Steven Bartlett’s Flight Story buys performance marketing agency in US

BBC Dragon’s Den member and host of Europe’s most downloaded podcast ‘The Diary of a CEO’, Steven Bartlett, has launched his marketing consultancy Flight Story in the US.

The expansion comes with the acquisition of Mint Performance Marketing - rebranding as Flight Performance - a world-first brand-performance marketing offering aimed at accelerating growth for disruptive brands through cutting-edge performance strategies across creative, influencer marketing, paid social, paid search, email and SMS.

Daniel James, founder of Mint Performance Marketing, will lead Flight Performance from its LA headquarters.

Amid this period of expansion, with offices now in London, New York, Los Angeles and Manchester, Flight Story has also made a new addition to its team, hiring Neil Gissler as a Non-Executive Director to lead the agency’s global growth strategy going forward.

Bartlett said of the expansion: “The world is changing at an ever-increasing pace - we’re at the start of a series of new exponential curves that will undoubtedly transform life as we know it - that’s why I’ve founded Flight Story; because we believe that exponential change creates exponential opportunity and we believe we’re uniquely positioned to help the world’s leading brands capitalise on that opportunity.

“We’re stepping into the third iteration of the internet as we know it, a more decentralised, immersive, artificially intelligent internet, where new rules apply. With our acquisition of Mint Performance Marketing we’re adding a talented collective of individuals who understand these new rules and how to use them to help disruptive brands achieve their marketing goals.”

Oliver Yonchev, CEO and co-founder of Flight Story added: “The business is scaling exponentially and our growth to the US marks an exciting and monumental milestone for the business that will see us gain an advantage to move beyond regions and service global accounts.”

This news comes in quick succession to a series of recent moves from Flight Story - the launch of Flight3, a new innovation arm for the business, Flight Deck, a world-first tool that measures the impact social media has on stock prices and Flight Fund, a new fund backed by Steven Bartlett and a collection of successful founders to accelerate the next generation of European Unicorns.