You research the neighbourhood, check the school districts, and evaluate the infrastructure. You think about property taxes, maintenance costs, and how the local market is trending. You have a plan for improvements: a kitchen renovation next year and new windows in three years.

A website should be similar.

Your domain is your address, your CMS is your foundation, and your integrations with CRMs, email platforms, and analytics tools are like your home’s plumbing and electrical systems. It sits on digital infrastructure, like AWS or Google Cloud. Regulatory landscapes, including privacy laws, accessibility requirements, and industry compliance standards govern it. 

Your house isn’t something that you tear down and rebuild every three to five years. But your website? Odds are that’s a different story. 

While website rebuilds are a common practice among companies, the process itself often lacks a clear strategy. All too frequently, we see businesses that spend six months and six figures on a complete rebuild, lose traffic in the migration, retrain their entire team on new systems, and wonder why their conversion rates tanked.

But the real issue isn’t the way website rebuilds are done; it’s that they shouldn’t be necessary at all. 

Google Docs doesn’t do semi-annual rebuilds. Neither do Uber, Netflix, or any other digital product you actually rely on. They plan for the long term and make strategic improvements over time, like a smart homeowner who renovates thoughtfully rather than demolishing.

They don’t need to start over because they’ve started with a great product strategy.

Product strategy isn’t just about having opinions about fonts and button colours. It’s looking at your website through the lens of your business’s next 2-10 years and asking hard questions, for example: 

• Where is your company heading? If you’re a B2B software company planning international expansion, your website needs to support multiple languages, currencies, and compliance frameworks. If you’re a local service business eyeing franchise opportunities, you need a content management system that can scale to hundreds of locations without losing brand consistency.
• What’s happening in your market? Consumer behaviour shifts constantly. The pandemic accelerated e-commerce adoption by about five years overnight. AI is changing how people search and discover content. Privacy regulations are making third-party cookies extinct. Your website strategy needs to account for these macro trends, not just react to them after your competitors have already moved.
• How do your initiatives connect to business outcomes? You may want to add a customer loyalty programme. Great idea, but why, for whom, and how does it integrate with your existing systems? If you simply bolt on an off-the-shelf SaaS tool without thinking strategically, you’ll end up with siloed data that your marketing team can’t utilise and customer service can’t access. That’s not a loyalty program; that’s expensive digital clutter.

Strategic thinking means asking these questions before you write a single line of code, not after you’ve already committed to a vendor and blown half your budget.

After working with hundreds of companies on their digital products, we’ve identified what separates wishful thinking from strategies that actually work.

Clear success metrics that drive decisions

Effective strategies start with measurement frameworks that matter. Not vanity metrics like page views or social media followers, but the leading indicators that predict business outcomes.

Take conversion optimisation. Everyone wants higher conversion rates, but innovative companies track the behavioural patterns that lead to conversions: Time spent on key pages, engagement with specific content types, and abandonment points in their user journey. They establish baselines, set improvement targets, and most importantly, they know when to double down on what’s working and when to cut their losses.

Netflix doesn’t just measure subscriber growth; it also tracks completion rates for different content types, user engagement patterns across devices, and the impact of personalisation algorithms on viewing time. These leading indicators help them make strategic content investments months before they show up in subscriber numbers.

User-centric decision making

Most websites are built around internal org charts rather than user needs. Effective product strategy flips this dynamic.

Use frameworks like Jobs-to-be-Done to understand what users actually hire their website to accomplish. A professional services firm might discover that potential clients don’t just want to read case studies; they want to assess competency in their specific industry and understand pricing models before they’re ready to talk to sales.

For example, instead of generic “About Us” content, create industry-specific capability demonstrations. Instead of hiding pricing behind “Contact Us” forms, you provide transparent cost frameworks that pre-qualify leads. The website becomes a strategic sales tool rather than a digital brochure.

Technical architecture that enables strategy

We often see teams choose technology first, then try to fit their strategy around those limitations.

An effective product strategy starts with business goals, then selects technology that enables those goals. If your growth plan includes partnerships, acquisitions, or new product lines, you need APIs that can integrate with diverse systems. If you’re planning to personalize user experiences, you need a data architecture that can collect, process, and act on behavioral insights in real-time.

This is why companies like Airbnb invested early in headless, API-first architectures. It seemed like over-engineering at the time, but it enabled them to launch new features (host onboarding flows, guest verification systems, dynamic pricing tools) without rebuilding their entire platform each time.

Cross-functional alignment and governance

The best technical strategy in the world fails without organisational buy-in. Effective product strategies include clear governance frameworks: who makes decisions about new features, how resources get allocated between new development and technical debt, and how success gets measured across teams. Establish decision rights, communication protocols, and change management processes that persist beyond individual projects or personnel changes.

