Limerick just got a jolt of good news. At Connelly Partners, we’ve had the pleasure of championing Transport for Ireland through campaigns that reframe how people see public transport and this time, we got to celebrate a milestone: the launch of TFI’s first fully electric city bus fleet in Limerick!
The brief was simple: TFI wanted to honour this incredible achievement. Limerick is leading the way as the first city to welcome TFI’s electric fleet, and we wanted the city itself to feel that shift visually. We built the campaign around a single, striking metaphor: Limerick as a circuit board, coming alive with electricity. In our CGI creative, TFI’s new electric buses travel along glowing circuit pathways, lighting up as they pass some of Limerick’s most recognisable landmarks: Thomond Park, the O’Connell Statue, University of Limerick, King John’s Castle, and TUS Gaelic Grounds. Each landmark illuminates as the bus passes, visually connecting the city’s landmarks, its people, and its energy into one network.
Bringing this concept to life required a fully CGI approach and we partnered with PenCo Post to render the animation and bring our electric city circuit board to life.
We also put together an “Electric” Spotify playlist to go along with the creative, packed with electric-themed tracks and the perfect soundtrack for getting around the city.
Now live across social and out-of-home in Limerick, “Let TFI Electrify Your Bus Journey” is our way of marking a first for Irish public transport. We’re proud to have helped tell that story for TFI.
Let TFI Electrify Your Bus Journey!
Advertising at the Frequency of the Soul

Advertising at the Frequency of the Soul
A speculative thesis from Connelly Partners on consciousness, holography, and why moving people’s souls is not a metaphor — it may be physics.
Steve Connelly, President & Copywriter, Connelly Partners
At Connelly Partners, we have long held a belief that guides every brief, campaign, and conversation with a client: to move people’s feet, we must first move their souls.
For decades, this felt like philosophy. Increasingly, it looks like science.
A growing body of research — from neuroscience to quantum physics to consciousness theory — suggests that human decision-making is not a rational process colored by emotion. It is, at its core, a feeling process that gets rationalized after the fact. And the most provocative frontier of that research raises an even bolder possibility: that what we call the “soul” — the place in a person where meaning lives, where a message either lands or doesn’t — may be less metaphorical than we imagined. It may be a frequency. And advertising, at its best, may be an act of tuning.
Part I: The Science of Feeling First
The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio spent decades studying patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex — the region that processes emotional signals in decision-making. What he found upended the Enlightenment’s central assumption about human rationality. These patients were intelligent and articulate — but they could not make decisions. Without the emotional signal, the rational mind had no mechanism for choosing.
His landmark finding: emotions are not noise. They are the prerequisite for decisions. Before logic weighs in, the body registers a feeling — a somatic marker — that pre-screens options, elevating some and eliminating others. Damasio called it an “internal alarm.” Not irrationality. The system worked exactly as designed.
The advertising research confirms what Damasio’s neuroscience predicts. A Nielsen analysis of 100 campaigns across 25 brands found that ads scoring above average on neuroscience-based emotional measures generated a 23% lift in sales. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s landmark analysis of over 1,400 IPA campaigns found that purely emotional campaigns produced a 31% profitability increase versus 16% for purely rational ones — nearly twice the ROI. A 2025 study conducted by Columbia University neuroscientist Professor Moran Cerf for Seedtag found that ads aligned to the emotional tone of their context delivered 3.5 times higher neural engagement and a 26% lift in positive, action-driving emotional response.
The soul, in other words, is not a soft target. It is the most efficient path to the decision.
Part II: The Brain as Hologram
Here is where the science gets stranger — and more interesting.
Stanford neuroscientist Karl Pribram spent decades puzzling over a problem no conventional brain model could solve: why does memory survive injury? When large portions of brain tissue were removed in animal experiments, subjects still retained learned memories. The information wasn’t stored in any single location — it seemed distributed everywhere. No matter where you cut, the whole remained.
