When Expressway asked us to announce their new fleet, the objective was clear: move beyond the traditional “‌new vehicle” specs and focus on the human experience. While the technical upgrades, like 5G connectivity, integrated power, and ergonomic design are impressive, Expressway’s true value lies in what they enable the passenger to achieve.

Our creative strategy centered on the idea that travel time shouldn’t be “dead time.” Whether you are a professional, a student, or a holidaymaker, the new fleet provides a bespoke environment tailored to your needs.

Rather than a standard gallery of bus photos, we developed the “Editions” concept. This series of visuals transforms the coach interior into specialized zones: a personal boardroom, a private cinema, a quiet library, and a pre-flight lounge. By highlighting features like “Infinite Battery” and “Buffer-Free Premieres,” we shifted the narrative from the mechanics of the journey to the quality of the time spent on board.

The visual language of the campaign uses cinematic lighting and bold, 3D typography to signal a new era for the brand. We wanted the assets to feel premium and modern, reflecting the significant investment Expressway has made in passenger comfort.

With a focus on total personalisation, we’ve positioned Expressway as a lifestyle enabler rather than just a transport provider. We are proud to have partnered with them on this launch, helping to redefine what it means to travel by coach.

Maya Menon Freeman, Brand Strategist

For Connelly Partner’s most recent Women’s Networking Event, I moderated an incredibly thoughtful, candid panel of young professionals.

– Liliana Amato (Development Assistant, GBH)
– Kaitlin Curtis (Manager, Accounts, NEXT GEN·TEAM)
– Alexa Maddi (Former Content Writer, Amazon)
– Shruthi Krishnan (Copywriter, Education First)
– Jeanie Thompson (Associate Manager of Client Partnerships, Impact Media)
– Emily Farrell (Senior Marketing Associate, Brand, Gorton’s Seafood)

The intention was simple: create space for unfiltered perspectives that challenge generational assumptions. We got a look inside what moves Gen Z’s souls, and ultimately moves their feet to purchase. Here are the takeaways that have stayed with me:

Gen Z’s Favorite Brands Go Beyond Affinity

When panelists shared their favorite brands, the common thread wasn’t aesthetics or product quality, it was deep investment in their customer base. Gap felt like it was “talking with Gen Z, not talking at us,” and Guinness stood out for consistently giving back to its community. Topicals earned praise for formulating skincare “with melanated skin in mind first” and constantly improving from consumer feedback.

Gen Z doesn’t just want to buy from brands, they want to feel valued by them. This requires intentional effort to understand consumer mindsets, because when brands move people on a deeply human level, action naturally follows.

Authenticity Isn’t Dead, it’s the Litmus Test

This sparked one of the most nuanced debates of the evening: On one hand, there’s fatigue around recycled trends that has made authenticity feel hollow. But the counterpoint was sharper: Authenticity isn’t disappearing, it’s getting harder to fake. “Trying to be authentic is literally the opposite of authenticity,” one panelist noted, emphasizing how quickly Gen Z can detect when something feels manufactured.

The baseline isn’t performative relatability. It’s consistency, originality, and self-awareness.

Brands Need to Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk

Real trust comes from follow-through, and a brand’s refusal to engage with big issues means “you lose that human connection, and you’re not actually caring about the people that you’re making products for.” Whether it’s Topicals reformulating a serum based on feedback or brands protecting their workers, clear action supported by storytelling is what differentiates.

It’s important to note, subtlety can outperform spectacle. Brands like Patagonia, who embed their values into operations, often feel more credible than those loudly shouting them. 

Fulfillment Is the Ultimate Goal

For Gen Z, fulfillment isn’t a luxury, it’s a requirement. This shows up both in how they consume and how they work. It lives “in the small activities…your morning coffee…your evening run.” One panelist shared that they left a stable corporate role because it conflicted with personal values, choosing instead to “actually connect with humans again and do something I love.”

While this is often seen as disengagement, in truth it is a practice in intentionality. In a world of constant information and instability, fulfillment becomes a form of control and acts as a north star.

Trust Gen Z to Lead the Conversation

If you want to reach Gen Z, involve them meaningfully. “Don’t just have us present, have us involved entirely from start to finish.” Representation without influence is easy to spot, and campaigns can easily fail when Gen Z doesn’t have a seat at the table. 

Young people are increasingly undervalued in AI-driven environments, but to create work that resonates, you have to trust their voices. “Pick our brains…that’s why we’re there. If you want our fresh perspectives, just ask.”

Across different perspectives, it’s clear: Gen Z isn’t looking to be convinced, they want to be seen. They’re active participants who are quick to question, quicker to disengage, and determined to shape what comes next. By understanding what moves their souls, whether it’s authenticity, fulfillment, or trust, we can define the catalysts that truly move Gen Z’s feet.

Check out a clip from the event below!

Jane Amendolara, Sr. Public Relations, Social Media, & Influencer Marketing Manager

There’s no secret sauce to brand success, but there was a time when polished content was the gold standard. Perfectly staged shots, 100% branded messaging, and scripted lines were how brands proved they were “serious.” Scroll through a Gen Z social feed today, though, and that level of polish often reads as stiff, distant, or … try-hard.

It’s not a sudden change. Social-first platforms have steadily nudged audience expectations toward a more unpolished, authentic style. While polish still has a time and place across the broader marketing mix, what was quietly emerging is now unmistakable in 2026: on social, relatability beats perfection every time.

Welcome to the era of the unpolished brand, where scrappy is the new serious.

Gen Z grew up online. They know what “real” content looks like because they make it themselves in minutes. They can spot a scripted or overproduced video in half a second. It’s not about production quality; it’s about authenticity. Overly polished content can make a brand feel like it’s managing perception rather than participating in culture. And participation? That’s what Gen Z actually values.

TikTok didn’t just change the look of content. Over the last several years, it’s changed the feel of it. Brands aren’t just competing with other brands anymore; they’re competing with a five-second meme, a chaotic storytime, or a random relatable comment that somehow lands perfectly. The algorithm rewards resonance, relatability, and timing. Not polish.

All of this means it’s time to rethink the brand book. Social-first brands need a new layer of guardrails that let teams move fast, lean into humor, respond in real time, and flex with trends. It’s not chaos. It’s strategic looseness, where the post is only the start. That’s because real engagement happens when a brand participates by joking along, acknowledging feedback, or even using the comment section as creative inspiration for future content. Huge brands like Dunkin’, for example, do this all the time, by sharing memes and posts that look like a five-year-old could have created them on an iPad. That’s how brands become relatable; they lean into the joke to build a real connection.

Scrappy content doesn’t mean you’re being lazy. Done right, it signals confidence: “We get the platform. We trust our team. We’re here to participate, take risks, and show up in unexpected ways.” When a brand intentionally lets go of perfection, the payoff isn’t just likes or shares. It’s cultural relevance.

We’ve just launched a new integrated campaign with ESB Networks to help the Irish people better understand a vital but often technical topic, Demand Side Flexibility. This is the idea that when we use electricity matters, and by making the most of off-peak times, we can all take a little pressure off the electricity network.

Rather than relying on industry jargon, the campaign boils it down to a simple, human truth: It’s simply a matter of time. Highlighting that by shifting high-energy tasks to off-peak hours, like checking the time before putting on a wash or charging an EV, consumers can collectively take the pressure off the national electricity network.

The creative platform uses a distinct split-screen format to demonstrate how these small, mindful changes fit seamlessly into daily life. To ensure the message reached every corner of the country, the agency developed three bespoke executions tailored specifically for Home, Farms, and Businesses.

“Demand Side Flexibility is a complex concept, but the solution is actually very human and simple. Our goal was to show that by making small, simple changes in our routines, we can all have a major impact on the grid. And we used a split-screen device to keep the message clear and distinctive across every format”

Sam Moorhead, Creative Director, Connelly Partners

The fully integrated campaign is live across VOD, OOH, DOOH, and Radio, supported by a comprehensive suite of social-first assets including 9:16, 4:5, and 1:1 formats.

Read more here.

We couldn’t let March pass without sharing some new basketball work—especially when it involves the great state of Connecticut. 

Our client, Liberty Bank, entered the NIL world with a big splash, partnering with Connecticut women’s hoops star Sarah Strong. The CP and Liberty Bank teams spent an early March afternoon with Sarah in New Britain, shooting a collection of social videos that have been rolling out as the big games have unfolded. 

The highlight, without question, was Sarah surprising the New Britain High School girls basketball team as they prepared for the state playoffs. Talk about a perfect fit for Liberty Bank’s #BeCommunityKind brand platform. 

Keep an eye out for more videos as Sarah and her teammates hit the home stretch!

Jen Hansen, Director of Analytics

Most CMOs are making million-dollar decisions based on fiction.

If your GA4 is showing “Unassigned” traffic, sampled data, or a disconnect between ROAS and bottom-line revenue, you don’t have a marketing problem—you have a data architecture problem. But on a deeper level, you have a connection issue: you can’t see if you’re actually reaching people.

The Reality: Your Tracking Is Leaking Revenue

The shift to GA4 left most brands with a “Frankenstein” setup: bloated Google Tag Manager (GTM) containers, duplicate triggers, and broken attribution paths. This isn’t just “messy data”—it’s a blind spot that hides where your customers are actually dropping off.

We recently audited a premier retailer with 900 million annual events. Their data was so noisy they couldn’t see that their final purchase step had a staggering 87% abandonment rate. Something was stopping customers in their tracks.

The Diagnostic Audit

You wouldn’t greenlight a $500k media spend based on a “hunch.” Why rely on a tracking setup you haven’t verified?

Our Analytics Audit is designed to transform raw data into Actionable Intelligence. We don’t just look for broken tags; we perform deep behavioral analysis to find the “Why” behind the “What”:

• The Promo Code Trap: We discovered that an open coupon box was “inviting” users to leave the checkout to find discounts, killing conversion.
• Mobile Friction: We identified unclickable UI elements on mobile—where 70% of their traffic lived—that were invisible in standard reports.
• Strategy Shifts: Our regression modeling proved that “Free Shipping” drove more revenue than category discounts, allowing the brand to pivot their entire promotional calendar toward what truly moves their audience.

Stop Guessing. Start Scaling.

Once we sanitized the data stream and stabilized the tracking architecture, the results were immediate. We didn’t just “fix the tracking”; we gave the brand a roadmap to recapture lost revenue and scale media spend with 100% confidence in their ROAS.

Your data is either your greatest asset or your biggest liability. It is the proof that your work is moving people forward. Before you spend another dollar on ads, let’s ensure you can actually track the return. Interested to see what we can do for you? Send us a note.

Abby Peterson, Creative Director/Brand Activation Specialist

There’s a specific feeling you get when a brand experience is done right. It feels less like marketing and more like discovery. 

At Connelly Partners, we know that moving feet to purchase requires moving souls first. Modern consumers don’t fall in love with brands because they are told to. They fall in love because of how a brand made them feel in a moment: seen, welcomed, surprised, connected.

So when we were tasked with the challenge to bring Gorton’s Seafood to a younger audience in a way that felt authentic and modern, we knew they needed to discover and experience the brand for themselves.

We believe Gorton’s isn’t in the frozen seafood business. It’s in the surprise and delight business.

We’ve had Gorton’s show up in unexpected places in consumers’ lives – whether in a new recipe, on the grill at a tailgate, or on an influencer’s sweatshirt from our merch store. 

But this time we needed to go bigger. 

So why not go where everything is bigger? …Texas.

Each March, hundreds of thousands of people descend on Austin for South by Southwest, featuring seven days of connection, discovery, and culture-shaping creativity. SXSW is best known for its conferences and festivals that celebrate the convergence of tech, film, music, education, and culture. It’s known as the place for discovering the next big thing.

“It’s been called a rite of passage, a whirlwind, and even a new world. But above all else, SXSW is a stage for storytellers, a platform for boundary-pushers, and a place where authenticity and innovation thrive.” – SPIN Magazine

With over 450 brands activating at the festival each year, it’s one of the hardest environments for a brand to stand out. Everyone is competing for the attention of a highly influential audience (one that is famously resistant to being sold to). To succeed here, brands must earn the attention, not demand it. 

To create that lasting impact, we couldn’t half-ass it. Flopping on a stage of this magnitude was not an option. If our event didn’t blow away our audience, they’d leave with a worse opinion of the brand. So we decided to host a massive party far from coastal New England Gloucester all the way in Austin, TX.

We brought Gorton’s Shrimp & Cocktail to life through a full branded house takeover on Rainey Street, creating an authentic slice of Gloucester infused with Austin’s energy. The home was wrapped in Gorton’s bold and iconic yellow, instantly recognizable from the street, while a massive ship’s wheel archway welcomed guests inside.

The visual design had to be clever and aesthetic enough to surprise our audience, leading to sharing the Gorton’s brand into the world as walking advocates. 

Signage and merch included things like shrimp being lassoed and lines like “Ahoy, cowboy!” and “This is, in fact, my first rodeo.” We carried the theme through every last detail, down to the “Buoys” and “Gulls” bathroom signs, and a menu of custom cocktails inspired by the New England brand. (Cape Ann Codder, anyone?)  

Every element of the event needed to foster that feeling of connection, community, and discovery that we know this younger audience craves. Up and coming bands played throughout the day in the front yard. Our Shrimp Shack served tacos, sliders, and shrimp samples paired with custom cocktails, while daily live cooking demonstrations from popular influencer @theShaySpence showcased how simple and modern the product could be. Each room offered a unique interactive moment. An analog photobooth encouraged guests to pin photos to the wall to create a living mosaic of the diverse community who experience the brand. A hands-on activity dispenser sparked spontaneous interaction between guests.

When an experience creates surprise, warmth, or connection, it stops being marketing and starts becoming a memory.

We had a line down the block all day, both days of the event. Beyond Texas we had millions of social impressions before, during, and after the event. Attendees didn’t just share content. They endorsed the brand, signaling to their own communities that Gorton’s is full of unexpected possibilities.

This was more than a branded activation. It was a cultural moment and a powerful step forward for a brand ready to evolve. We transformed a brand once seen as predictable and outdated to one that shows up in surprising and culturally relevant ways, on people’s plates and in their lives. 

That’s what it means to move souls in order to move feet.

Michele Hart-Henry, Managing Director, CP Health

Having recently returned from the annual health technology conference, ViVE, in Los Angeles, I would summarize the atmosphere as expensive and slightly confused. Between the sprawling, multi-space booths and the high-end giveaways, the investment in “the future of health” is staggering. 

Yet, walking the floor, I noticed a curious paradox: for all the capital being poured into the room, many players struggled to articulate exactly what they do for the people at the center of the ecosystem, or why they do it.

AI was, predictably, the oxygen of the conference. It was everywhere. But as I sat through sessions and navigated the show floor, it became clear to me that we are in danger of building a very expensive, sophisticated house without ever asking the residents who will live in it what they need.

We are obsessed with how to solve healthcare’s problems with AI, but I’m not sure which of healthcare’s myriad problems we’re addressing. At the same time, I fear we’re neglecting the who and the why.

Are we reducing stress and burnout in clinicians? Are we making it easier for health systems to accurately bill payers, or to plan for capacity issues? Are we making it less expensive to answer routine questions and phone inquiries? Are we making it quicker to find clinical trials? Are we connecting home devices to remote patient monitoring tools? The answer to all of these questions, and many others like them, is yes. That’s exactly why all of these companies come to conferences like ViVE or HIMSS. 

But why? Why are we doing this? And most importantly, for whom are we doing this? At Connelly Partners, we believe that if you start with humans at the center, their fears, their language, and their motivations, the technology finds its rightful place as a high-powered assistant.

The Inclusion Gap: About Them, Not With Them

One of my biggest takeaways from the week is that AI is currently being built in a vacuum. Most Large Language Models (LLMs) are trained on data written by clinicians and researchers. While that’s great for clinical accuracy, it creates a language divide. Clinicians and patients don’t speak the same language, nor do they share the same priorities.

We see this in the development process: too much AI is being created about the patient, but not with the patient. If we don’t include the consumer in the co-creation process, we risk building “solutions” that are technically brilliant but practically alienating. For example, ambient transcription is a godsend for reducing clinician burnout, and we should celebrate that, but are we sharing those insights with the patient? Are we using that technology to help the patient see the “whole picture” of their own health, or is it just another way to automate a back-office task?

The Data Silo Problem (Again)

It’s 2026, and we’re still talking about interoperability. Even within the same platforms, the mountains of data we’re collecting don’t always talk to each other.

More importantly, we are ignoring a goldmine of unstructured data. Patient-supplied notes, journals, and lived-experience observations often stay outside the system. Yet this “subjective” data is often the most vital context for healthcare, helping people live their most fulfilled lives. If AI can’t digest the patient’s voice alongside the clinician’s expertise, it isn’t really “intelligent.” It’s just a fast filing cabinet.

