By Michael Bürgi  •  August 25, 2025  •

Ivy Liu

That direction has worked, with the shop picking up Franklin Templeton and another client in the real estate business (who declined to be identified) in late 2024.

“I think it’s done well for us, being a contrarian, because I think the agency business hasn’t performed that well, as evidenced by IPG and Omnicom having to merge,” said Connors, who grew up in the agency world working for his father Jack, a co-founder of Hill Holliday. “While everybody was so caught up in their own agency B.S., we were trying to figure out how to be smarter than an agency — a little more consultative, but very clearly not trying to also be a consultant. Because, consultants want to come in and tell you your business.”

Connors and team’s strategy is instead to connect the CMO to the rest of the C-suite, to make sure they’re all aligned to market effectively and understand strategic goals before doing research that might come back with a strategy that doesn’t align with those goals. “We’re very careful to walk in and say, we’re trying to reflect the strategy, not dictate the strategy,” said Connors.

Jen Ball, CMO for Franklin Templeton, said that’s exactly what she and her team got from Boathouse. She said Boathouse’s first moves were to connect all corners of the C-suite with marketing, due to the considerable changes the company has undergone in the last five years — it’s now mostly a B2B financial services firm working in private markets, ETFs and other business lines. It required a whole new set of messaging, which Connors and team helped her shape. 

“I think our EQ/IQ ratio is really high. We think a lot about the personalities behind the strategies. What’s the board chair trying to achieve? What’s at stake for the CEO and the CMO, in addition to the IQ variables of who’s the target, what’s the right strategy,” explained Connors. “Now that the industry is so over indexed to the IQ side … they’re forgetting about the people behind the strategies and the dynamics. And we think so much about the people behind the strategies and what’s best for them, that they do start to notice that we actually care about the relationship versus the transaction. And I think AOR is so much about the transaction, not the relationship.”

“It wasn’t a marketing exercise. It was a whole company exercise that we went through, and everybody bought into it. It felt right and honest and authentic,” said Ball. “This was a much more strategic exercise that was a lot deeper, honestly, from the starting point. And that’s what made it different — the depth and the inclusion, and then the importance of it connecting with the strategy of the company, and what was resonating from that strategy with clients.”

The resulting work delivered a “ladder” of a campaign that began in the U.S. but is now expanding to Asia and parts of Europe. centered around the tagline “Your trusted partner for what’s ahead,” followed by a series of sub-messaging that hit on all the new areas the financial services firm had expanded into. 

The result so far? “We’ve moved the dial on absolutely all of the areas that we were hoping to move the dial on in terms of brand perception,” said Ball. “I just shared it with our CEO, and she was really pleased with it.”

The CMO of the global real estate client said she’s worked with Connors in some capacity since she first met him in 2003, and at each company she’s been, Boathouse has always won her business, often beating out larger agencies and holdco shops. “At almost every turn, John and Boathouse would win, and this small, growing agency would be handling these really complex, huge accounts and huge budgets,” said the CMO. “It’s their approach to solving business problems — it’s never about the marketing solution.”

The CMO said she’s learned three key approaches from Connors that she applies to every marketing job she’s had:

1. Align marketing to the broader business
2. Follow the money
3. Understand leadership in order to translate their vision

“John has a unique ability to speak CEO, and a strategic acumen to identify the right strategies that are anchored in the business, but that really lend themselves to effective and very impactful solutions,” the CMO said.

All of which translates in Connors’ mind to: “If you use your EQ and all your executional knowledge as prompts, nobody can touch you.”

Color by numbers

If you’ve caught a pre-season football game or two, you know America’s favorite sport, the NFL season, is almost upon us. But are there weak links in the league’s offensive line, with the league possibly losing yardage? According to a survey of 1,000 consumers conducted in August by market research firm Savanta, aggressive moves into streaming and the rising cost of enjoying the game are coming at a price.  Some highlights from the survey:

• While 41% now watch football primarily via streaming services, 56% say they’re frustrated by NFL games being exclusive to certain streaming platforms;
• 69% report cutting back on attending games due to rising ticket, travel, and concession costs
• As far as spending thresholds, 55% of Americans spend less than $250 per season on football-related expenses, including tickets, merch, streaming, food, travel, and fantasy leagues; another 27% spend $500 or more, 14% spend at least $1,000; 7% spend over $2,500, and 3% shell out more than $5,000.
• In the good news department, 49% of Americans say game-time commercials influence their purchases, while 48% report being influenced by ads featuring famous football players.

Takeoff & landing

• WPP Media scored its first big win in 2025, landing Mastercard’s global media strategy, planning and buying, and taking over from Dentsu’s Carat. The win helps to explain why WPP Media resigned the PayPal account earlier this year, which was picked up by Publicis. Mastercard is reported to have spent some $180 million in media in 2024.
• It will come as some solace to Carat that it retained Vodafone’s EMEA business for the next three years starting in 2026, following a review. Part of the mandate is for Carat to help the telecoms brand take more media buying in-house.
• IPG Mediabrands and Acxiom launched a contextual ad solution for CTV with Iris.TV, called Acxiom Contextual CTV powered by IRIS_ID, which aims to align ads to the tone, genre, and context of the streaming content being viewed.
• Accenture acquired U.S.-based social and influencer agency Superdigital, whose 40 person team will be folded into Accenture Song.  In other acquisition news, Gravity Global acquired U.S. performance media agency Marketing Doctor. 
• Personnel moves: Veteran agency executive Nick Brien was formally named CEO of Outfront Media, following an interim role there … Stagwell named Margaret Key its executive director for the Asia Pacific region, as well as CEO of Allison Asia …FitzCo tapped Chris Wallrapp to be its new CEO, coming over from the same position at Hill Holliday. 

Direct quote

“We’re finding that more and more retail media networks can play a pretty powerful lever that creates this closed loop targeting synergy, that feels like more effective media placement. Not all retail media networks can do that now, but more and more, they’re getting to a place where some can.”

— Ron Amram, senior director of global media at Mars, talking about retail media’s part in a broader media strategy. Amram will be speaking at Retail Media Advertising Strategies on Sept. 10. 

Speed reading

• Sam Bradley looked into media agencies’ adjustments on paid search in light of the impact of zero-click search thanks to the advances of AI. 
• Bradley also unboxed Kellanova’s use of AI to inform its marketing tactics, and the halo effect those changes have on agency fees it pays. 
• I wrote about how Podean’s acquisition of Commerce Canal heralds fresh consolidation among “marketplace” agencies that specialize in working with brands on Amazon and other commerce platforms.