Reinventing Crispin to Meet the Moment, 60 Years On

“It is a long road to perception change,” says Maggie Malek, CEO at Crispin.

In its 60th year of business, the Stagwell agency has just passed the one-year anniversary of a vital rebrand, taking back the Crispin name with a ‘truthful and raw’ new approach, after a multitude of iterations as CP+B.

“Crispin is a brand that went from being the thing to a brand that is misunderstood and underestimated,” she says. “We still meet with clients who have funny things to say about Crispin. Some people will not even let Steve and I into the room because they had a bad experience with Crispin 20 years ago.”

This left a challenge somewhat suited to the less traditional backgrounds of her and CCO, Steve Denekas, becoming a “ride or die” duo following Steve’s arrival in Spring 2024 – a necessary bond for what turned out to be a predictably difficult year post-rebrand in May. “We put a stake in the ground with the rebrand and defined very bold ambitions,” says Steve. “The year has been hard, but nothing great is ever easy.”

Embodied by the scribbly handwriting featured across the new design system, he says the rebrand took a swing at an industry ‘so focused on the show that it was losing the ability to be scrappy, in the moment, and vulnerable with ideas’. And now, the approach is resonating with clients – including several big additions from the last 12 months.

^{Above: CEO Maggie Malek and CCO Steve Denekas}

“Candidly, no one thought we could have as many successful wins as fast as we have,” says Maggie, highlighting partners like Target, Nature’s Sunshine and DSW. “We want to be the destination agency for the most talked-about work that actually works. CMOs need that now more than ever, and we're continuing to double down on that story.”

To make that happen over the last 12 months, Crispin decided its differentiator would be to ‘tap into conversation and culture’ as a truly integrated agency. Collaborating closely with chief transformation officer Freddy Dabaghi, she says the team has focused on nurturing the synergy between its media, social and creative teams. “We are thinking about the channels that people are in, the words they are using, the niche communities they interact with, and how the creative is going to be delivered.

“That takes investment as an agency. We have to put our money where our mouth is every day, because we have paid media clients like Fannie Mae, and creative clients like DSW. So we can't NOT make all of those things awesome – and they work really well together, too.”

Maggie approximates that 60 to 70% of Crispin’s business is now integrated. “CMOs are starting to understand that social, brand, performance, etc. cannot live in different places,” she says. “It makes the data confusing; it’s hard to brief-in… and consumers are only getting more social. So how do we make sure that our brands are there?”

^{Above: Visuals from Crispin's rebrand  of Nature's Sunshine}

One client working this way is supplement brand Nature’s Sunshine, which first came to Crispin around two years ago for influencer, social and performance work. “Over the course of the years, we've been able to seed more interesting stories into that and help them realise that something beautiful lives within their story, that culture and their customers need,” says Steve. This resulted in a full rebrand this year, transforming the company with a fully integrated story.

Crispin hopes to soon recreate this process, in a “potentially revolutionary” way, for shoe retailer client DSW. “Silos for brands are the death of making progress,” Steve continues. “When you work with brands that have distinct silos between their business units, and they're not telling one cohesive story, they struggle. It's always a constant job of the agency to try to connect the dots between those things. However, when CMOs realise that you take all those things and you create a thread around all of them – not saying there aren’t different messages for each of them in some capacity – then all of a sudden, you start to see results really quickly.”

This dedication to understanding where culture lives, building ideas around that, and tearing down silos and creative workflow norms to do so has been something of a hallmark for Crispin. Putting media in front of creative is now a USP for the agency, even attracting new creatives by offering them a seat at the table to solve business problems further upstream.

“When you understand a brand and build around that, it's a beautiful thing,” says Steve. “The work just starts to take off and go in the direction it needs to go, because it’s coming from a place of deep-rooted connection.”

The key to this? “True data and insights that actually pull out emotional stories.”

Crispin’s data team, supported by proprietary media measurement and effectiveness tools, can ‘look intimately, understand deeply, and then turn that into something actionable’. He explains, “We're dissecting, defining and creating meaning – that's the difference.”

Discovering new actionable insights sometimes means uncovering a need to pivot a client’s business – a consideration that bears extra weight amidst the socio-political context of 2025 America. Considering themselves, and all agencies, as “business advisors”, Maggie says that the current climate in the States has introduced “a wealth of challenges”. Though post-pandemic, the agency has experience in guiding its clients and employees through complex business problems.

“We are serial truth tellers with our people and clients. Right now, I feel really strongly that the name of the game is being steady. Every time you open your phone, there is something there that could make you feel a certain way. So how do we be measured, and help our clients be measured as well?”

Steve adds, “In 2024, I often talked to clients about the power of having deep empathy, and understanding the folks that they're trying to build a connection with. The change you’re going to see [in 2025] is that action is going to be necessary. You're going to see this trend and shift for brands to be not only empathetic, but also action-orientated.”

The Crispin leaders themselves empathise with brands facing change, as a “misunderstood” agency still undergoing its own transformation a year after its rebrand. “Because of that, Steve and I don't take anything for granted,” says Maggie. “We know that we have a big, difficult job, but we are seeing the perception shift. We're getting into bigger pitches and getting better opportunities.

“Where Crispin lost itself a little bit was when it was focused on making cool commercials and winning awards,” she says. “We've doubled down on what makes an agency a good business advisor – being social and understanding people. That means you might need to reinvent yourself every six months. It means you've got to be agile. It means you have to understand problems differently.

“Crispin’s been through ups and downs, like many clients have – but we always want to keep it fresh,” she adds. “We always want to be thinking about what’s coming and how we should be changing…To me, it feels like both a new and a legacy company at the same time, which is really fun.”

While unafraid to both question and celebrate moments from Crispin’s past, Steve says that the agency today is about embracing the moment. “It represents progression. It represents what we think the industry needs – to be more in tune with customers and culture. It’s about being scrappy, vulnerable, and telling the truth. That’s where Crispin is, and where it’s going.

“It's a beautiful brand and a beautiful story,” he says. “It's been an incredible 60 years, and we're here to do another 60 even better. But what better looks like is defined by the moment and culture, and us adapting our organisation and business to serve our clients and our people. We work for them.”