NEW YORK—Omnicom-owned MMC—the former Marina Maher Communications—has launched a new branding, including a new visual identity that builds on the firm’s heritage and creative focus and a new tagline that positions the firm as “artfully disruptive.”

The announcement of a new identity comes just a few months after agency founder Marina Maher stepped down from the firm she launched in 1983 and handed over the reins to current chief executive Olga Fleming, but it is the culmination of a process that began before that announcement.

“This was a six-month process, and every aspect of it was very intentional,” says James Ferber, executive creative director of MMC, who led the development of the new identity. “We wanted something to define what we had always been, an expansion on the legacy of the firm, but also something that would position us for the next 40 years.”

The process involved the entire leadership team of the agency—a team of about 20—in an assessment of how they wanted to position the firm for the next 40 years, and involved the entire agency in redefining the agency’s values, combining its historic focus on marketing to women in the consumer and healthcare spaces with its more recent reputation for creativity and disruption.

According to Fleming, “We’ve preserved the period from our original logo mark, and artfully disrupted ourselves by placing it at the center of our new logo. This not only symbolizes that our heritage remains at the heart of our new identity, it forms a much more fitting piece of punctuation for the brand: an exclamation point. This provides us with an incredible visual shorthand that immediately speaks to the attention we bring to our clients, our causes, and ourselves: Our work is important. It is urgent. It demands to be seen.”

In addition, she said, “The C within our logo isn’t actually a letter at all—it’s a keyhole. And it’s there to symbolize how our Creativity unlocks both Conversation and Conversion. It’s subtle, but truly a perfect reflection of our core differentiation as an agency.”