The Scale Factory Welcomes Mat Mildenhall as Advisor

25 years ago, my partners and I sold my Oslo agency, Oslo Nettdesign, to a Commercial Director at Proximity Worldwide. His name was Mat Mildenhall, and the deal created Proximity Oslo.

Today I'm delighted to share that Mat is joining The Scale Factory as an advisor.

In the six years after that acquisition, Mat helped grow the Proximity network from 11 markets to 50+, lifted revenue 155%, and won global accounts including P&G, Shell and InterContinental — leaving in 2007 with Proximity ranked #1 in The WON Report. He then spent a decade at BBDO, most of it leading P&G globally (a team of 300+ that won BBDO's first 12 Cannes Lions on the business), and went on to run Omnicom's global team on Visa.

From 2017, Mat spent seven years as Chief Client Officer at eg+ worldwide — growing top-20 client revenue double digits almost every year, lifting global NPS to 8.3 across 800+ clients, and winning more than 60% of regional and global pitches. Most recently he was Chief Client Officer at Omnicom Production, on the leadership team that built one of the largest global content businesses in the industry, with AI, agentic and automation solutions increasingly central to how client work gets made.

One question almost every scale-up we work with is wrestling with: should ad-tech and martech platforms go direct to advertisers, or work through agencies? Mat's view:

It's not binary. Sometimes a direct client relationship is enough. Other times you'll inhibit your platform's growth if key agency partners aren't aware of — and motivated by — the value you bring. The ideal is often a three-party model that works for platform, agency and client.

On why he's getting involved:

It's about the people. I've known Lars and some of the team for years, and I'm psyched to do whatever I can to help the team and their clients grow.

Welcome, Mat! We're looking forward to drawing on your perspective as we keep helping ambitious scale-ups build predictable revenue engines across markets.

LB