When we recently shared coffee with Lisa Murray, it was a day or two before she was retiring from Octagon. After 34 years and 4 million air miles, she still wasn’t sure how to make her exit on that final day. “I’m not going to cry,” she insisted. “Maybe I’ll just slip out for lunch and not come back.”
The 65-year-old outgoing Octagon executive vice president and CMO has never been a self-promoter, refreshing enough in a business that’s largely ego driven.
Peers describe Murray as the archetypal “great client person.”octagon
“I don’t like attention,” she said. That we’ve known for some decades. Still, we weren’t going to let the occasion pass without note. Murray was the only woman in that room adjoining sports and brands when many of today’s female sports marketing stars were too young to drive. “As long as I felt like the most prepared person in the room, I never worried about being the only woman,” she said.
Offered Woody Thompson, another Octagoner with three decades in his briefcase: “I can’t overexaggerate the role model Lisa’s been for women at our company. Because of her, we never felt like we were at a boys club.”
Reaching 65 and having worked full-time for 40 years “made me think how I was going to spend the rest of my life,” Murray explained, when asked how she came to terms with the R-word. “Not that I consider that old, it just made me wonder about doing different things.”
Murray is described by peers as that archetypal “great client person” every agency needs. Some can never master melding the professional and the personal. For Murray, that was innate; she was genuine in a business where that in itself can be uncommon.
“Lisa brings comfort and a quiet confidence to every relationship and that’s evidenced by her longevity in a business not known for that,” said Octagon founder and President Phil de Picciotto. “She has this unique combination of expertise, experience, and a collaborative mindset that’s perfect for client work.”
Still, Murray gets just as many kudos for her work inside the agency. Former Octagon President Harlan Stone helped engineer predecessor agency Advantage’s acquisition of Strategic Group in 1994, then headed by Rick Jones. With that agency came the Mastercard business, still one of Octagon’s oldest clients.
“Rick is a one-of-a-kind talent, and Lisa was the glue that held that agency together,” said Stone, a veteran of many marketing agencies. “I don’t think we would have done that deal without her. In many ways that’s been her career arc. Rick would invent stuff out of thin air, and Lisa — after an eye roll — would figure out how to do it flawlessly … A great agency trait is the ability to get along with every level and all types. She has that in spades.”
When clients got contentious, Murray was Octagon’s Swiss diplomat. “She was always the voice of reason when people on the client side weren’t aligned,” said former Mastercard sports marketing chief Jeff Price, now CCO at the PGA of America. “Her ability to manage egos, disagreements, and find common ground was something truly special.”
Mava Heffler was the Mastercard exec who originally hired Murray and Jones, largely to work on their first World Cup sponsorship, in 1994. “She’s the original ‘whatever it takes’ person,” recalls Heffler, now an independent marketing consultant. “We invented a lot of wheels together and got better and better at rolling them.”
Over the years, Murray became a keeper of Octagon’s corporate culture. That function will be impossible to replace.
“So many clients have said that wherever in the world you walk into an Octagon office, it’s the same vibe,” said Thompson. “Lisa had everything to do with that.”
Former Allstate marketer Pam Hollander said she began to understand Murray’s nature at an Allstate Sugar Bowl event, when she arrived early to a client dinner and found Murray ironing tablecloths.
“Lisa understands the big picture, but was never above getting her hands dirty,” said Hollander, now vice president of marketing at agency TSMGI. “She could make anyone feel comfortable, from the CMO to the intern, and she always championed her own staff. As a client, that was refreshing.”
Added Jones, “There’s a lot of ego in our business, but when you see the leaders unpack the boxes and hang the banners, it’s hard for anyone else to say no; that nature may be Lisa’s greatest skill.”
Murray is in Montana and Wyoming now visiting national parks, so we’ll have to wait to find out if and how she “slipped out the back, Jack” during her last day at Octagon.
As for how she will occupy her time now? Murray grimaced when we suggested that she’d do any further consulting, so we don’t see that in her future. Maybe some more golf; perhaps take up pickleball; definitely continued involvement with WISE, for which she is a board member and for which she has toiled since shortly after its founding in 1993. Other than that, “There’s some white space, but I’m not worried,” she said.
After working so many global events of behalf of Mastercard and other big brands, Murray has decided on an agenda for 2026, when FIFA’s signature event comes stateside for the first time since 1994. “When the World Cup comes here, I’m gonna be a fan,” she said.
After 4 million miles and almost as many events, that seems about right.
Terry Lefton can be reached at tlefton@sportsbusinessjournal.com
