Bose Hires VaynerMedia as Global Brand Agency

VaynerMedia has been focused on expanding its global footprint and building linear buying expertise. This April, Bose wrapped up four multi-month reviews spanning brand, performance, analytics and public relations, culminating in the appointment of VaynerMedia as its global brand agency of record. It's a momentous win for the agency, and one of the largest assignments VaynerMedia's London office will execute to date. Indie media agency PMG, which received Adweek's Breakthrough Agency of the Year award in 2021 before VaynerMedia received the same award in 2022, won the performance media review. Global market research agency Ipsos and Hill+Knowlton secured Bose's analytics and business accounts, respectively. WPP previously managed media placement for the company. Bose relied on numerous specialty agencies and its in-house team to manage other marketing initiatives. CMO Jim Mollica declined to name other agencies he had invited to the review, or to specify Bose's account size. However, Mollica did reveal his media budget breakdown: Brand media investments make up about 70% of the pie, with the remaining 30% allocated to performance media. Ogilvy Wins Global Creative Duties for Jameson Today's advertising focuses too much on creating interruptive messages and inserting them into consumers' social feeds, Mollica told Adweek, noting that he's pursuing a data-informed creative planning strategy that eschews large upfront investments in favor of more strategic buys. "We're going to continue to control that mid-funnel relevance engine and expand the [global] relationship into upper funnel and linear video buying," John Terrana, VaynerMedia's chief media officer, told Adweek. VaynerMedia's test-and-learn approach Deep partnerships between in-house teams and agencies are becoming more common for VaynerMedia. Bose relies on VaynerMedia to advise its internal creative team and third-party production partners on which creative and thematic elements to focus on. This tight collaboration makes marketing operations more efficient. Bose's internal team may shoot footage for large above-the-line activations, but Terrana and his team can ask that team to capture footage that is most likely to perform across the channels VaynerMedia manages. "We're creating content pieces, like a publisher, to help convey this pride, love, passion and joy around music," Mollica told Adweek. "In order to do that, you have to have a partner that understands how to create content in an engaging, compelling way on each one of those platforms." Taking on linear investments During the pitch, VaynerMedia showcased a novel approach to linear TV buying that impressed Mollica. "This may just be a sign of the times, but there's a little bit of softness in the linear upfront model right now," said Mollica. "The other thing that people don't talk about is the way that [large media agencies] get those advantages, is they buy a chunk and then distribute it out to the client. It's a bit of a conflict of interest. ... I don't always know that that's in my best interest," he added. VaynerMedia takes a different approach than the large holding companies. It views linear investment strategies the same way it views video strategy across social platforms. The team hopes a more targeted approach to linear planning is likelier to drive results than broad upfront investments. "Expanding with Bose is the exclamation point on what's been 18 months of really deep, hard work [on linear strategy]," Terrana said. Last year, VaynerMedia wasn't buying any linear. Now, it comprises about 7% of the agency's annual investments. Breaking through with Bose Bose's RFP asked agencies to demonstrate how they'd impact the bottom line of Bose's DTC and in-store purchase journeys alike. VaynerMedia was primed for success. In 2021, Mollica assigned the agency a mid-funnel DTC expansion project. At the time, he was so convinced of the agency's effectiveness that he used a discretionary budget to fund the 2021 project, despite his existing contract with WPP. For Breakthrough Media Agency of the Year VaynerMedia, Convergence Fuels Success Leading up to the review in late 2022, Mollica offered more assignments to VaynerMedia. The work spanned content creation, TikTok strategy and planning and VaynerSports activations. Every week, VaynerMedia produced as many as 100 creative social assets against as many as 15 different audiences, and focused on getting those assets into market fast. Terrana recalled some campaigns coming together in as little as three business days. This work served as VaynerMedia's proof of concept during the pitch, and supported its win. Integrated media and creative scopes, like the Bose's, are VaynerMedia's "favorite type," Terrana told Adweek. "Give us that and give us six, nine, 12 months–whatever it is. At the end of that, what we will know objectively is: Does our model prove success, and does it drive your bottom line?"