This is precisely how a hologram works. In a holographic plate, every fragment contains the interference pattern for the entire image. Cut the plate in half and you get the whole picture, slightly less sharp — not half a picture. Pribram proposed that the brain encodes memory the same way: as distributed wave-frequency patterns across neural fields. His decades of laboratory data convinced him that “whatever comes into the brain becomes distributed” — stored in a frequency domain describable by the same mathematics used to create holograms.
His model went further: the brain doesn’t record the world like a camera. It performs a frequency transformation — converting waveform inputs from the senses into the coherent objects and experiences we perceive as reality. Perception isn’t passive recording. It is an active translation between frequency and form.
Part III: The Universe as Hologram
Physicist David Bohm arrived at a compatible theory from the opposite direction — from quantum mechanics rather than neuroscience. Bohm observed that quantum particles that had once interacted seemed to influence each other instantaneously across any distance, as though space posed no barrier at all. He proposed that the separate, distinct world we perceive — what he called the “explicate order” — is a surface unfolding from a deeper, enfolded reality he called the “implicate order”.
The best analogy for the implicate order, Bohm argued, was a hologram: a distributed whole from which any fragment can reconstruct the complete image. Consciousness, he believed, operates between the two orders — between the visible world of space and time, and the deeper field where “everything is internally related to everything”.
In his 1991 book, The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot synthesized Bohm and Pribram’s parallel frameworks into a single proposition: that the universe itself functions holographically, and that the human brain — also holographic in its processing — is a smaller piece of that larger whole. Each mind, in this view, contains a perspective on a universal pattern of information that underlies physical reality.
Part IV: What This Means for Advertising
Most advertising models assume a world of bounded, separate individuals — each one a container to be filled with messages, persuaded through argument, moved through incentive. The brief is to reach them. The goal is to change what they think.
But if the holographic model is even partially correct — and it remains speculative, a hypothesis rather than settled science — then a different picture of the consumer emerges. Not a container, but a receiver. Not a rational agent processing inputs, but a frequency-sensitive consciousness, perpetually translating between the world of surface signals and a deeper order of meaning from which those signals arise.
In this picture, authentic stories move people and manufactured ones don’t — not just psychologically but perhaps structurally. Authentic communication is coherent: the surface signal aligns with the deeper pattern of meaning it represents. Manufactured emotion is incoherent: the signal and its source are misaligned. The receiver detects that dissonance, even if the rational mind cannot name it. This would explain Damasio’s somatic markers from a new angle. The gut feeling that a brand rings hollow — that the ad feels false — may be the brain’s holographic processing detecting interference between the signal received and the deeper pattern it purports to represent.
In physics, resonance occurs when an object vibrates at the same natural frequency as another, amplifying both. In marketing, the same principle applies: when a brand’s message operates at the same emotional frequency as its audience, the impact multiplies. This may not be a metaphor borrowed from physics. It may be the same phenomenon, at a different scale.
The Speculative Thesis
Connelly Partners’ belief — to move people’s feet, we must first move their souls — has always been intuited from practice: from the campaigns that worked and the ones that didn’t, from the creative that moved people and the creative that didn’t.
The emerging science of consciousness offers a compelling framework for why this is true:
If the holographic model of consciousness is correct, then human beings are not passive recipients of information — they are active participants in a universe where meaning is distributed, non-local, and present at a level deeper than the visible world. A brand communication does not create meaning. It either resonates with pre-existing patterns of felt human experience, or it doesn’t. Moving the soul is not a poetic device for emotional engagement. It is a description of what actually happens when a frequency-coherent communication reaches a frequency-sensitive receiver.
This is why authenticity cannot be faked — not just as brand strategy, but perhaps as a matter of physics. Manufactured signals are incoherent. Incoherent signals don’t resonate at the level that matters. They may register at the surface — but they do not move the deeper pattern. They do not move the soul. And without the soul, the feet don’t follow.
A Note on Speculation
This is deliberately framed as a hypothesis, not a proof. The holographic universe framework is serious science, advanced by physicists and neuroscientists of the highest standing — Bohm at Princeton and Berkeley, Pribram at Stanford. But it remains contested and unverified as a complete theory of reality.
