Founded in 2017, SM&C partners exclusively with brands and people that we believe in. 

As a boutique agency, we are nimble and creative, while at the same time as veterans of large agencies and multinational publicly traded companies, we are rooted in the strategy, intellectual rigor, disciplined thinking and battle scars of big brands.

We understand the needs and pain points of clients, as our founder and other senior members of our team, worked on the client side of the agency/client relationship for many years before founding the agency.

Each of our account teams is comprised of a mix of talent to best meet the client’s goals. All teams are led by a senior executive. Our founder, Michelle, leads the strategy for every partnership.

We excel at earned, owned and paid media and we thrive on establishing or transforming brands in the hearts and minds of consumers. 

MEET MICHELLE

Her career in marketing communication started over 25 years ago working on Starbucks Coffee, Legal Seafoods and on several  non-profits such as The New England Aquarium. From 2000-2017 she worked in-house at The Boston Beer Company as its chief communications officer/head of marketing. During her tenure she worked closely with founder Jim Koch to launch the craft beer revolution via Samuel Adams and change the American beer landscape forever.

She also helped pioneer the multi-million-dollar hard seltzer category by overseeing the strategy and execution behind the launch of Truly Hard Seltzer. She conceived and managed the Company’s signature philanthropic initiative, Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream. She is an expert in driving strategic earned media, as well as owned and paid media.

She has launched national and international brands spanning more than two decades. She’s also been instrumental in developing highly successful, multi-million-dollar sponsorships across sports, music, movies and television. She has successfully passed legislation in Washington, DC and has worked to pass and defeat legislation in many states. She has extensive crisis communications experience including successfully managing national recalls and consumer boycotts.

OUR TEAM

We’ve already told you about Michelle’s 20+ year experience in the beverage industry and her history-making collaboration with Jim Koch and Samuel Adams. But here are some other fun facts about Michelle: she’s s fluent in the creation of tried and true paid media creative, social media, launching products and event planning. She’s also been instrumental in developing highly successful, multi-million-dollar brand sponsorships across sports, music, movies and television. She has worked tirelessly to pass and defeat legislation in many states and in Washington, DC. She has extensive crisis communications experience including successfully managing national recalls and consumer boycotts.

MEET THE TEAM AT SULLIVAN MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS

  • Sarina
    Sarina is based in New York City which allows her to foster relationships with national media that she has developed in her 20+ year career in PR. She is a veteran of big NYC agencies working at Deutsch, Hunter PR and Laforce + Stevens before joining our team. She has led local and national publicity for brands such as Snapple, Pfizer, TGIFriday’s, Samuel Adams and many technology clients.
  • Bianca
    Bianca began her career as a journalist, combining her passion for food and writing as a print and radio journalist covering the culinary world. After transitioning to a career in PR, Bianca worked with clients in the culinary space, such as Eataly, the Slow Food Movement, and with chefs, founders and consumer brands in the U.S. Hailing from Brazil, she is fluent in three languages. Bianca is a published cookbook author. She earned a Master’s in Strategic Communications from Boston University.
  • Skip
    Skip has over 20 years of marketing and communications experience and thrives on working to tie our clients brand strategies to consumer trends, desires and motivations. He is an expert at building integrated marketing campaigns, designing and implementing public relations, events, promotions, digital, social and sponsorships. His experience includes Samuel Adams, Krispy Kreme, Sprint, Comcast Sports Net, NBC and Fox Sports.
  • Sophia
    Sophia leads experiential marketing, events and brand activations for our clients. She tackles everything from small private events, large scale consumer-oriented activations and festivals, pop-up experiences and corporate outings and meetings. She previously worked at Hill Holliday in Boston specializing in retail and CPG event marketing. She is active in Boston’s art scene and an active supporter of The Greater Boston Food Bank.
  • Jessica
    Jessica is an account coordinator and likes to bring a creative approach to her work. Having worked on multiple accounts for other agencies and companies in a variety of industries, she loves to bring a fresh take wherever she goes. Her background is in public relations, marketing, event planning and digital marketing. Jessica is looking to sharpen her skills and broaden her public relations expertise at SM&C.
  • Bill
    Bill has over 25 years of Management experience in a wide variety of industries.  He has worked in Advertising, Sales, Custom Software Development, Payroll/HR, Insurance and Finance.  Along with Business Operations, Bill is responsible for the agency’s business development.
  • Victoria
    Victoria started her time at SM&C as an intern in 2019. Her past professional experience includes work at NBC Sports Boston and Boston Magazine. She loves brainstorming creative new ideas for clients and watching them come to fruition.
  • Niharika
    Niharika's background comes from global agencies on brands such as Proctor and Gamble and Coca-Cola. Her passion is telling great brand stories by applying her strategy and consumer insight capabilities to take a cultural deep-dive for clients. She is an expert in building digital and social media content strategies that resonate with consumers by staying close to popular culture and emerging trends. She volunteers for causes that aid animals and childhood education including K9 Fields, Teach for India, and Dubai Cares.
  • Lauren
    Lauren is a key member of our media relations practice based on her  acumen for delivering on message, earned media coverage for a variety of clients. She began her career as a journalist on both the print and broadcast sides of news. She is skilled in brand storytelling, writing, editing, media training and message development.

