Chemistry Acquires Colossus In An Expansion to Boston, Which It Sees As Ripe For A Challenger
With its new acquisition of Colossus, Chemistry gains both a wealth of design expertise and a foothold in Boston.
Chemistry is acquiring advertising and design agency Colossus, giving the Atlanta-based agency a needed service capability and a foothold in Boston—a market its leaders believe is ready for a new challenger. Colossus’ three partners will become shareholders in Chemistry as part of the deal.
The Colossus brand will remain for the near term, and its team will establish Chemistry’s Boston presence alongside its existing offices in Atlanta, Miami, New York and Pittsburgh. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Chemistry, which took on a majority private equity investment in 2025, has 185 employees and $40 million in annual revenue, while Colossus has 20 employees and $6 million to $7 million in annual revenue, according to the agencies.
The deal adds to a growing contingent of independent agencies, including Saylor and gaming agency Mutiny, BarkleyOKRP, Giant Spoon and Burrell Communications, which have acquired or merged with other independent agencies in efforts to scale.
A long-standing relationship
Chemistry and Colossus’ relationship has roots that date back to long before acquisition talks began.
Colossus co-founder Travis Robertson, one of its executive creative directors, studied under Chemistry’s current Chief Creative Officer Chris Breen while he was teaching at Portfolio Center, said Taylor Guglielmo, Chemistry’s President. Robertson later interned at Breen’s agency, Breen Smith, before Chemistry acquired it in 2017.
The two agencies have worked on business together since Colossus launched six years ago, including recent joint pitches that won the shops PetSafe and Miller’s Ale House together.
Acquisition discussions began when Guglielmo asked whether Colossus could help with an earlier pitch for a client whom the agencies declined to identify.
“The short story is: Taylor was like, ‘You guys don’t have bandwidth to help on this pitch, do you?’ And Travis is like, ‘No, we’re running an agency … unless you want to buy us.’ And Taylor’s like, ‘Wait, are you serious?’” said Jon Balck, Colossus’ co-founder and managing director.
“That literally kicked this off,” he said.
A mixing of capabilities
The Colossus acquisition addresses Chemistry’s need for design expertise, said Ned Show, Chemistry’s CEO. Colossus’ clients include Adobe, Wellness Pet Company, Nobull, Politico, AthenaHealth and Kayem. Chemistry’s roster includes Netflix, Salesforce, American Home Shield, the NFL, Marriott and the Ad Council.
For Colossus, the deal provides capabilities that Balck said had previously limited its chances of winning business. “We almost never lost when it came to creative,” Balck said. “We’d lose on strategy. We’d lose on size. We’d lose on digital. We’d lose on analytics and data,” Balck said. “Now we walk in, and all of those objections are gone.”
Chemistry’s broader services include media, research and analytics, digital development, production, public relations and Hispanic marketing. Balck also cited access to Chemistry’s data and AI resources as a reason to join a larger business.
“The only way to stay in front of [the disruption from AI] is data. And in order to have data, you have to have scale,” he said. “We can’t do AI the way Chemistry can do AI.”
Guglielmo said Chemistry has been investing in tools and talent to build a proprietary data stack that helps forecast outcomes for clients. “It’s been a big build year for us—investing in tools, investing in talent—to build our own proprietary data stack with trillions of data points that make us better at forecasting outcomes,” she said.
Chemistry is currently at the letter-of-intent stage to buy a San Francisco analytics and performance media agency, said Show. Chemistry is looking to beef up its capabilities in data analytics and predictive modeling, as well as branded entertainment to expand its TestTube production business.
An opportunity in Boston
Show said that Chemistry is serious about Boston, which it sees as a major market opportunity—enough of one, in fact, that the agency is considering another Beantown acquisition within six to nine months.
Balck said Boston-area marketers need a stronger local alternative, pointing to brands such as Puma and Dunkin’, which are headquartered there but work with agencies based elsewhere.
He pointed to the recent dissolution of Interpublic Group of Cos.’ MullenLowe and sale of Hill Holliday as examples of the agency ecosystem being weakened since the ’90s, when he considered Boston to be the best advertising market in the country.
“In my opinion, the market didn’t give them a hard enough choice to stay,” Balck said.