DEPT at SXSW London: don't cut costs, innovate

Jeff Bowerman and Ali McClintock present the Growth Invention idea

Marketing Report is attending SXSW London. Jeff Bowerman and Ali McClintock of DEPT talk through the Growth Invention proposition and explain why the agency believes the future of marketing is about more innovation rather than less spending.

To explain how DEPT sets itself apart, Bowerman and McClintock take aim at a familiar industry reflex: the innovation department parked away in a corner. Agencies and brands like to build a small team that is supposedly about the future. "They build a little thing in the corner that's meant to be about the future and inventing new things, and usually it's a cost."

DEPT turns that model around and builds an entire company around the idea. "Our proposition is that we're the growth invention company. We invent things." The core is always the same: bringing together new technology, marketing and innovation to deliver what the client ultimately wants, which is growth.

Inventing for more, not saving for less

The sharpest argument is about where growth comes from. "There's a strong feeling right now that growth comes from efficiency. That you save money and that that's your way to growth." DEPT sets a counterpoint against this. Efficiency has its place, but the real potential lies in innovation. "What is the potential of this new technology for more rather than less?"

It fits DEPT's broader repositioning. The agency, which marks its tenth anniversary in 2025, presents itself around Growth Invention and as the independent alternative to the holdings, consultancies and system integrators, built on speed, agility and innovation. The SXSW session is that thesis, live in front of an audience.

Technology and marketing in one company

The distinctive strength is the genuine fusion of technology and marketing, not as separate departments but as one company. "We have around 4000 people worldwide. 2000 are experienced in engineering and 2000 are creative and media."

That mix sits beneath five broad work streams. Brand and media is about advertising and culturally connected content, tied to measurable impact. Customer experience covers products, digital experiences and the e-commerce platforms where audiences buy. Technology and data form the systems layer: how data is processed, how AI runs behind the scenes, and how CRM and personalisation make content and one-to-one communication possible at scale. AI runs through all of it. "We apply AI in every part of everything we do." And yet, at a festival full of AI demonstrations, the showreel of generative work stays deliberately at home.

From brief to business problem

The pitch is most visible in the way the client conversation is changing. A company used to come with a media budget and an assignment: here's the money, come back with a plan. Now the conversation starts with a business problem.

Take Foot Locker. The retailer sells well but is struggling with a profitability problem caused by the enormous volume of returns. "It's bad for the customer, bad for us as a business and actually bad for the environment. Can you help us solve that?" There is a media component in the answer, and it probably resurfaces in a media plan, but the starting point is a business challenge. "It's a business problem rather than just a brief." Because DEPT can draw on the full breadth of expertise rather than just brand or just creative, it takes those problems as the starting point and builds the briefs around them. Clients such as eBay, Meta, Just Eat Takeaway and Foot Locker show how brand, media and experience come together to drive growth in very different ways.

Independent, with a global base

For all the focus on London, the home base stays firmly in view. "We still have a beautiful office in Rotterdam and in Amsterdam, and that's still our headquarters." Around it, the company operates in some 20 countries, with around four billion dollars of media under management.

That media figure is on the slide on purpose. Call yourself a media agency and people quickly picture a team of three in a corner. DEPT is not a pure-play media agency but runs media for some of the largest companies in the world, "like OpenAI and Meta." The global spread is not a box to tick. "Talent is everywhere." A footprint across continents delivers not only the best people, with a strong design team in Argentina as an example, but also longer combined working days across time zones, and that is a kind of efficiency that goes beyond what AI alone can offer.

www.deptagency.com

www.sxswlondon.com

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