We're a DTC growth studio with gumption.
Strategists, designers, and mischief-makers. We are the misfits.
For brands that are identity-driven and rooted in sub-culture. Our service loop puts audience intelligence, creative, and performance under one roof so the work that earns attention is the same work that grows sales.
a person whose behavior or attitude sets them apart from others in an uncomfortably conspicuous way.
We built Misfit to close a gap.
So we built the opposite. One studio that listens for what your audience actually feels, makes work that carries your brand's DNA, and runs the performance that ties all of it back to revenue. We cut through the noise to find the one thing worth saying, then say it everywhere it counts.
Our team has senior-level experience, so no juniors learning how to do the work on your dime. One team, accountable end-to-end and straight with you about what's working and what isn't.
The Misfit Service Loop
Three phases. One team. No gaps.
SEE
Our proprietary L.E.N.S. tool (Live Emotional Narrative Signals) decodes social conversations into emotional sentiment. Not just positive vs. negative, but joy, frustration, confusion, and aspiration. L.E.N.S. turns cultural signals into actionable creative briefs so every campaign starts with what your audience actually feels.
Social listening Β· Emotional taxonomy Β· Cultural EQ Β· Brief generation
MAKE
Creative production and brand building grounded in real culture and audience emotion, not guesswork. Every campaign and asset is designed to resonate with what's happening in culture today and with how your audience is feeling about your category.
Ads Β· Content Β· Campaigns Β· E-commerce stores & pages Β· Creative testing
GROW
Full-stack performance execution optimized for profitability, not vanity metrics. We manage paid social, paid search, CRO, on-page SEO, AEO/GEO, and email. We measure success by contribution margin, not just clicks. Our performance team has managed $112K+ in monthly ad spend at a 5x+ Marketing Efficiency Ratio.
CRO Β· Paid social Β· Paid search Β· SEO Β· AEO/GEO Β· Email Β· Unit economics modeling
THINGS WE BELIEVE TO BE TRUE
We don't fit in, and we like it that way. The name isn't ironic. Brands that blend in get forgotten, so we help our partners develop a point of view if they don't already have one. We start with ourselves and run our own playbook.
We'd rather be honest than comfortable. You don't need another partner who nods along. We'll tell you when the creative isn't landing or the spend's in the wrong place, and you can count on us to shoot straight. We're not difficult, we just care.
We chase the feeling, not just the number. Metrics tell you what happened and are short-term trackers. Feeling tells you why. We build for the emotion first, because that's what people actually remember β and what brings them back.
We stay students. Culture moves faster than any playbook, so we stay curious.
The best work feels like yours. We value co-creation over gatekeeping. We're with you every step of the way, not just at a grand presentation once per quarter.
Meet the Misfits
Jaden Abfalter
|Calgary
Founder & Chief Strategist
Jaden's journey started at 16, by hocking Mountain Dew out of his locker when the school took all the sodas out of the vending machine. Since then, he's strived to create work that feels alive and lights others up. From a career in criminal & corporate law to ghostwriting/copywriting to launching a global tequila brand, he's never really fit a single mold. So, he founded Misfit, a creative shop of outcasts bonded by the pursuit of creating great work that moves people, sparks loyalty, and pushes culture forward. Jaden has helped notable brands build and maintain deeper and more engaging relationships with their customers. At the core, he is a creative strategist and entrepreneur who believes creativity should be fearless and impactful.
Graham Winn-Lee
|Chicago
Creative Director
Graham is a Pratt-trained designer with 15+ years of experience and a top graduate from NYU's design program. Before leaning into his passion for art, he was studying physics and actually won a math competition! He's one of those freaks that can use both sides of his brain. Graham blends illustration, visual storytelling, and creative direction into work that feels both intentional and unexpected. He's led campaigns, built visual identities, and shaped brand worlds across multiple industries. He is deeply in-tune with pop-culture and street culture. His work is structured and beautifully imaginative. When he's not at work, you can find him in the kitchen, on the slope, at the beach, or the tennis court.
Nolan Palmer-Smith
|New York
Accounts Director
Nolan is a multidimensional Accounts Director with a foundation in UX/UI design and project management, giving him a rare blend of strategic thinking, technical understanding, and operational rigor. Prior to becoming a Misfit, Nolan managed relationships and projects with commercial real estate developers across NYC. He leads engagements with clarity and calm, ensuring clients feel supported, the team feels aligned, and the work moves forward with purpose. His design background allows him to translate creative and technical nuances seamlessly, making him an invaluable bridge between vision and execution. Outside work, he's a personal trainer, avid rock climber, and art collector.
