When I’m not at DCG ONE, you can often find me tinkering in my home studio. It’s a space I created to sketch, imagine, and develop entire worlds without the pressure of a deadline. It’s the purest form of creativity–just me and my messy ideas.
Inside, you’ll find boxes and drawers full of sketches that won’t likely see the light of day. Not because they’re bad, but because many of them are iterations. Experiments to find exactly the right details for whatever I’m dreaming up that day. Every iteration gives me clues and confidence, moving me a little closer to a fully realized idea. A big part of my satisfaction with the finished product is knowing that I explored my options and made intentional choices along the way.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how we’ve brought a similar feeling into the agency. If you follow our blog, you know that we have a team dedicated to learning what’s possible with AI and a lab full of tools to experiment with. We’ve been making more investments in these efforts because we know the long-term value of iteration–for us, and for our clients.
Move slow to move fast
If you’re a marketing leader, you’re probably tired of hearing this, but it’s true the pace of change is faster than it’s ever been. New tools, new technologies, and new platforms are emerging before most of us can clear the learning curve from the last big release. The sheer volume of newness is so noisy it can overwhelm our better instincts.
Although counterintuitive, the answer to accelerating change isn’t to keep up. That’s exactly how teams end up blindly chasing the latest trend in the name of strategy. Instead, we slow down.
When marketing leaders ask us what we think, we’d like to offer a perspective that’s based on more than the latest Fast Company article. One of our responsibilities as an agency is to ignore the hype cycle and put the latest advancements to work. That means we’re not always the very first to adopt something new, but we’re always proud to put our name on the work when we do.
Outsourcing your firsts
When it’s time to put your brand’s resources behind a new tactic, the stakes feel high. Is this worth the time, talent, and money you’ll put into making it work? Will your audiences respond well? Can it make your marketing efforts more effective, measurable, or memorable?
These questions are the exact reason it’s so valuable to have an experienced creative partner. When your agency understands the tech and your broader strategy, expanding into new territory feels less like a risk and more like a market advantage.
By the time we recommend the next big thing to our clients, we’ve typically experimented and figured out the answers for ourselves first. So when you work with us, you’re not just outsourcing deliverables–you’re outsourcing the growing pains of trying something new. Even when we collaborate with brands on never-been-done-before work, they benefit from creative teams built on a culture of interdisciplinary experimentation.
Think about that for a minute: What would you want to try if you knew you had the team to make it happen?
Building in public
Maybe the most important part of our emphasis on iteration and experimentation is that it’s a value that lives beyond the walls of our agency. We’ve invited clients and local associations to tour our lab. We’ve interviewed industry leaders about the ways they’re leading the industry forward. And we’re always excited to compare notes with other marketers who care about making experiences great for their customers.
We’re very open about the work we do, and we believe that building in public can inspire everyone to either try something new or add to the conversation. If that sounds like you, contact us. We’d love to give you a tour of what we’re working on behind the scenes and talk shop about your next big idea.