Time and time again, Swedes emerge as some of the most creative people on the planet. Andreas Dahlqvist is no different.
He founded DDB in Sweden and the Nordics in 2004. Under his leadership, the Gunn Report ranked the shop as the best creative agency in the region and the best digital and interactive agency in the world.
Now chief creative officer of Grey New York, the division of the big Grey Global Group of ad agencies, Dahlqvist’s palette is bigger than ever – thanks to technology.
“We’re going through the next big creative revolution,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “We have so many tools to make brands become people’s lives and play an active role through marketing.”
A winner of multiple Cannes Lions awards, Dahlqvist has created campaigns for clients including McDonald’s, General Mills, Diesel Jeans, Coca-Cola, Chevrolet and Skoda, including a popular Volkswagen viral.
But creativity is changing. Marketing is no longer just about devising and distributing messages. Brands have to step up and change, he says.
“The opportunity is to lean in to the context more …but also to react more to stuff that happens in pop culture at large,” Dahlqvist adds.
“Which is a pretty massive shift in mindset in what you create. It’s a re-education of a marketing mindset. It’s less about figuring out the right message and more about becoming topical.”
Dahlqvist should know. “He started his own agency from scratch and built it into the best digital agency on the planet,” a colleague once said.
As brands react to the changing world, it’s no longer just about making a message that people but remember, but about providing real value or even utility, Dahlqvist tells Beet.TV: “The thing that will make you stand out is how creative you are. It’s more about creating something that people want to engage with. It’s about creating something that invites people in. That puts more focus on us as marketers delivering value than 15, 20 years ago.”
