Rival
London, Boston, Cape Town
Website: We Are Rival
Founders: Eric Fulwiler and Jenna Cummings
Year founded: 2021
UK headcount: <50
Locations: London, Boston, and Cape Town
We like that we’re rocking boats because while we’re a startup, we are still a small part of the change – and a lot of change needs to happen in our industry.
Profile
We Are Rival is the product of an itch too strong to ignore. With a background in marketing, Eric Fulwiler had always fancied starting his own thing, so when former Vayner Media colleague Jenna Cummings said she was up for it, they set about scratching that itch together.
We Are Rival launched at the end of 2021; a boutique marketing consultancy with a very clear mission to challenge what Eric and Jenna believed was an “outdated” holding group model with market share up for grabs.
The last thing they felt the world needed was another advertising agency, though. Instead, they have spent the first three years building a fully integrated agency that operates more like a media company, offering a full service of strategy, creative production, media planning and tech. Its team of 30 are currently split between London (HQ), New York and most recently Cape Town, working across international clients such as Reebok, Activision and Tumblr.
A core part of We Are Rival’s strategy is to grow through acquisitions. In particular, absorbing talent from “micro-boutiques” - networks of two or 10-person agencies that are exceptional at what they do but don’t have the capacity to scale. It aims to bolster its integrated offering with one or two acquisitions a year, which recently included Boston creative shop HeyLet’sGo.
We Are Rival has been building out its senior leadership team as well, including hiring ex-Havas executive Lance Koenig as chief strategy officer in 2024 and, if all goes to plan, its first chief product officer later this year.
With business revenue on track to double between Q1 and Q4 and a major campaign for Tumblr underway, 2025 is certainly off to a flying start for the three-year-old scale-up. Testament to its agile business model and growing pool of talent, the campaign took seven days from concept to market.
Alongside acquisitions, We Are Rival is focusing on scaling up its own technology to drive growth in future. This will require a much larger round of fundraising, for which conversations are currently taking place.
Amid all the highs and wins posted on LinkedIn, Eric wants to be clear about the “hard and messy” reality of being a founder. As much as anybody, he and Jenna are “figuring it out as [they] go along”.