John Greenhow
|Madrid
Digital Director
John is our professional "nerd" on the team and has 15+ years in e-commerce strategy, performance marketing, conversion optimization, and digital marketing strategy. He specializes in full-funnel strategy, paid media, CRO, and data-backed decision-making that turns traffic into revenue and brands into performance machines. John has helped brands unlock new revenue through smart channel optimization, media mix models, and paid media. He loves to talk about anything auto-racing or baseball, and also has an alarming tolerance for hot sauce.
JR Murphy
|Calgary
Sr. Strategist
JR describes himself as a professional surfer, investigative reporter, and master deck builder. In other words, he knows how the internet works. JR knows where to dig for meaningful signals, and can turn disparate data into sharp, usable insight. His superpower is clarity: making strategy feel simple, human, and persuasive. If something needs to be understood, aligned on, or rallied around, he's the one you want shaping the narrative and GTM plan. Some of his career accolades: he's assisted a 100-year-old brand in rebranding and forming lucrative relationships with new customer segments, and advised one of the leading healthcare and academic centers in the world on how to achieve cult-like brand status.
Robert Melnyk
|New York
Designer
Robert graduated top of his class at SUNY and has a deep love for craft. Robert brings discipline and detail to every project. He's fluent in designing for production, ensuring assets are built correctly, consistently, and regularly goes above and beyond for both the team and clients, always ready for whatever is thrown at him. Outside of work, you can catch him playing Spikeball, watching football, or working on passion projects such as finishing and publishing his grandmother's children's book that she did not get to finish before passing. He also collects maps and lives like he's on a permanent archaeological dig. We think he knows he isn't Indiana Jones, but we've stopped telling him.
Edwin Cervantes
|Sonora
Full-Stack Engineer
Edwin is a seasoned engineer and full-stack developer experienced in both front-end and back-end web and app development. He is proficient in PHP, Javascript, C#, Liquid, Python, React, Svelte, Angular, Vue, Next.js, and C++. He has deep expertise with CMS platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, and Webflow. Before tech, he worked in a prison infirmary, so there's very little that can rattle him, except for maybe when we ask him for a "quick tweak." Outside of work, he's a big gamer and is currently going back to school part-time to earn his Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence.
We're a DTC growth studio with gumption.
Strategists, designers, and mischief-makers. We are the misfits.
For brands that are identity-driven and rooted in sub-culture. Our service loop puts audience intelligence, creative, and performance under one roof so the work that earns attention is the same work that grows sales.
a person whose behavior or attitude sets them apart from others in an uncomfortably conspicuous way.
We built Misfit to close a gap.
So we built the opposite. One studio that listens for what your audience actually feels, makes work that carries your brand's DNA, and runs the performance that ties all of it back to revenue. We cut through the noise to find the one thing worth saying, then say it everywhere it counts.
Our team has senior-level experience, so no juniors learning how to do the work on your dime. One team, accountable end-to-end and straight with you about what's working and what isn't.
The Misfit Service Loop
Three phases. One team. No gaps.
SEE
Our proprietary L.E.N.S. tool (Live Emotional Narrative Signals) decodes social conversations into emotional sentiment. Not just positive vs. negative, but joy, frustration, confusion, and aspiration. L.E.N.S. turns cultural signals into actionable creative briefs so every campaign starts with what your audience actually feels.
Social listening Β· Emotional taxonomy Β· Cultural EQ Β· Brief generation
MAKE
Creative production and brand building grounded in real culture and audience emotion, not guesswork. Every campaign and asset is designed to resonate with what's happening in culture today and with how your audience is feeling about your category.
Ads Β· Content Β· Campaigns Β· E-commerce stores & pages Β· Creative testing
GROW
Full-stack performance execution optimized for profitability, not vanity metrics. We manage paid social, paid search, CRO, on-page SEO, AEO/GEO, and email. We measure success by contribution margin, not just clicks. Our performance team has managed $112K+ in monthly ad spend at a 5x+ Marketing Efficiency Ratio.
CRO Β· Paid social Β· Paid search Β· SEO Β· AEO/GEO Β· Email Β· Unit economics modeling
THINGS WE BELIEVE TO BE TRUE
We don't fit in, and we like it that way. The name isn't ironic. Brands that blend in get forgotten, so we help our partners develop a point of view if they don't already have one. We start with ourselves and run our own playbook.
We'd rather be honest than comfortable. You don't need another partner who nods along. We'll tell you when the creative isn't landing or the spend's in the wrong place, and you can count on us to shoot straight. We're not difficult, we just care.