CAPABILITIES

We believe that the best marketing campaigns are fully integrated across all of your consumer touchpoints. We can develop a fully-integrated marketing plan that we seamlessly execute for you.  Also, we can work in collaboration with your in-house team or alongside other agencies to implement your marketing activities.

Public Relations/Earned Media

Paid Media: Creative Development & Media Planning/Buying

Owned Media/Content Creation 

Social Media Strategy & Execution

Influencer Marketing

Brand Strategy

Cause Marketing & Philanthropy

Events/Experiential Marketing

Leadership & Founder Driven Message Development

Media Training

Crisis Communication Management

BRAND EXPERIENCE

From national ad campaigns to multi-million-dollar sponsorship deals to national publicity campaigns to social media programs across all platforms, Michelle and her team have made their mark on some of the CPG growth stories in the beverage category and beyond.

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HOW WE WORK

A WINNING COMMUNICATION AND MARKETING CAMPAIGN is a mix of strategy, creativity, pivotal relationships, and experience.

THE STRATEGY: Whenever possible we like to immerse ourselves and understand a client’s business and brand strategy as fully as possible before we kickoff an external communication campaign. We’d like to help identify what your brand owns or wants to build with key audiences and craft our messages accordingly. Our belief is that all marketing and communication should drive back to key messaging. Developing that messaging all starts with consumer insights. Analyzing data. Doing the homework around a brand, its competitors, and its target consumers. We hope to deeply understand the core of each client’s brand positioning and identify which emotional and rationale benefits they’d like to better communicate externally. The more we understand about a brand’s insights, competitive environment, and its customers the more effective we can be in crafting compelling messages across owned, earned, and paid media. We can immerse ourselves in existing background materials or help clients develop a meaningful brand positioning and strategic framework.

THE CONNECTION: Strategy is meaningless unless you can apply it to a creative marketing campaign that engages consumers on an emotional level and gives them a ringing call to action. At Sullivan we have a proven track record of creating marketing that moves the needle – drives awareness and trial, enhances brand image, and builds key associations and delivers ROI.

THE EXPERIENCE: One thing about experience – there’s no faking it. You either have it or you don’t. And our team has it in spades – with senior executives who’ve been in the field for decades and highly creative young talent. Over the years several of us have also worked on the client side of marketing and public relations, which puts us in a strong position to meet and anticipate our client’s needs. We’ve worked successfully in a variety of sectors including consumer products, retail, business to business, non-profit and sports marketing. Several members of the team began their career as journalists, which makes them adept at anticipating how to connect a client’s goals with the needs of the media. Many of our most important media contacts are journalists that we’ve worked with for decades. We’ve fostered those relationships by delivering newsworthy content on behalf of our clients again and again and treating the press as an important customer. Our job is to help reporters do their job well. We are adept at finding the important intersection between the content that our clients want to deliver about their brand and tying it to content that the media will be motivated to report upon.

HISTORY REPEATS. AND REPEATS.