What is not speculative is the neuroscience of emotional decision-making. Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis is among the most well-evidenced theories in cognitive science. The advertising effectiveness research is robust across hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and industry analyses.
The leap — from “emotions move decisions” to “consciousness may be holographic and advertising may be an act of frequency resonance” — is offered in the spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity. Connelly Partners has always believed the best advertising asks the biggest questions. This is one of the biggest: What, exactly, is a soul? And what does it mean to move one?
We don’t have the complete answer. But we think the question is worth asking out loud.
References
Somatic Marker Hypothesis – Wikipedia
We’re Ruled by Our Emotions, and So Are the Ads We Watch – Nielsen
The Dangerous Power of Emotional Advertising – Tasawwar Karim, LinkedIn
Seedtag Releases First-of-Its-Kind Neuroscience Study – Seedtag
RATIONAL v EMOTIONAL – Andy Greenaway, LinkedIn
The Organization of Memory by the Brain – Karl Pribram (PDF)
Karl H. Pribram – Wikipedia
Some Comments on the Nature of the Perceived Universe – Karl Pribram
Bohmian Wave Mechanics, Holographic Universe – David Bohm
Tuning the Mind in the Frequency Domain: Karl Pribram’s Holonomic Brain Theory and David Bohm’s Implicate Order – Shelli R. Joye, Cosmos and History
Proceedings of Symposia in Applied Mathematics – Karl Pribram
The Holographic Universe, D.Bohm & N.Haramein – My Quantum Life
David Bohm and the Implicate Order – Documentary Excerpt
The Holographic Universe – Michael Talbot
The Psychology of Resonance – Emilie B., LinkedIn
What the OOH Insider Summit Revealed About the Future of Out-Of-Home

Abby Sullivan, Associate Media Director
At the recent MediaPost OOH Insider Summit in Nashville, the conversation wasn’t just about billboards; it was about whether out-of-home advertising is ready to earn its seat at the performance table. One theme surfaced again and again: OOH has the reach and the creative power, but it’s been playing catch-up on measurement for years, and in a media landscape where every dollar needs to justify itself, that gap has real consequences.
The Industry’s Honest Reckoning
Dentsu set the tone early with a line that stuck: OOH has been bringing a showreel to a data fight. Out-of-home now represents just 2.3% of total advertising spend, down from 4%, and continues to lose ground as other channels have built closed-loop measurement, attribution models, and real-time optimization. The medium isn’t broken as attention is actually growing. But the inability to consistently prove downstream impact has made OOH an easy line item to cut when budgets tighten.
What the Data Actually Shows
MFour Data Research brought six years of benchmark data (145,000+ survey responses across hundreds of campaigns) and the findings were both validating and uncomfortable. Creative Recall has climbed from 38% to 44%, and Ad Recall has nearly doubled from 18% to 29%. But lower-funnel metrics like Brand Opinion, Consideration, and Purchase Intent have been trending in the opposite direction. Reach is up. Lift is down.
The Human Edge
A session on OOH in 2031 offered a useful reframe for planners: AI will absorb the repetitive, execution-heavy work, but OOH remains uniquely dependent on human judgment. Whether it’s the read on a market, a neighborhood, or a moment, the nuanced instincts that make a placement feel right just aren’t automatable. As hard skills shift to AI, soft skills sharpen.
What We’ve Seen at Connelly Partners
On the final day, I had the opportunity to present our own experience making OOH work under real budget pressure. For the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, a strategy built around physical frequency and emotional connection drove significant increases in ticket sales both in the immediate launch window and year-over-year. The lesson: OOH performs best when treated as an accountable lower-funnel anchor and omnichannel multiplier, not a standalone awareness play.
The Road Ahead
OOH is at an inflection point. The creative case has always been strong. What’s catching up now is the data, and with it, the opportunity to reframe how OOH is planned and measured. Audience precision, category-level thinking, dynamic creative, and incrementality-focused measurement are the levers that will bring the medium back. The planners who build around those principles will be the ones defining what OOH looks like in 2031.
