Alex Bogusky and Andrew Keller

Sorority girls with mustaches.Volkswagen evangelists, Kung Fu chickens, sufferers of Whopper withdrawal, mandroids, millions of Simpsonized people, Orville Redenbacher. Every year it seems Crispin, Porter + Bogusky kicks a handful of characters into the ad world, many of whom are received with open arms, and a few, like Orville, not so much. But reviled or revered, the agency's output continues at a steady drip into the vein of popular culture. Moreover, it doesn't seem like either co-chairman Alex Bogusky (who recently moved up from his CCO post) or executive creative director Andrew Keller (who now shares ECD title with Rob Reilly) is content to churn out pop icons. 2006's King Games project made millions of dollars and put Burger King in front of as many kids' eyeballs and may mark the moment that Crispin got serious about its more entrepreneurial endeavors. In 2007 the agency added Boulder neighbor Radar Communications and expanded its cognitive anthropology department in addition to creating memorable campaigns for the usual suspects. Bogusky now has realized his shop can bring a product to market in the same amount of time it'd take to bring a marketing campaign around, and he's staffing up on industrial designers. What's next? We're not sure, but you'll certainly hear about it somewhere.

Bogusky, on the expansion of the agency's strategic offerings: "A lot of the clients that we're working with are looking for not just strategic thinking in terms of their advertising but strategic thinking for their brand and their marketing that is so tied into their business strategy that they can kind of be one and the same. That's kind of a level of strategy that we hadn't necessarily been asked to do or done as much of. I think as you grow and your clients are bigger, that's what they're looking for."

Read more Creativity 50 profiles.