Ellington

Elizabeth Crisler, president and founder of Jackson advertising agency Liquid Creative, will celebrate the company's 10-year anniversary tonight. Crisler opened the agency in 1999 as a branch of Dallas-based Squires & Company, and she bought the company in 2003. Since then, Liquid Creative has doubled in size and tripled its client base.

Those increases necessitated more space, but instead of moving to a larger location, Crisler chose to renovate their existing building. Adding 1,400 square feet to the 1972 structure allowed for features that Crisler thinks will provide a more productive space for creativity. Liquid Creative will unveil the renovations at an open house tonight.

Since 1999 Crisler has seen the agency change to keep up with her customer's needs. "We started out doing basic advertising and moved onto print, media, radio and TV," Crisler told the Jackson Free Press. "We have seen an increase in Web work. ... We also do work in public relations, social media and anything else that a company's image is impacted by."

A Jackson native, Crisler worked as a legal secretary for 10 years before obtaining a business degree from Belhaven College. "I am quite an unlikely candidate for owning my own business," Crisler says. "It's been a long journey to get where I am today."

The key to having a successful business, Crisler says, is to seize new opportunities: "I can only speak from my own experience. I am pretty headstrong, and I think the biggest thing is to be able to assess an opportunity ... and be flexible in order to make it successful," she says.

Crisler's experience includes land development, retail, telecommunications, law and non-profits. She has won several advertising awards including an EFIE national award honoring creative marketing ideas for the Mississippi Museum of Art exhibit, "Palaces of St. Petersburg"; a local Best of Show ADDY for Peoples Bank & Trust Company; and a national ADDY for the American Diabetes Association. In 2003, the Mississippi Business Journal named Crisler one of the state's 50 Leading Business Women.

Tonight, the public is invited to celebrate Liquid Creative's anniversary from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at their office at 8 Lakeland Circle. Call 601-982-9194 for more information.