When Smaller Budgets Ask the Biggest Questions
Michelle Capasso, Partner & Chief Media Officer
I recently moderated a roundtable titled “The Role of OOH in Budget-Conscious Media Strategies” at the MediaPost OOH Insider Summit in Nashville. The premise was practical: how do you justify and maximize out-of-home when budgets are tight and every channel is fighting for the same budget?
While the large group started with that thought, where we ended up became something more interesting.
Within the first few minutes, the conversation moved past tactics. Formats, geography, dayparting. We landed pretty quickly on something nobody had explicitly come to discuss – are we at risk of optimizing OOH into irrelevance?
The pressure is understandable. When budgets compress, every channel gets scrutinized. And OOH has always had a measurement problem relative to digital. No click, no cookie, no clean attribution path. So the natural response is to reach for programmatic buying, efficiency metrics, and CPM comparisons that make OOH look defensible in a media plan. My colleague, Abby Sullivan, called it the digital media security blanket in her presentation, and it’s a real thing. As an industry, it can be too easy to default to what is readily measurable, even when that measurement isn’t the whole story.
And that’s when the roundtable got really interesting. The same moves that make OOH easier to defend on paper also strip out the context, physical presence, and creative intentionality that make it work. You can buy OOH like a digital impression. The question the room kept circling was whether you should.
You could see this identity shift playing out in the summit itself. The partners in attendance looked noticeably different from even a few years ago. Programmatic partners, custom digital display vendors, audience buying platforms, and measurement companies sitting alongside the traditional OOH operators. That diversity is a good thing. It signals a category opening up to more advertisers, more budgets, and more use cases than the traditional billboard buy ever could. But it also accelerates the tension. The more OOH looks and trades like digital, the harder it becomes to preserve what makes it distinct: the physical scale, the environmental context, the presence that no algorithm can fully replicate.
OOH earns its impact by showing up in the real world in a way digital can’t. A bus wrap on a commuter route isn’t competing with a display ad for attention. It’s doing something different entirely. When you reduce it to a CPM and optimize accordingly, you’re not really buying OOH anymore. You’re buying a version of it that will underperform and confirm every skeptic’s priors.
The accountability conversation that came up in the roundtable wasn’t really about measurement tools. It was about making the case for what OOH actually does, and what role it plays in your media plan.
The tension in that room isn’t going away. Budget pressure is real and the demand for accountability is fair. But the answer isn’t to make OOH behave like digital. It’s to measure what OOH actually moves: awareness, recall, physical confidence, bottom-funnel lift. And build the case from there.
The channel doesn’t need to justify itself by becoming something it isn’t. It needs better advocates for what it already is.
How Extreme Athletic Agony Explains Everyday Brand Obsession
Nick Cronk, Co Managing Director, CP West
When it comes to athletic endurance, I’m fascinated by what humans are capable of.
Specifically, their ability to push through significant suffering and absolute misery in the pursuit of remarkable physical feats.
British endurance swimmer Ross Edgley has swum around the UK (without touching land) and Iceland, during which he suffered such extreme chafing to expose raw flesh, Lion’s Mane and Bluefire jellyfish stings, and a decomposing tongue from all the salt water. Ultra-runners Courtney Dauwalter and Jasmin Paris have set countless long-distance running records (including breaking those previously held by men) pushing through severe hallucinations caused from sleep deprivation and brutal physical punishment (Courtney hospitalized herself in 2020 following a FKT attempt on the Colorado Trail). And climber Kevin Jorgeson was having to superglue the skin together on his fingers during a 19-day ascent of The Dawn Wall.
And while perhaps not as extreme as these examples, many of us have experienced what it’s like to push through our own physical comfort levels, whether that’s a running a 10k or a marathon, a sprint or full distance triathlon, or some other random endeavour (I’m signed up to for an “Everesting” mountain race this summer).
The question I keep coming back to is: what part of our soul pushes us to endure such discomfort, and go to such extremes, in the pursuit of these crazy goals?