We chase the feeling, not just the number. Metrics tell you what happened and are short-term trackers. Feeling tells you why. We build for the emotion first, because that's what people actually remember β and what brings them back.
We stay students. Culture moves faster than any playbook, so we stay curious.
The best work feels like yours. We value co-creation over gatekeeping. We're with you every step of the way, not just at a grand presentation once per quarter.
Meet the Misfits
Jaden Abfalter
|Calgary
Founder & Chief Strategist
Jaden's journey started at 16, by hocking Mountain Dew out of his locker when the school took all the sodas out of the vending machine. Since then, he's strived to create work that feels alive and lights others up. From a career in criminal & corporate law to ghostwriting/copywriting to launching a global tequila brand, he's never really fit a single mold. So, he founded Misfit, a creative shop of outcasts bonded by the pursuit of creating great work that moves people, sparks loyalty, and pushes culture forward. Jaden has helped notable brands build and maintain deeper and more engaging relationships with their customers. At the core, he is a creative strategist and entrepreneur who believes creativity should be fearless and impactful.
Graham Winn-Lee
|Chicago
Creative Director
Graham is a Pratt-trained designer with 15+ years of experience and a top graduate from NYU's design program. Before leaning into his passion for art, he was studying physics and actually won a math competition! He's one of those freaks that can use both sides of his brain. Graham blends illustration, visual storytelling, and creative direction into work that feels both intentional and unexpected. He's led campaigns, built visual identities, and shaped brand worlds across multiple industries. He is deeply in-tune with pop-culture and street culture. His work is structured and beautifully imaginative. When he's not at work, you can find him in the kitchen, on the slope, at the beach, or the tennis court.
Nolan Palmer-Smith
|New York
Accounts Director
Nolan is a multidimensional Accounts Director with a foundation in UX/UI design and project management, giving him a rare blend of strategic thinking, technical understanding, and operational rigor. Prior to becoming a Misfit, Nolan managed relationships and projects with commercial real estate developers across NYC. He leads engagements with clarity and calm, ensuring clients feel supported, the team feels aligned, and the work moves forward with purpose. His design background allows him to translate creative and technical nuances seamlessly, making him an invaluable bridge between vision and execution. Outside work, he's a personal trainer, avid rock climber, and art collector.
John Greenhow
|Madrid
Digital Director
John is our professional "nerd" on the team and has 15+ years in e-commerce strategy, performance marketing, conversion optimization, and digital marketing strategy. He specializes in full-funnel strategy, paid media, CRO, and data-backed decision-making that turns traffic into revenue and brands into performance machines. John has helped brands unlock new revenue through smart channel optimization, media mix models, and paid media. He loves to talk about anything auto-racing or baseball, and also has an alarming tolerance for hot sauce.
JR Murphy
|Calgary
Sr. Strategist
JR describes himself as a professional surfer, investigative reporter, and master deck builder. In other words, he knows how the internet works. JR knows where to dig for meaningful signals, and can turn disparate data into sharp, usable insight. His superpower is clarity: making strategy feel simple, human, and persuasive. If something needs to be understood, aligned on, or rallied around, he's the one you want shaping the narrative and GTM plan. Some of his career accolades: he's assisted a 100-year-old brand in rebranding and forming lucrative relationships with new customer segments, and advised one of the leading healthcare and academic centers in the world on how to achieve cult-like brand status.
Robert Melnyk
|New York
Designer
Robert graduated top of his class at SUNY and has a deep love for craft. Robert brings discipline and detail to every project. He's fluent in designing for production, ensuring assets are built correctly, consistently, and regularly goes above and beyond for both the team and clients, always ready for whatever is thrown at him. Outside of work, you can catch him playing Spikeball, watching football, or working on passion projects such as finishing and publishing his grandmother's children's book that she did not get to finish before passing. He also collects maps and lives like he's on a permanent archaeological dig. We think he knows he isn't Indiana Jones, but we've stopped telling him.
Edwin Cervantes
|Sonora
Full-Stack Engineer
Edwin is a seasoned engineer and full-stack developer experienced in both front-end and back-end web and app development. He is proficient in PHP, Javascript, C#, Liquid, Python, React, Svelte, Angular, Vue, Next.js, and C++. He has deep expertise with CMS platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, and Webflow. Before tech, he worked in a prison infirmary, so there's very little that can rattle him, except for maybe when we ask him for a "quick tweak." Outside of work, he's a big gamer and is currently going back to school part-time to earn his Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence.