Conor Sullivan
Fractional CMO & Media Strategist for businesses
that want to grow without guessing.
I've planned and bought media for some of the largest brands in the country, built paid search programs from scratch, and managed millions in ad spend across every major platform. Now I do it for businesses where I can see the impact firsthand — and where every dollar has to work.
Three ways to work together.
Every engagement is different, but they tend to fall into one of these categories. If you're not sure which fits, reach out and we'll figure it out.
I built marketing machines for billion-dollar brands.
Then I watched private equity break the model.
I spent five years at Mindshare, one of the largest media agencies in the world. I started in client finance, auditing and reconciling hundreds of millions of dollars in digital media delivery for BBVA, General Mills, Tyson Foods, Kimberly-Clark, and others. Then I moved to the Nestlé account, where I spent the next four years — aggregating cross-brand media budgets for leadership, building the competitive reporting infrastructure, planning full-funnel media for more than a dozen Purina brands from Fancy Feast to Dog Chow, and eventually running paid search across the portfolio.
When I moved back to Minneapolis, I took that experience and applied it to lead generation — specifically, high-ticket home services. At Hook Agency, I built the paid search department from nothing into the most profitable service line at the company, generating over $100,000 a month in retainer revenue in under a year. Conversion tracking, attribution, bidding on actual outcomes instead of impressions — strategies most agencies in the space hadn't adopted yet.
Then I went to CAMP Digital, where I ran paid media for roughly 40 home services accounts under Sila Services — a Goldman Sachs-backed consolidator. Over $3 million a month in ad spend across electrical, plumbing, and HVAC companies, averaging better than 8x ROAS. Individual businesses routinely added $3 to $5 million in annual revenue within their first year.
That's also where I saw something that changed how I think about this industry. Inside a private equity consolidator, I watched the companies they acquired begin to monopolize local search results across the country. In some markets, a consumer searching "plumber near me" would see what looked like five or six different companies. In reality, four of them routed to the same call center. Same owner. Same fund. Different yard signs.
I started Sullivan Brothers to bring enterprise-grade media strategy to the businesses competing against that machine — independently-owned operators who don't have a war chest but still deserve marketing that actually makes sense.
Embedded, not outsourced.
Sullivan Brothers currently works with a small roster of clients across home services, luxury consumer goods, real estate, and transportation. Engagements range from salaried CMO roles with full P&L involvement to monthly retainers and targeted project work. Total media under management exceeds $1 million annually.
What ties the work together is the model: I don't send reports from a distance. I sit inside the business. That means I'm not just planning and buying media — I'm integrating CRM data with ad platforms for closed-loop attribution, building dashboards leadership actually uses, coordinating creative production across agencies, implementing AI tools for customer operations, and getting pulled into pricing, sales process, and growth strategy because that's where the real leverage is.
Across current clients, the work has included full omnichannel campaign planning and buying (TV, radio, print, cinema, digital), Google Ads, Meta, and LSA management, conversion tracking infrastructure, competitive positioning and brand strategy, and creative direction from brief through production. The common thread is that every engagement ends up broader than the original scope — because when someone's embedded and paying attention, the opportunities to create value don't stop at the media plan.
The long version.
Finance degree. Data minor. Early start.
Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta Ads, The Trade Desk, Google DV360, Google Analytics, Looker Studio, Power BI, ServiceTitan, CallRail, MediaOcean, MediaTools, ComScore, Kantar, Avoca AI, HubSpot, Zapier
Daily user of Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini for research, analysis, and content production.
Everything I know about showing up and solving problems for people started well before a media agency.
Sullivan Brothers is Conor and Owen.
The company is named for me and my brother Owen. Owen is VP of Analytics at 4MATIV — also a Sullivan Brothers client — with a math degree and serious coding ability. He's the other brain in the operation: the person I bring in when a problem is more analytical or technical than it is strategic. Different wiring, complementary instincts.
Sullivan Brothers is primarily my practice today, but the ambition has always been to build something we run together. That's where this is headed.
Let's talk about what you're up against.
Whether you need a full marketing leader or a second opinion on your media plan, I'd rather have the conversation than not.
Start a Conversation