It’s not as if fame and fortune are the drivers for the athletes in these obscure sporting worlds – the financial gain and notoriety are simply not comparable to the likes of what mainstream sport athletes see. Similarly, in the amateur world, not only will the majority of us will never see a podium or prize money, but we’ll actually spend thousands on race fees, coaches, apparel, nutrition, physio, fitness trackers, footwear, and everything in between.
The answer matters, because it’s the force that dictates how we interact with the world as consumers.
If we market strictly to the brain, we miss the point entirely. Logic alone can’t explain why an amateur athlete will happily sacrifice sleep, spend thousands of dollars, and push through physical agony just to cross an arbitrary finish line. They aren’t buying products; they are funding a belief system.
For CMOs, the lesson is clear: if you want to change consumer behavior, you have to look past the transaction and look at the transformation.
At Connelly Partners, this is our north star. We know that in a world full of noise, you can’t just ask people to take action. We move customers’ feet, by first moving their souls. Because when a brand taps into the deep, irrational emotions that drive human behavior, they don’t just win a customer. They build an obsession.
How Helping a Stranger Moved My Soul
Courtney Marlow, Social Media & Influencer Marketing Supervisor
We’re taught from a young age that helping a stranger is a selfless act meant to benefit the other person. It’s framed as a one-way street of generosity. But after my own experience, I’d argue the opposite: helping a stranger can move your soul just as much as (if not more than) the person you’re helping.
When I was strolling through campus in college, I signed up for the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) registry and like most people, I never actually expected to be selected. Statistically, only about 1 in 430 members ever go on to donate, so I forgot about the swab almost as soon as I walked away from the table.
From Swab to Soul-Moving
Years later, I got the call. My first thought was that it was a scam. I was skeptical enough that they actually had to FedEx me a physical letter and call my mom (ha!) before I realized it was the real deal. Then came the disbelief. I was the only perfect match for a stranger fighting Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and suddenly, I was preparing to do a stem cell donation. That tiny statistical chance had become my reality.

The “Giving” Paradox
While it might seem like I was the one “giving” in this situation, I can honestly say that the experience moved my soul in a way I wasn’t prepared for. It’s hard to articulate the weight of being handed the opportunity to give someone else hope. You go into it thinking you’re performing a service, but you come out of it with a shifted perspective on the weight of a single life, regardless of whether they’re a stranger or loved one.
A Two-Way Street
In the crazy, fast-paced world we live in, it’s easy to get caught up in our own bubbles, like our own schedules, goals, and close circles of friends. But this experience is a great reminder that Moving Souls isn’t just a tagline we use at work; it’s a human practice.
I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Looking back, it really shifted my perspective on generosity and reminded me to prioritize infusing it into my daily life more often. You never know when a friendly smile, a donation, or a helping hand could make a huge difference. And let’s face it, there are moments in all of our lives when we’re the “stranger” in need.
And if I’ve successfully moved your soul today, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to sign up here to get on the registry list 🙂

A Month Abroad: What I Learned
Abby Versaggi, Programmatic Media Specialist
Like many others around my age, I did not go abroad in college due to COVID. A part of me always wondered what the experience would have been like as everyone had always said you most likely only get to experience it once in your life, and how special it was for them.
Well somehow I got lucky enough to work at a company that offers an abroad program, so it all worked out!
Wanting to maximize this opportunity, I first headed to Zermatt, Switzerland to get in 5 days of skiing in one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen. The constant fresh air and wide open mountain views of the Matterhorn were the perfect reminder of the importance of slowing down and being fully present in a way that’s hard to find in our fast-paced world.

After taking my checked bag, carry-on, personal item, ski bag, and boot bag on 3 trains back to Zurich during rush hour, I flew to Dublin to get ready for my month working abroad. Despite everyone’s horrified look when I told them I was staying in Temple Bar, it was the perfect place to be fully in the mix for the month.
The first thing I learned in Dublin was how genuine and friendly the Irish people are, and how excited they were to share their culture with me (and how excited they were to hear I lived in Southie). I quickly adjusted to my new home for the month and settled into my routine of going to the CP Dublin office, located in a beautiful area of the city. I felt incredibly welcomed by my coworkers, who I had only ever interacted with online. I learned so much from them, from new words to the places I had to visit. I also was pleasantly surprised when they told me they all eat lunch together in the kitchen every day.
