drives commercial impact.
That strength remains. If your value is built on volume of output, that model will struggle.
My third initiative
I then expanded the arena
I added - “Across every searchable platform”
I reframed search from Google-only to behaviour-driven discovery (TikTok, YouTube, Amazon, AI, Pinterest, TikTok Shop etc.).
That’s called market scope expansion.
I redefined the playing field we were in.
And fourth initiative
And lastly rebranded. A brand new look to the world.
Rise at Seven is intentionally redefining agency leadership and agency models that have existed for years.
This isn’t about hiring impressive CVs.
It’s about building an agency run by people who have sat in the client chair.
We are deliberately building a leadership team of strategic consultants who know how to diagnose business problems and architect solutions around them.
Because that’s the biggest gap in marketing today.
Rise started as an executional powerhouse. We’re evolving into a strategic, multi-channel growth partner built around human intent.
I have always believed agencies win by offering consultative value, not volume.
That means:
Helping brands unlock new channels
Enter new markets
Create new categories
Reach new customers
Build sustainable demand and discovery systems
And clients are responding.
In under 12 months, the percentage of clients buying multi-channel strategy from us has grown from 38% to over 70%. Red Bull and Birkenstock joined the portfolio. We expanded the US and reached $3m in revenue.
That’s not a service upsell. That’s a mindset shift.
Brands are asking for integrated thinking - not siloed delivery.
Behind the scenes
Written By
Carrie Rose
Founder
Tue 26 Nov
News
CEO & Founder of Rise at Seven, and my job is to be out in the market and see which way the wind is blowing in the next 1, 2, 5 or 10 years time and bring that home to my team and clients. I lead the vision of the agency across the UK & US.
