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Meet an Indie Agency: Venables Bell + Partners
February 3 @ 9:30 am – 10:00 am PST
Paul Venables has a message for exhausted CMOs.
“Send us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of marketers slaving over spreadsheets. We will free you from the hamster wheel of performance marketing and show you what real brand growth looks like.”
San Francisco, where Venables Bell + Partners has been independent for nearly 25 years. Paul launched in June 2001 with Will McGinness joining in 2010 and Brittni Hutchins building out the growth side over the past five years. They call it a “partnership pure play” because there are no shareholders, VCs, or holding companies getting in the way of doing right by people.
The model is senior-heavy by design. Smaller teams, faster decisions, match-to-match engagement across the table. They’ve kept clients like Chipotle for eight-plus years not by chasing efficiency metrics but by focusing on emotion and brand love.
But here’s the thing that stuck: Will talked about building confidence through a coaching mindset rather than operating like a “disapproving parent.” He traces it back to an art teacher named Sally Aldridge who believed in what he was doing. That snowball effect is what they’re trying to create for everyone who walks through the door.
25 years of surviving and thriving. From the dot-com bust to 9/11 to whatever’s next.
