DEPT At 10 – Dimi Albers Unveils The Growth Invention Company

In a landscape where every agency claims to drive growth, DEPT is staking its future on invention. Its new positioning — ‘The Growth Invention Company’ — sums up that ambition.

Founded in Amsterdam in 2015 and led by global CEO Dimi Albers, the agency has evolved from its “half technology, half marketing” beginnings into a 4,000-strong creative technology network. With 30 offices worldwide, DEPT’s client list includes Google, eBay, Lufthansa, Snap, Coach and OpenAI.

While now competing at the scale of Accenture Song, WPP and Omnicom, Albers is intent on preserving the boutique culture that defined DEPT’s first decade — something he admits has occasionally been diluted. “It’s vital,” he says. “That culture is what keeps our people and clients so committed to working with us.” He believes that closeness means marketers feel like they’re working with colleagues rather than suppliers, and that DEPT’s culture still offers a personal approach — one of its key differentiators. Even as it expands into new markets and disciplines, DEPT keeps what Albers calls “a relentless focus” on high-quality work that directly serves client needs.

“You can ask anybody who runs a large pitch - it doesn't matter what kind of entity you set up to serve that one client in the best way possible, every client will still say, ‘I’d like A, B, and C. But there are a few challenges. One: to get the very best from the company I'm working with. Two: doing that fast. Three: being agile with it, and innovating.’ We've been able to do that quite well,” claims Albers proudly.

Supporting client growth

As DEPT marks its 10th anniversary, Albers sees a timely opportunity to redefine the agency’s positioning. Having invested significantly in its native digital technology capabilities - particularly in response to post-COVID client demands and the rise of AI -he’s now focused on anchoring that evolution with a clearer strategic narrative.

He acknowledges that major agency networks have spent billions and built global partnerships to strengthen their tech offerings. This is a marketing services business that was around before Accenture Song and S4 Capital, he adds. For all the talk of tech innovation, he believes DEPT’s goal remains straightforward: meeting the ongoing business growth needs of its clients.

The complexity CEOs and CMOs face while charting a course for growth is what steers DEPT at this pivotal moment.

“We need to be super crisp about what the value is that we bring for our clients and what ultimately is going to make them better. We like to call it ‘growth invention,’ but ultimately it is customer growth. Whatever brand comes to us, that is what we are going to be delivering,” he explains.

The new positioning, led by chief client and growth officer Andrew Dimitriou, who joined last September, includes the introduction of a refreshed brand identity anchored by the Star - a symbol of forward motion, flexibility, and connection.

“We've basically taken all the bits and pieces that we have within the different parts of our business and brought that together in the Growth Invention Framework, which is at our heart. It is making sure that in three different phases, you get your client towards the right growth,” Albers explains. Those three steps are ‘Discover’, followed by ‘Invent’, and then ‘Grow’.

“We keep it that simple because, in principle, that is how every collaboration between brands and their partners works. And then we have certain proprietary parts that will help us unlock certain opportunities faster than you might have done in the past with other partners. That's the way we deliver on our promise,” he adds.

A Creative Evolution

In November, DEPT will welcome global chief creative officer Ben Williams to lead its global team while integrating design, marketing, experience, and technology. Williams joins from TBWA\Worldwide, where he spent almost four years as global chief creative experience officer - another strong step forward for the agency as it sharpens its creativity.

Alongside Williams, also joining in the US is Carla del Porto as executive creative director (ECD), while in Germany, Käthe Lisson has joined as ECD director and vice president, creative for the DACH region. An ECD for the Amsterdam headquarters will also arrive soon.

“We've arrived at a point now that it doesn't make any sense to remain a hidden gem. We need to get a really strong creative leader in who can take all the brilliant creative we have and thread a needle through it and create this one story for the market and one approach when it comes to what we would consider the creative of the future,” says Albers.

“It's all part of how we level-up. We have this small, tight-knit team that can really push the creative profile, because the work is there, but it's weird that we're not talking about it and that the world isn't seeing it enough,” he continues.

Albers is resolute that in a world dominated by technology, creativity will prevail. He sees AI tools as enabling teams to deliver better work while freeing them for more valuable client conversations. Despite the hype, he remains measured on AI’s impact: it will help innovate faster but will not threaten creativity or alter DEPT’s business philosophy. If anything, it will primarily change production processes.