Despite the crazy weather, I checked off a bucket list item of golfing in Ireland, embarked on amazing cliff walks, went on the duck boat adjacent – the Viking Splash tour, and of course drank a lot of Guinness. I was also lucky enough to have many of my friends and family come visit which really allowed me to play tour guide and share the experience with them.
I was also able to read a bit of James Joyce’s Ulysses with PJ Murphy, who runs Sweny’s Pharmacy, the famous shop featured in the book. In addition to having read the novel over 80 times, PJ speaks 10 languages, and is a descendant of the famous Oscar Wilde. I somehow ran into him again at a pub later that day and ended up having a drink with him. If that doesn’t prove how welcoming and friendly people in Ireland are!
Living and working abroad gave me a new sense of independence that I had never experienced before. Having never lived on my own, let alone in a completely different country, navigating daily life in an unfamiliar environment pushed me outside of my comfort zone and challenged me to rely on myself in ways I never had before.
This experience was also a great reminder that the paths we think we missed are simply waiting to meet us later, in a way that feels even more aligned. Allowing myself to tailor my time abroad around what mattered most to me helped me build even more authentic, meaningful connections that I’ll continue to carry with me throughout my life.

More Than Just a Commute
Introducing “Transport for Your Spare Time”
The workday is done, the school gates are closed, and the weekend is calling. At Connelly Partners, we’ve always known that public transport is the backbone of the daily grind. But when the National Transport Authority (NTA) challenged us to increase off-peak usage, we saw an opportunity to change the narrative.

Reclaim Evenings and Weekend
Most people view public transport as “utility” tools, something you have to take to get to work or school. Our goal was to flip that script. We wanted to position Transport for Ireland (TFI) not just as a commuter service, but as an enabler of Irish social life.
The creative centers on the moments we live for: taking the DART to go dancing with friends, the TFI Local Link to GAA training, the Bus to the bingo hall, and the Luas for leisure at the local pool. By highlighting these specific, relatable Irish pastimes, we shifted the focus from the destination to the experience.
We leaned into high-energy visuals and a bright, summer-ready palette. We didn’t want static scenes; we wanted movement. To capture that energy, we worked with the dynamic crew at Bad Coyote to film all eight campaign scenes in a single, high-octane day.
The campaign is currently live across Ireland, spanning a heavy digital presence on YouTube and social channels, supported by OOH (Out of Home) rollout. As we head into summer, we’re proud to help TFI show Ireland that the network is there for more than just the commute; it’s there for your spare time.
When a Soul Is Moved, All Is Forgiven
Will Burns, Chief Growth Officer
In today’s complex, overstimulated, multimedia world, it’s not enough to be “convincing” and expect your audience to act. We believe the only way to move people’s feet—the tangible actions like visits, signups, and loyalty—is to move their souls first. Everything we do at Connelly Partners is designed accordingly. What you may not know is that there is a seriously powerful fringe benefit for a brand when it successfully moves souls. That is, immunization from harm.
Let me give you an exaggerated example. When I was 3 years old I was moved by the Beatles song, “Hey Jude.” Believe it or not, I still remember the day my older brothers summoned me and put the headphones on me and said, “Listen to this.” I did and I was transformed.
I would sing it while rocking on my rocking horse with my cowboy hat on. Seriously, there’s a picture. I became obsessed with the song, then obsessed with the Beatles in general. It was a profound “branding” experience for me. The Beatles moved my soul and that moved my feet, listening to more records, identifying new favorites, buying posters, you name it.
But you know what else it did? It immunized my favorite Beatle, Paul McCartney, from his many lame albums post-Beatles. I was able to suffer through the albums “Wildlife,” “Give My Regards To Broadstreet,” and “Pipes Of Peace,” because my soul was already moved to such a degree. This is not to say Paul didn’t have any good albums, he did. “Band On The Run,” “Back To The Egg,” and “Ram” were classics. But my point is, I was able to endure the flops because once a soul is moved, there’s no turning back.

