12
Production
Five editors, three shooters, two motion designers and two producers. They own the calendar and the delivery deadline, and they are the reason 72 hours is a promise rather than a hope.
The studio
We built the studio before we built the client list.
Crestwick Digital started in 2019 above a coffee shop on Thomas Street with two editors, one camera and a conviction that social agencies were selling strategy they had no capacity to actually produce.
34
People in the studio
19
Brands on retainer
2
Shoot spaces on Deansgate
01 · Origin
The strategy was never the bottleneck
Our founders spent years writing social strategies at larger agencies and watching them arrive at a production team that was six weeks behind. By the time an idea was shot, the platform had moved on and the insight behind it was stale.
So we inverted it. Crestwick was a production studio first: cameras, lights, edit bays and people who could turn a brief around in days. Strategy came second, and only ever as much as the studio could actually make.
Seven years later that is still the constraint we design around. We do not take on a client whose volume we cannot produce, which means we grow slowly and turn down roughly half the work that comes to us.
Crestwick, factually
Founded2019
Team34
StudioDeansgate
Clients on retainer19
Average client tenure2.6 yrs
Assets produced in 2025840+
Briefs declined last year~50%
02 · The team
Everyone here makes something
We have no account managers. The people you meet are the people editing your videos, buying your media and replying to your comments.
8
Strategy & social
Strategists and social leads who write the plan, publish the work and present the results. Each holds a maximum of three brands.
6
Paid & performance
Media buyers and an analyst, seated with the editors rather than in a separate performance department, because the loop only works if it is short.
5
Design
Brand and social designers building the identity systems and the templates that let a small production budget behave like a much larger one.
3
Community
Community managers covering seven days, feeding the monthly insight report that shapes what everyone else makes next.
0
Account managers
Deliberately. Nobody at Crestwick is paid to relay messages between you and the person doing the work.
03 · What we believe
Five things we will argue about
Not values on a wall. These are positions, and we will defend them in a first meeting even when it costs us the work.
01
Fewer, better, always
Posting frequency is the most over-rated variable in social. We will always recommend halving output and doubling the effort per piece, and we have never once regretted it.
02
Production capacity is strategy
A plan you cannot execute at cadence is not a plan. We size every strategy against the studio hours available, and we say no when the maths does not work.
03
Report the failures first
Every monthly review opens with what did not work and what we are changing. It makes the meeting shorter and the relationship considerably longer.
04
Creators are collaborators, not media
We pay published rates, on time, and we brief creators properly instead of sending a list of mandatory talking points. It is why the good ones answer our emails.
05
You own everything
Raw footage, project files, usage rights, ad accounts. Transferred on payment, no exit fee, no archive held back as leverage.
Come and see it
Visit the studio. Watch a shoot day.
The fastest way to know whether we are exaggerating is to come to Deansgate on a Tuesday and watch the studio work. Bring your brief, meet the editors, and ask them how quickly they really turn things around.
Arrange a visit