Anatomy of an Agency 2018: Calcium

Calcium has a vibrant agency culture, and we nourish that culture through the mind, heart, and yes, even the stomach. Calcium is pleased to provide free lunches every day for all of our employees. 

The daily ritual of breaking bread together has done much to foster our lively culture and creative spirit. 

Creative minds — and bodies — need to be fed well to do great work.

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Locations: New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco

Phone: 917-612-3290

Year Founded: 2012

Employees: 90

Holding company: Calcium is an independent agency

Sample Clients: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Strongbridge Biopharma, Genentech, Nabriva Therapeutics, ITF Pharma

New Business Contact: Steven Michaelson, [email protected]

Founded by the owners of the award-winning agency Wishbone, Calcium, now in its sixth year, is an independent agency optimally structured to deliver the important forms of brand nourishment clients need to grow. Calcium is lean, focused, nonbureaucratic, and highly responsive, emphasizing the deployment of the right individuals — and skill sets — to satisfy a wide range of client needs. 

One hallmark of the Calcium structure is the high degree of senior leadership involvement in client businesses. Calcium believes in utilizing its top talent in this manner because it’s simply the way to deliver the greatest client impact. “You get the big agency experience without the bureaucracy,” as founder and CEO Steven Michaelson likes to say. 

At Calcium, brand nourishment is delivered in the form of powerful insights and ideas in the areas of strategy, creative, science, technology, and tactical programming. Leading-edge digital capabilities are integrated directly into the fabric of the agency, which make the delivery of those solutions more efficient and effective. 

Calcium’s strategic and creative capabilities are also particularly robust. They are guided by a passion for clarity and focus (in the strategic realm) and boldness and memorability (in the creative realm). 

In all of its work, Calcium seeks to heighten brand engagement — and strengthen customer activation — by creating compelling brand experiences that powerfully resonate with people’s lives and needs.

Calcium offers a fully integrated service model that emphasizes the delivery of core strategic, creative, and tactical services with seamlessly interwoven digital services. Its proprietary system Growth Process generates insights, strategies, creative, tactics, and tech solutions. 

• Insight generation 

• Brand strategy development

• Comprehensive creative services

• Branding, product, and corporate 

• Innovative tactical solutions

• Direct-to-consumer

• Media strategy and buying

• Convention planning

• CRM

• Mobile app development

• Front-end and back-end web development

• Mobile device QA lab

• Digital project management

• Search engine marketing, paid and organic

• Custom web analytics and measurement

• Social media strategy

• Email marketing