5 Minutes with… Ben McMahon
Ben McMahon is dedicated to disrupting and challenging the experiential space – helping ambitious brands grow with human, memorable moments in unexpected places. Helping his own teams flourish and excel – with a spirit of adventure baked into the cultural DNA.
Under Ben’s leadership Collaborate Global, the experiential agency that he founded in 2016, is now a leading global independent network, growing and growing fast. Winning, retaining, and creating work for iconic brands including eBay, F1, Goodwood Festival, Hyundai, Aston Martin, Sky and Hispano Suiza.
In the past 12 months alone Collaborate has expanded its footprint from the UK and South Africa into the Middle East – next stop Asia. Double-digit growth has been recorded in the UK. Industry recognition is growing – with recent wins at The Drum and Campaign Big Awards. The team has also recently grown four-fold. Cultural recognition has come too: Collaborate has been listed as one the best UK places to work by The Sunday Times.
LBB’s Alex Reeves catches up with Ben.
LBB> What were you like when you were growing up and were there any signs then about what you'd end up doing?
Ben> My grandad was an entrepreneur – he pretty much invented the first-ever CNC machine. He worked at Rank Xerox and as a kid I’d hang out in his factory, seeing all this weird amazing robotic stuff he was making.
Nan owned a chain of toy shops. So that independent, self-starter attitude felt like a family trait – and as a kid I was fascinated by it. I probably didn't see the long hours and the stress that went with it; I just saw a few people very successfully doing their own thing.
While I wasn't particularly studious at school, there was a chemistry teacher who knocked me off my peg and helped refocus my attitude towards learning and recognising what could be done in life. And that’s stayed with me.
LBB> Early in your career, what were the lessons that stuck with you? And why?
Ben> I studied as an accountant. I was lucky to get a job at British Oxygen, which sponsored my accountancy. For some reason, the CEO took a shine to me and introduced me to one of his mates who was MD at Courage – and I got picked up by the brewery. So, I was studying to be an accountant while drinking beer – you can't really ask better than that!
I did the same by joining another incredibly entrepreneurial drinks company Pernod Ricard. The CEO, Paul Duffy, was inspirational. A true leader. His clarity of direction was so singular - I was a lowly exec when I joined, and even I knew exactly what we were doing as a company.
There were three firm beliefs: entrepreneurialism, integrity, and conviviality. I remember all three.
Sales training was phenomenal.
I learned to do three things at once: being in the moment and being genuine in the situation; thinking ahead to where that conversation is going, what you're trying to do; staying focused in terms of listening intently to the person you're having the conversation with and giving something back.
I thrive on finding solutions, and my time there fuelled that drive to never say ‘no’ (while not always saying ‘yes’).
LBB> What were the thoughts that came together to provoke you to found Collaborate in 2016?
Ben> Collaborate was born out of a genuine opportunity to take all the best bits that I learnt in life and combine them in one simple offer. Using the sentiment of ‘collaboration’ as a driver for success.
At the time, P&G’s CMO Marc Pritchard announced he was going to save a staggering US$ 1 billion by removing marketing and activation spend with big agency networks and putting it all back to small boutiques. He wanted to talk to creatives or producers instead of layers of account people. It struck a chord.
I’d come out of managing a 60-70 strong production factory, six to seven days a week, in an environment that was micromanaging process and tasks. It wasn’t for me and didn’t drive efficiency and opportunity.
Collaborate set out with a mindset that you didn’t need to be physically where you had the most value. I’ve always believed that creativity, inspiration and passion don’t come from being behind a desk 24/7.
LBB> Why did you decide to do it in Chichester?
Ben> I’d been working in the Reading area running a big production company and one day realised something was missing. I knew there was more to life, and knew I wanted adventure – preferably near water. I'm Aquarian and happiest when I'm surrounded by the sea – sailing, swimming, or just soaking it in.
Plus, we needed more space for the kids!
LBB> Can you quickly chart the progress of experiential marketing over the years and explain the main direction of travel for it right now?
Ben> It’s gone full circle. If I go back to Pernod Ricard days, Jameson's was its first brand to go above the line on TV, from an advertising point of view. Everything else to support the brand was done via field sales, sampling, and in-person activation.
Those days it felt like it was all experiential.
Then came online marketing and budgets started drifting there to reach people quickly. It was new and innovative.
Now, the digitised marketing landscape is saturated. It's highly fragmented. It used to be relatively inexpensive too – pushing out content versus putting on a festival but that’s changed.
