What Happens When Two Agencies Stop Acting Like Two Agencies?
For the rebrand of LendingClub, a publicly traded national bank that has facilitated more than 5 million loans, SPARK and Monigle came together to help launch its next chapter as Happen Bank.
As LendingClub prepared to transition into Happen Bank, both agencies came together around a simple goal: create the best possible outcome for the client. This was not a small ask. LendingClub was evolving, and the brand needed to evolve with it. Building on the identity foundation the agency Prophet had already established, the challenge became carrying that work across the finish line and bringing it to life throughout the organization in a way that could support a successful launch and everything that came after.
From the start, the SPARK and Monigle teams recognized that success would require more than dividing workstreams.
“The shared commitment to the client’s success over agency ownership made this collaboration feel different,” says Yana Ossenova, Director of Client Experience at Monigle. “The focus stayed on solving the client’s challenge, not protecting territory.”
A no egos – or logos – approach became clear almost immediately.
“There was an onboarding moment where we realized the volume of work and timeline were much more aggressive than anticipated,” says Dulani Porter, EVP at SPARK. “We rolled up our sleeves, built a process together, and committed to sprinting side by side.”
What made the partnership work was the clarity of our respective roles. Monigle’s work centered on brand systems, organizational alignment, and employee experience, while SPARK concentrated on storytelling, marketing activation, and customer-facing brand experiences. There was meaningful overlap in our capabilities, but each team engaged from a shared mindset, ensuring every touchpoint reinforced the same vision.
“There wasn’t one specific moment where the partnership clicked,” says Ossenova. “It was the accumulation of creative sessions, working meetings, and problem-solving conversations. Eventually it stopped feeling like two agencies and started feeling like one integrated team.”
The client felt it too. Happen Bank noted that it didn’t feel like they were juggling two agencies. It was just one team, one conversation, one unified body of work.
“We left our logos at the door,” says Porter. “This wasn’t about SPARK or Monigle. It was about helping the client navigate a really important moment in their business.”
Together, the teams built a scalable brand system designed to support Happen Bank’s future while staying true to its purpose of helping people make meaningful progress in their lives.
“The commitment to client goals has to be shared by everyone involved,” says Porter. “When you have that, the work gets better, the decisions get easier, and the client feels it.”
In a business where collaboration is often treated as a process, this partnership was a reminder that it’s really a mindset. And when everyone is rowing in the same direction, great work has a way of following.
