Will Burns, Chief Growth Officer
For most of my career, I’ve been inside or alongside ad agencies of every shape and size. I’ve worked within them, led them, pitched for them, and in recent years, consulted with them — often on their approach to new business. And if there’s one claim I’ve heard more than any other, it’s this one: “We’re a full-service agency, all under one roof.”
Every agency says it. Every deck, every website, every pitch. And every time, it’s not quite true.
The “Full-Service” Myth
Even the most talented 20-person shops I’ve consulted with confidently call themselves full service, usually because they’ve built a tight core team and then outsource what they need when they need it. It’s not deceitful — it’s just how the industry evolved. You find great specialists, build relationships, and assemble capabilities to meet the client’s needs.
But to say it’s all under one roof? It never is. Not really.
That was my baseline assumption—until I met Connelly Partners.
How It Started
What began as a consulting engagement quickly turned into something else. My task was to immerse myself in the Connelly Partners business: understand how they see themselves, how they sell, how they deliver.
I went deep. Ten senior employee interviews. Five recent pitches. Five RFP responses. Countless hours on their site and blog. I wanted to see what made this place tick.
And somewhere along the way, a realization hit me: this wasn’t another agency claiming integration. This was the first agency I’ve seen that actually is integrated.
No Assembly Required
Connelly Partners is the rare agency that truly lives up to that “full service” claim. Advertising, brand strategy, media planning and buying, digital, influencer marketing, production, even in-house editing — all actually under one roof (well, several roofs, given our teams in Boston and Dublin).
When that hit me, so did the client benefit.
For the past decade, marketers have been assembling ecosystems of “specialist” agencies — one for social, one for influencer, one for digital, another for media. On paper, it sounds smart: best-in-breed expertise across every channel.
In practice, it’s chaos. Every specialist brings a narrow view of the brand and, understandably, an agenda to sell more of their niche. So the marketer becomes the integrator — trying to align competing priorities, maintain brand consistency, and assemble a unified plan out of mismatched parts.
It’s exhausting.
At CP, that problem doesn’t exist. No assembly required.
One agency. One brand understanding. One cohesive plan. We can shift strategy on a Tuesday and deploy a new mix on Wednesday. Because when all the disciplines live together, collaboration isn’t a talking point — it’s just how work happens.
The Soul of the Agency
Of course, great structure means nothing without great spirit. What drew me in even more than CP’s integration was its ethos: We move customers’ feet by first moving their souls.
That line hit me because it’s not just a brand statement — it’s a truth. Everything here is guided by empathy, curiosity, and creativity that’s designed to drive real business outcomes. Emotional intelligence meets commercial intelligence. And it works.
From Consultant to CGO
My time consulting with CP’s leadership team went better than either of us expected. We clicked — philosophically, strategically, culturally. I saw an agency with enormous potential. A true full-service shop that nobody was giving full credit to.
So when the opportunity came to join as a fractional Chief Growth Officer, the decision was easy. My job now is to make sure marketers discover what I’ve discovered — that Connelly Partners is the real thing.
No assembly required.