That’s a personal story, but there are plenty in the marketing space. Remember that wonderful “Think Different” campaign from Apple way back when? Here’s the genius “Here’s To The Crazy Ones” TV spot that Chiat Day created that highlighted all the “crazy ones” from humanity’s past. Apple planting a flag firmly into rebel territory and this beautiful spot truly moved souls. But what’s ironic about this spot is the timing. It came out just after Steve Jobs returned to save the company he started and you know what? The Apple product assortment had become a disaster while he was out. And Jobs, in his infinite wisdom, must have known that in order to retain any of the remaining Apple fans, he’d need to avoid product and instead move souls.
And boy did he.
That one spot, I’d argue, immunized Apple from certain negative perceptions about the products to extremely positive perceptions about its brand. Forgiveness was the result, and in abundance.
More recently, look at Patagonia. I’d wager they could come out with a new line of flawed jackets that fall apart after one wear and it would only start a trend for disposable jackets. Patagonia has moved souls to such a degree with their commitment to environmental well-being that it would take a lot of flops to tarnish the brand in any significant way.
So we as marketers could continue to try convincing the world that this product or this feature is better than that product or that feature. Or we can set our sites higher and try to move souls. That’s our mission.
Because, heck, moving souls not only immunizes brands. You might say it takes a sad song and makes it better.
The Gift of Time: Outsourcing Influencer Management is Essential for Today’s Brands
Neal Malone, Director of Social Media, Influencer Marketing, and PR
For most people, hiring a house cleaner doesn’t feel right. Why would you pay someone a few hundred bucks every few weeks to complete the household tasks that you can do yourself? It’s an age-old question.
But then, life happens. The job becomes more demanding, the weekends get swallowed up by events and activities, and that full basket of laundry has been sitting at the bottom of the stairs for a week.
Suddenly, outsourcing these tasks doesn’t seem so crazy anymore. People begin to realize that if they want to focus on their true priorities, hiring a house cleaner is an easy remedy. After all, it’s really time that they’re after—and time has significant value.
You know what influencer marketing is? It’s a big, messy house that takes hours and hours to clean. And sure, brands can do it themselves without help from an outside agency—but at what cost? To truly maximize your investment in influencer partnerships, it takes time. So much time. I know this because my job is to absorb all that labor-intensive influencer work from clients so that they don’t have to remain in the weeds.
Hiring an agency like Connelly Partners to build and manage your influencer program is giving yourself the gift of time—and in turn, the ability to focus on other business priorities. Just like a house cleaner, our influencer expertise has a price tag, but brands are actively looking for ways to get internal hours back. And quite frankly, they’ve started to realize that the house sparkles that much more when you leave it to the professionals.
Ok, so you’ve decided to hire an agency to run your brand’s influencer program. Now what?
There are tons of influencer SaaS platforms and influencer-only agencies out there—and they’ll all sell you on access to a database of millions of influencers and a managed service offering. This type of big-box influencer assistance can totally work for large, established brands that are activating partners at massive scale. But for most other brands, a more hands-on approach is required. Budgets aren’t endless, campaigns are more niche, and brand awareness hasn’t even come close to reaching its peak, making it absolutely critical to find the right influencer partners.
That right there, folks, is what makes Connelly Partners’ dedicated influencer practice different.
Everything we do is customized to the client’s needs and goals, every influencer partner search is unique and based entirely on the campaign brief, and the team takes on every step of the process—from writing the brief and contracting influencers to shaping the content deliverables and measuring performance. Plus, as an integrated agency, our influencer programs are seamlessly weaved into paid social campaigns and measurement strategies, ensuring that the content is reaching target audiences and tracking towards all of the brand’s core KPIs.
That house cleaner is sounding a lot better now, isn’t it? Just do us a favor, though—when you go to make your agency hire, do your research. Don’t just look for the biggest name. Find someone who is actually going to dust the top half of the blinds and pull out the chairs when they vacuum. That’s what we do.