Claire Eisenberg, Director of Corporate Communications

Cause and Affect features CPers who pursue unique side hustles⏤ affecting others through their passion and inspiring us to live Defiantly Human.

There are people who are passionate about giving a voice to histories that matter today, stories that can change our future, people like our very own Director of Creative Services, Barry Frechette. These are the people who highlight good deeds that have gone unnoticed in order to inspire others to make an impact.  Outside of his day job at Connelly Partners, Barry made the leap into documentary films to shine a light on the incredible untold stories of our veterans and those who do good against the odds.

“I never made a documentary film before I made this one. But all my life, in the ad industry, you tell stories or snippets of stories… I’m just fascinated by people. And their stories. And I love storytelling. I love the medium. Armed with this experience and passion, I made the leap into the unknown.”

Barry Frechette (co-director, executive producer) and Max Esposito (co-director, director of photography, editor) created Paper Lanterns. The critically acclaimed documentary is about Normand Brissette (Lowell, MA) and Ralph Neal (Corbin, KY), two American POWs killed in Hiroshima, and Shigeaki Mori, a Japanese survivor who refused to let them be forgotten. The horrors they witnessed. The families that struggled to find the truth. And one man’s effort to give them the gift of closure.

“It’s not about going back and looking for apologies for the bombing, it’s about moving forward. There are tough moments in the film that we left in, but they are important because we want to show that there is redemption in all this. After all these years, we can still figure shit out. It’s opened doors for me where I get to hear other people’s stories and help them too.”

Paper Lanterns gave a voice to a community whose stories would have gone untold. Mr. Mori greatly impacted the last few days of Normand and Ralph’s lives. After surviving the initial bombing in Hiroshima, they were like so many others in the wake of the devastating attack⏤ without support or resources. And to think, what took place in Japan in 1945, came to light when Barry was looking through a photo album at his Grandmother’s house halfway around the world in Massachusetts. Paper Lanterns not only celebrates Mr. Mori’s compassionate heroism, but also inspires reconciliation representing our two nations as people who are not our past, but humans working together for a brighter tomorrow.

Barry recognizes and meets the challenge of honoring and protecting a lived truth that is not his own. While Barry worked on this project outside of Connelly Partners, he’s put into practice the agency’s purpose to be Defiantly Human⏤ prioritizing and defending empathy, compassion and the unique stories of humans.

Barry was recognized at the 2019 AdClub Rosoff Awards for his work to make a positive impact through passion. For more, visit https://theadclub.org/rosoff2019/.

Steve Connelly, President and Copywriter

Times were Boston, and I include Providence here, was one of the creative hubs of the marketing universe. Some of the greatest creative agencies and minds called our corner of the world home. And some of the biggest brands, born in the Northeast and around the world, came to our agencies to get access to those minds. But creative reputations are like gardens, they need constant attention and cultivation.

The responsibility for that cultivation falls to us, the marketing industry of Boston. We need to constantly be out as a unified market talking of what we are doing and what’s possible here. This is a pretty sexy creative beachhead. Flo lives here, JetBlue lands here, Bank of America banks on the talent here, the Gorton’s fisherman was born here.

But we don’t have a voice in the market anymore. The bigger players are responsible to their holding companies, not the talent and potential of Boston. Back then, to be an agency in Boston was to belong to a club of creativity, where every agency spent their days raising the bar for clients and daring their agency friends to keep up. Together we made everyone better, and we unapologetically told the world about it.

Today major local brands like Liberty Mutual, Dunkin’, Mass Mutual, Ocean Spray, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Homegoods, Gillette, Reebok, even Cumberland Farms leave this market for advertising not because better talent and resources exist outside, but because they THINK better talent and resources exists elsewhere. We have been quiet, disorganized, self interested, rather than seeing and painting the big picture. Boston needs a voice, a voice that reminds and educates about the awesomeness available here. The more we stay quiet and fail to promote our market, the easier it is to see past what’s here and experience wandering eye.

Boston STILL does amazing work that should attract the next generation of great Boston brands like Wayfair, Hubspot and LogMeIn, as well as brands from all over the country. Boston has always been synonymous with independent thinking, with creativity, with being at the front of every innovation. We have never been much for staying quiet. What happened?

Noise starts here. We challenge other voices to follow.

Steve Connelly appeared in the Boston Globe article “Hometown advantage? Not for Boston’s ad agencies”. Learn more about his perspective and the local boston advertising scene.