THERE’S ONLY ONE THING BETTER than a history of launching successful brands – and that’s having history repeat itself. Again and again. Here are just a few examples of what we’re talking about:

TRULY
Since its launch, Truly is #1 vs. much larger international conglomerates and is 1.5% of total FMB volume in only 2 years. Michelle led each aspect of the brand’s creation-naming, packaging, product development and the strategy and implementation of its marketing.
FITMONEY
Amid the challenges that 2020 created, a challenging media climate, remote learning, and an unpredictable NFL season, we partnered with Fitmoney.org and New England Patriots linebacker Brandon Copeland to create around the importance of financial literacy. The collaboration encompasses virtual events and bringing a free financial literacy curriculum into schools. The only thing missing was awareness about the offerings and that’s where we joined the design and implement a championship publicity effort with national and local coverage across TV, radio, print, and digital.
FREEBIRD RIDES

In 2018 we helped launch this innovative ridesharing app in several test markets including Boston and Sacramento. Significant publicity helped the brand soar as we were able to secure great coverage on both coasts across all mediums.

SIERRA NEVADA – OCTOBERFEST
Harkening back to the very first Oktoberfest in 1801, a party to celebrate the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria and Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen, we conceptualized and implemented a 4 month-long campaign to crown Craft Beer’s Royal Couple and publicize Sierra Nevada’s 2019 Oktoberfest. The program generated tremendous social media engagement and publicity in multiple phases- when it was announced, when the winners were selected and around the wedding itself. The campaign earned more than $1 million in media value that got drinkers and the trade talking about Sierra during a competitive selling period, even as  sales of other seasonals declined.
SAM ADAMS: PROJECT GREENLIGHT

Along with fellow Bostonians Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, this partnership helped talented underdogs break into Hollywood. It helped Samuel Adams shine attention on the obstacles Jim faced as an underdog in its David vs. Goliath fight against big beer and then pay it forward to other talented amateurs looking for their big break.

SAM ADAMS: UTOPIAS
Pushed the boundaries of what brewing could achieve could be to defy the expectations of consumers and demand a place for beer alongside the world’s most noble beverages. It drove millions of dollars in publicity in places like Esquire and Food and Wine Magazine, many who had never before covered beer before.
SAM ADAMS: BREWING THE AMERICAN DREAM
A charitable program designed to help small business owners rise out of poverty by starting a food or beverage business. Boston Beer provides microloans and mentoring. By paying it forward to other small business owners, Samuel Adams builds a stronger emotional connection with charitably minded, younger drinkers.
TWISTED TEA
In only three years from 2014-2017, Michelle’s leadership around Twisted Tea’s integrated marketing campaign doubled volume. We developed marketing programs that were motivating to loyal, blue-collar males and millennials and gained share with both consumer targets. We earned the buy in and focus from wholesalers, national chain and mom and pop retailers at an unprecedented level.
SMUTTYNOSE BREWING COMPANY

We conducted focus groups with loyal drinkers and new, target consumers to identify the most compelling look and feel that built desired brand associations. Then through research, we validated that the design appealed to target and existing drinkers.

NIGHT SHIFT BREWING – LOVEJOY WHARF

In opening this new restaurant by the TD Garden we built and executed a media relations program that commanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in press coverage and earned a place among Boston’s Hottest New Restaurants via Boston Magazine and Eater. We lined up a free partnership with NBCSports where they broadcast live from the location during the Stanley Cup finals to keep momentum behind the buzz with Gen Z and sports fans alike.

PATIENT RIGHTS ADVOCATE

Would you buy a car, a gallon of milk, or go on a vacation without knowing the price upfront? Clearly not so why are patients expected to receive healthcare without the same right? The system, long controlled by lawyers and lobbyists who put profits over patients, was about to meet its match. Entrepreneur and longtime patient advocate Cynthia Fisher hired us to lead the communication effort to bring healthcare price transparency to all Americans. The result? Beginning in 2021 hospitals, followed by insurance companies in 2022, will have to show their real prices to American consumers. Shining the light on the social injustice that had become the status quo, effective communication, earned media and a compelling spokesperson was part of the winning strategy to transform the healthcare marketplace.

US IN ACTION