“If you are a good partner to your clients, a lot of the work is not production. A lot of the work is thinking about what is unique about a brand or company and what a customer journey truly looks like. How do you make sure that you make the right decisions on it? How do you come up with the right concepts? How do you tie that all together? How do you sit down with a client in a room to make decisions? Most of that will not change.”

DEPT enters its second decade at a pivotal moment. With a clear focus on delivering business growth for clients, the agency’s promise is straightforward — and increasingly compelling for marketers seeking real impact.

Here are some further thoughts from Dimi Albers on current trends around the ad sector:

Creative Salon: You’re hiring a team of creative leaders - in a moment of tech upheaval for the industry, were you looking for anything particularly new from potential candidates?

Dimi Albers: Culture was number one. Bringing in somebody who is not high-ego and who wants to collaborate. Bringing in somebody who understands that the very best work is done when you do that with people that you will still have a good relationship with in 20 years. That's important because that has hampered us, especially on the creative side. That is a part of our business where egos are a bit bigger, so it's been a journey for us to find the right people.

Then secondly, it was not about hiring creatives who have only done advertising and a bit of other stuff. The people who come in all need to understand and have experience with building brands, not only in advertising, but also through design, through experience, and through technology. It was the key that it's somebody who fits the culture and who thinks in that integrated way.

As you look to the future, and having gone through this process, where do you think talent will come from?

If you look at our agency in the full sense of the word, then I would hope that we continue to hire people from outside the industry. This is like a great time for people to do lateral moves, to get younger people who might not even go through college, get them through the door, and work with them, because AI enables all of them to accelerate a lot. It also allows all of us to bring in a more broader vantage point to how you build, how you build a brand.

So you think it's a good time to come into the ad industry?

I think it's a great time to go into the industry. Of course, I understand that if your mindset is ‘We are doing all this production work, and that production work is going to be replaced by the machines,’ then of course I get that. But I think that 80 to 90 per cent of the jobs in our industry, or at least of the interesting ones, are not that. There are mountains of those and I think that, especially if you come from a different industry or if you are starting your career, AI enables you to leapfrog a bunch of people who've been doing the same thing for years, because you can bring a fresh vantage point. I would say this is a great moment, because all these people have done the same thing and find it really tough to change.

What do you think the ideal agency is going to be for the clients in the future? What do you think they'll be looking for?

The thing you hear from everybody is that clients are looking for outcomes rather than a set of people. The simplicity of customer growth is overlooked by a lot of people, and the good clients know that they need to be looking for partners who deliver for them. Ultimately, it's about customer growth. That'll be a massive thing. Guys will only want to work with a partner who does not bother them with their internal bullshit. There's a lot of that. It's our job to make sure that when any person walks into the client, they sit down and they start talking about Geo and they start achieving the right things for the client.

And then, I don't think that agencies or hold co’s or consultancies necessarily need to become software companies. All of our competitors are throwing, I don't know how many hundreds of millions, into whatever stack they're building and although I think being AI-enabled will rapidly create certain technologies, I still think that clients will be looking towards partners that can grab the very best from the market and connect that.

Even if you were to give me $50bn tomorrow, I could still not keep up with Adobe, with Google, with Shopify, and I can name another 20 companies that I couldn't keep up with. So for us, it's about how we can help our clients find the right stack for them, combine that with creativity in a way that will impact our full customer journey. It means we will connect those technologies. It does not mean that we will build the technologies - that's a stupid effort.

How would you summarise what has been the most important lesson the agency has learned from the first decade?

The importance of the culture. It's super simple. We've gone from a few people here in the Netherlands, for those people, a lot of countries, in the places where it's gone well, we have consistently been able to retain the heart of what our culture is – that almost boutique feel of being entrepreneurial.

And second, keeping your focus 100 per cent on clients is probably the most challenging thing, because it's how life works. However, the bigger the organisation you're in, the more questions you get. There's some structure here, there's some systems here - somebody came up with the idea of changing the organisational model of whatever, and that's all stuff that takes away from your core job. That happens in every company and making sure that you minimise that shit and maximise the focus on the client value - which is customer growth - that's the second big challenge.