The U.S. offices of Crispin Porter + Bogusky made a round of staffing cuts and changes this week as the network looks to restructure under the European leadership team that took over just under one year ago.
The “restructuring” led to the dismissal of 3 percent of total U.S. staff in Los Angeles and the agency’s headquarters in Boulder, Colo. in addition to the elimination of some positions. It is unclear exactly how many were affected, though the total would almost certainly be in the low-to-mid double digits.
“As we recommit to our core philosophies, we are focused on how CP+B can best meet the future needs of our clients and an ever-changing reality for marketers,” said CEO Erik Sollenberg in a statement provided by an agency spokesperson. “This means restructuring certain aspects of our business to be more relevant and differentiated.”
He continued: “To that end, we are hiring in many departments, but in others, we are scaling back. 3% of our employees in Boulder and LA will be leaving, as we continue to create this new CP+B. We don’t take this, or any of the moves we have made lightly, but we are confident that these changes are necessary to position CP+B as a modern creative company.”
The L.A. creative department was particularly hard hit, with chief creative officer Kevin Jones and CDs Paddy Fraser, Barnaby Blackburn and Gustavo Kopit among those let go.
The spokesperson declined to elaborate on the statement above. But multiple parties who reached out to us indicated that CP+B has elected to do away with the chief creative officer role. The Boulder office will also no longer have a managing director moving forward.
This news follows last year’s announcement that CP+B would close its original Miami office in March along with news of a 5 percent staffing reduction in L.A. and a “shrinking” of that location. The latter two moves came in the wake of 72andSunny winning global creative duties for Infiniti.
The reasons for this latest development are unclear. The agency has been winning new business for clients like Goose Island, Hulu and Amazon Thursday Night Football, though most of the wins are not Domino’s-sized AOR assignments. Sources say that, as per Sollenberg’s statement, he and other leaders plan to make CP+B more closely resemble his previous agency, Sweden’s acclaimed Forsman & Bodenfors.
We also hear that Tom Adams, who had been ECD in Miami, will soon lead CP+B’s L.A. office alongside managing director Ryan Skubic.