As part of our FONK150 agency results, we rated a 9,0 for creativity – our highest score on the different categories FONK looks at in their research. In this session, we interviewed Marcel van Zwieten, our Managing Creative Partner and Robbert Lopik, our Digital Art Director. We asked them what creativity means to them and to give examples of how we implement creativity at DotControl.
What does creativity mean to you?
Robbert: Creativity to me is allowing yourself as an adult to be a child sometimes but also allowing yourself to steer that in the right direction. Come up with things that might not always be good, but that are innovative, playful and bring some ideas further. And of course, looking with the team how we can apply these ideas. We work with data as an important indicator as well, so we connect data that bring us further. Based on that we come up with (more and/or new) ideas and then we merge that with our creativity. We hope to come up with something new that we’ve never seen before.
Marcel: But isn’t an idea not always a result of creativity? Because I think so. An idea is always a result of creativity. You have visual creativity, which can look appealing. But creativity can be in everything. For me creativity is something that somebody else can’t come up with in that certain moment. From a technical, strategic, or visual point of view. I think that is also creativity. Having fun and coming up with new ideas that are not 100% logical.
Robbert: Agreed. I think the balance in making sense and making no sense at all is how you come up with the best ideas.
What is your best example of how we implement creativity at DotControl?
Marcel: I think that all projects that we do at DotControl are perfect examples of creativity. What that means for a project for a client is different every time. If we are working for a large B2B company we will not search for an extreme out of the box design, but way more on the service that we have to offer around creativity. We did this for Priva, where we brought the digital experience to another level from a business point of view. We added animations and another flow (from a UX experience) on the website. Making use of these kind of things in a B2B brand makes it very different. But also, the project that we do for The Nationale Biosscoopbon is a very concrete example of creativity. Which is totally outside of the box, with crazy stuff, audio and animations. But also from a strategic point of creativity, because it is a totally different way of e-commerce on a website and for a brand.
Robbert: I once read a book that explored creativity and how to define it. And at one point, the writer (I don’t know the name anymore), but one of his conclusions was “Your ability to combine things you have seen before in a way it is has never been seen before.” And that is also something I notice here. Because you have a lot of different departments and very different people. You can image that is you have to constitute a friend group that you would have all similar kinds of people and that is the easiest way to get along. But because a lot of people here come from different perspectives and have different kinds of opinions, I feel like that allows you to bring two things together that probably otherwise would not be brought together. I think that is also one of the elements to help us be this creative and get to that next level.
Marcel: And our focus is that everything is based on data. That helps us to be a different kind of creative. Normally data-driven companies are purely looking at the data and based on that they directly do what they see in the data, but then data makes it boring. What we at DotControl do is that we see the data, learn from the data, and do something totally different with it. In the end, of course, with the aim of improving the experience or the data results even more. That makes data the briefing for us. This is something that makes our creativity different compared to other agencies.
How do you think we can expand our creativity even more in the next year?
Marcel: I think the world is a box with tools that you can play with. Something that is always evolving, from augmented reality to visual new tools for artificial intelligence - all these things can be used these days to create cooler experiences and greater user journeys.
Robbert: Agreed. I think it is almost hard for us to image, but if you think of the tools our grandparents had to create new experiences... We’ve come from very far. If they were from a rich family, they maybe had a laptop, but otherwise it was just pen and paper. Compare that to all the tools we have nowadays. People are discussing if we are going to use Adobe or Figma - that is kind of luxurious. So, I feel like next to the ideas you can think of yourself, we are also being helped with creativity by a lot of tools. These tools can help us create something completely new.
Marcel: But that is something different that creativity. Those are just the tools that we can use to push our creativity to another level.
Robbert: Haha agreed! It is not only having the tools that means the project is finished. Having creativity and the tools is the key.