AI is a catalyst, helping in some ways but equally creating distrust. Fakery is growing and brands are finding it harder to come across as honest and true. People are catching on.
Just recently I sat down with Red Bull. A great example of a ‘brand-in-the-hand’ experiential company. It’s now the third most valuable soft drink, behind only Coca-Cola and Pepsi. And it keeps growing, with turnover up 9% in 2023 – with a unique marketing approach that accounts for around 30% of revenues.
We see our job as helping brands win in the “attention economy”. Marketers are realising the value of a 15-minute engaged dwell time versus a three-second doom scroll, bringing new and existing customers to IRL experiences grounded in brand quality, emotion, innovation, and intrigue.
We’re seeing winning brands fuse content and live activation campaigns to build stronger trusted links for greater reach and legacy. It’s an opportunity for new growth.
LBB> How has Collaborate had to change to adapt to those changes in experiential?
Ben> We're not a traditional agency and that's one of our superpowers.
To be honest, we’ve stayed close to our original ethos of complete transparency in how we work and support our brand partners, helping solve challenges and bringing creative solutions – so we’ve not had to adapt too much.
Our unique blend of people, and how they bring brands to life in experiential, has been at the heart of our offer from day one.
We’ve always been honest and open about our ways of working with clients: stressing how we'll bring in specialist partners to support and supplement our skill sets, if the brief calls for additional elements we don’t have in house.
This way we’re creating that best-in-class solution – always using the right people at the right time – rather than pretending we have a full portfolio of broad skillsets sitting full time in an agency. We work with many, many partnerships.
LBB> What do your clients really want from you and why?
Ben> Brand-first experience marketing.
Brands that get it right think beyond the brand moment.
Success comes from experiences that drive dwell time, inviting wider audience consumption though digital interactions, content creation, and creating (and capturing) lasting moments.
We work from creative ideation through to full on-site production, and from tracking delivery to planning new growth campaigns in the space – all thanks to our terrifically talented, fast-growing product delivery team.
Clients want agencies to adapt easily and quickly to their unique needs – and they’re all different.
Maybe clients don't need consumer insights, they may already have that knowledge. But our teams still recognise and understand the brand strategy, how it translates to touchpoints, applies to production, and how it manifests in the live experience – designed around the consumer. That's intelligent production, not just production for a production's sake. We call it hyper-serving.
Our mantra is that we only do cool stuff with ambitious brands. And our client partners need the right mindset to push limits, to win.
LBB> What expertise are you most on the hunt for to make sure you respond to those client needs?
Ben> People with an appetite for adventure. A well-rounded team who sees the unseen.
We have a mentality of never leaving anyone behind – so we invest a lot in developing and coaching. I’ve always thought that adventure comes from inspiring each other and inspiring people around us.
I’m big on the word ‘enablement’ – how can Collaborate enable you as an individual to succeed in your own personal goals? Everyone gets a personal development day to do whatever they want – from flying a plane, to surfing to learning butchery skills.
And we’re constantly on the prowl for good people. In fact, we’ve taken on people simply because they’re a good fit and we know they can bring value – rather than recruiting to budget or fill an organogram.
LBB> You've been recognised as one of the best places to work in the UK, so how do you make sure you deliver on what the most talented people want from their workplace?
Ben> Trust is at the heart. I’m happy to give people my trust the moment they walk through the door. No-one is micro-managed – if everyone is pulling in the right direction, trust holds us all together. And it’s helping us evolve – we’re growing at pace, constantly developing our offer.
We all recognise the value of instilling our culture through osmosis.
You know it’s working when you see the best part of 30 people at one of our biggest experiences put under an incredible amount of pressure still bounding around, high-fiving, having fun. Just like our recent set of activations at this year’s Festival of Speed at Goodwood.
LBB> What are you most proud of working on and why?
Ben> The work we're currently doing out in Medina in Saudi Arabia. We created a leadership team out there, working with the city to help create world-class audience-first experiences to bring the Kingdom’s 2030 Vision alive.
It has a lot of purpose and value. It’s fascinating work, fuelling learning – and it’s defining our agency growth.
In terms of an individual project, I’d have to choose the Hyundai 5 N global launch. The experience really put us on the map, as we created and delivered an entire campaign, rather than just individual components within a campaign.
LBB> If a brand were to build an experience just for you as an individual, what would it be?
Ben> It would be based on water, brilliantly organised and beautifully produced with inspiring theatrics. I love Cirque du Soleil, Blue Man – those ‘never-been-seen-before’ production pieces. It would be sunny and warm. And no queuing!