At the conference, I observed three divergent tracks of AI:

1. The Enterprise Track: Tools built for and by health systems to streamline operations, which were much more prevalent.
2. The Clinician Track: Tools intended to make it easier for practitioners to do their jobs while reducing administrative burden.
3. The Consumer Track: Tools patients use independently to increase their health literacy, the builders of which were clustered among the startups at the fringe aisles of the larger players.

The concerning point? These worlds aren’t harmonized. Dr. Google is dead; long live Dr. AI. Consumers are already using conversational AI as their first entry point into the health journey. They are turning to AI “companions” to explain their labs or symptoms before they ever call a doctor, or to translate what a doctor told them. If the healthcare system doesn’t keep up and find a way to bridge these tracks, the gap between “system-speak,” “clinician-speak,” and “patient-reality” will only widen.

Moving Toward “More Birthdays”

It wasn’t all tech for tech’s sake, though. There were moments of genuine clarity that reminded me why we do this work.

City of Hope, for example, shared how they are using AI to bring clinical trial opportunities directly to the bedside. By giving doctors the ability to find and recommend trials in the moment, they aren’t just “optimizing a workflow”—they are living up to their mission of providing “More Birthdays.”

The Architecture of Care: Tool vs. Foundation

It feels as though we are treating AI as if it is the healthcare system, when in reality, it should simply be the scaffolding that allows ALL humans in the system to function better. When we prioritize the “How” (the algorithm) over the “Who” (the patient and practitioner) and the “Why” (the outcome), we build a system that is technically efficient but emotionally bankrupt.

My take on all of this is simple: Technology should make the invisible visible. It should capture the patient’s whispered concerns in unstructured data, bridge the literacy gap between clinician-speak and care-delivery-reality, and automate the mundane so that the human connection can flourish.

More AI isn’t the answer. Thoughtfully designed, co-created tools are. AI should be used to eliminate the friction faced by ALL humans when navigating and operating in the healthcare world. Not just patients. Not just doctors. All humans. And as such, all humans (not just those charged with lowering costs) should be part of the discussion that identifies where the friction is and how AI can help.

After all, the most expensive booth in the world can’t buy the trust that comes from finally feeling seen, heard, and understood. That isn’t a tech problem; it’s a human one.

A new brand campaign for Shannon Airport puts two charming new brand assets at its heart, two little birds who take to the skies – and the screen – to show why Shannon Airport really is the best place to fly from.

Connelly Partners and Shannon Airport have continued their long standing relationship by launching a new brand campaign, “The Best Place to Fly From“. It’s built around two charming animated characters: Robin and Wren Murphy, a couple of well-travelled birds who know a thing or two about flying.

The campaign was born from a simple but very true insight – that Shannon Airport is such a pleasurable experience, even the most frequent flyers choose it. Friendly staff, handy parking, and seamless security make Shannon Airport a genuinely different airport experience. Robin and Wren bring that truth to life in a way that feels surprisingly human, and entirely relatable.

The pair appear across TVC, cinema, radio, OOH, and social, guiding audiences through the Shannon experience in an almost documentary style – warm, witty, and surprisingly relatable for two birds.

“Some of the most effective brand campaigns are built around characters – or fluent devices – people connect with. We knew that from the start, we just needed to find the right ones to capture what makes Shannon Airport so special. And when you experience it, it’s warm, it’s easy, it’s genuinely lovely. So Robin and Wren felt like the perfect way to bring that to life. 

Sam Moorhead, Creative Director, Connelly Partners

The fluent device is one of advertising’s most enduring and effective tools, giving brands a recurring character audiences grow to love and recognise over time. With Robin and Wren Murphy, Shannon Airport now has two little ambassadors with all the makings of true brand icons.“The Best Place to Fly From” is live now across TVC, VOD, cinema, radio, out-of-home, and across social media.

Additional Coverage:
AdWorld: Birds of a Feather Come Together for Shannon Airport Campaign from Connelly Partners

In an age defined by algorithms and automation, there’s still one thing no machine can replicate: the power to move the human soul.

Soul Movers is a series of short films that explores that rare, electric force behind the people who move us. From Grammy-nominated vocalists and famous chefs to magicians, dancers, and speechwriters, these are the humans who remind us what it means to feel something real.

Each film explores what defines us at Connelly Partners, and our core belief: If you want to move customers’ feet, you have to first move their souls.