Crispin Porter + Bogusky announced plans to close its Miami office in March as part of an effort to consolidate its U.S. operations, Adweek reports.
“It’s something we’ve been talking about for a while,” CP+B founder and chairman Chuck Porter said, adding that while “agonizing,” it was “the best thing for the agency and the work. We’re done restructuring now.”
“Obviously, it was partly a financial decision. A lot of clients we had here came from our connections in Brazil,” he added.
CP+B launched with Miami as its headquarters back in 1988, subsequently opening offices in Los Angeles and Boulder in 2001 and 2006. The agency’s accounts run out of Miami will now move to its Boulder, Los Angeles and São Paulo offices.
The announcement follows CP+B’s decision to shrink the size of its Los Angeles office earlier this month, after laying off five percent of its staff this summer in the wake of Infiniti moving global creative duties to 72andSunny without a review. CP+B L.A. retains the U.S. agency of record duties for the car brand.
Around 75 staff members will be affected by this news. Porter told us that most employees in Miami are “support people” handling bookkeeping and business affairs work but said that a majority of client-facing staff, “particularly creatives” like ECD Tom Adams, will be moving to L.A. A number of the support staff will also relocate, and CP+B is working with the larger MDC Partners network to find opportunities for other employees, though Porter acknowledges that many will not be able to leave Miami.
Any employees unable to find work at MDC might be able to score a gig at the new agency that David veterans Anselmo Ramos and Gaston Bigio plan to launch in March.
Those guys didn’t want to tell us which clients will help fund their new operation. Who wants to guess??