Competitive intelligence and market timing

Ultimately, effective strategies strike a balance between innovation and market reality. They track what competitors are doing well (and where they’re vulnerable), assess emerging technologies for strategic fit rather than novelty, and time major investments to align with market readiness.

The companies that implemented AR try-on features in 2019 were probably too early. The ones doing it now are probably too late. Strategic timing isn’t about being first; it’s about being right for your market and your customers.

“But we’re not Netflix. We’re just a mid-market manufacturer with a simple website.”

That’s precisely why you need a product strategy. While you’re treating your website as an afterthought, your competitors probably are too. Which means you have an opportunity to build a genuine competitive advantage through better digital products.

After all, if strategic improvements to your website increase lead conversion by just 15%, even a modest traffic increase translates to serious revenue impact. 

More importantly, product strategy transforms your total cost of ownership. Instead of massive capital expenditures every 2-3 years, you shift to predictable operational investments that compound over time. You stop losing institutional knowledge in rebuilds and start building on what works.

Your website is either appreciating or depreciating. There’s no neutral ground.

Every day you operate without a digital product strategy, you’re choosing depreciation. You’re accepting technical debt, missing user insights, and letting competitors gain ground. You’re perpetuating the expensive cycle of rebuild, retrain, and regret.

But, once you start treating your digital presence as the strategic asset it actually is, everything changes. Your website becomes a competitive moat. Your team becomes more effective. Your customers have better experiences. Your business grows more predictably.

Because nearly 70% of searches now end without a single click. That’s the reality of zero-click search, where answers, product recommendations, and media appear directly on the results page through Google Shopping, AI Overviews, and other features.

This shift has major implications for e-commerce, and particularly brands that rely on DTC strategies. Product discovery is no longer driven solely by what’s on your website or how well you rank. Instead, visibility depends on how well your content is structured for AI, how consistently your brand shows up across platforms, and how useful your product information is to machines, not just humans.

Zero-click search isn’t new, but its scale and influence are. What started with featured snippets and knowledge panels has evolved into something much broader. Google’s results pages are now layered with AI-generated summaries, shopping carousels, video embeds, social content, and visual search results, pushing organic listings further down the page.

The rise of AI-powered search has also changed how people interact with queries. Instead of typing in product names or categories, users now ask natural language questions (“what’s a good concealer for sensitive skin?”) and expect instant, curated answers. For e-commerce brands, that means you’re not just competing for clicks, but to be included in the answer itself.

This affects the funnel in a few key ways:

• Top-of-funnel visibility is increasingly controlled by platforms and AI.
• Middle-of-funnel consideration is shaped by third-party content (reviews, forums, influencers).
• Bottom-of-funnel conversions still often happen on your site or a retailer’s, but only if shoppers navigate there first.

Not all brands are affected equally. Companies in visually driven or fast-moving categories—like fashion, beauty, tech, or wellness—tend to feel the impact sooner. So do brands that rely heavily on organic traffic for discovery, with publishers getting hit the quickest and with the most severity. 

But across industries, the trend is clear: the path to organic product discovery is shifting away from websites and toward AI-powered ecosystems.

Jewellery brand Kendra Scott has been one of the fastest movers when it comes to adapting to the realities of zero-click search and AI-driven discovery. Its approach blends content expansion, AI-powered customer experiences, and site improvements designed to meet both customers and AI models where they are.

One major initiative has been a large-scale content buildout aimed at increasing organic visibility. Since mid-2024, Kendra Scott has added 8,000 new pages to its website, many generated with the help of generative AI. These pages are organised around themes and use-case-driven queries (“gifts under $50,” “everyday hoops for sensitive ears”) rather than specific product names, giving the brand a better chance to surface for long-tail searches that frequently trigger AI Overviews in Google. 

Today, 27% of these pages appear on the first page of search results, accounting for 5% of Kendra Scott’s annual web traffic—demonstrating just how much content it takes today for a category-leading brand to drive organic traffic to product-focused pages. 

At the same time, the company has been investing in AI-powered customer tools on-site. Its AI Copilot, a chatbot that answers product and style questions in real time, now resolves 93% of customer inquiries, up 53% from the tool’s previous version. As a result, 6% of Kendra Scott’s e-commerce sales are now influenced by the Copilot, and revenue tied to these interactions is up 160% year-over-year.

Finally, Kendra Scott is modernising its tech stack to create faster, more consistent experiences across channels. Migrating to a progressive web app architecture has improved site speed by as much as 20%, which directly lifts conversion rates.

Takeaways for commerce brands:

• Expand your content footprint: build thematic landing pages that align with how people (and AI models) phrase their questions, not just product-specific pages.
• Use AI to enhance, not just automate, the customer journey: real-time support tools like chatbots and predictive product recommendations can capture demand even when organic visibility declines.
• Improve site performance and architecture: fast, consistent experiences are a ranking factor for search engines and a conversion booster for customers.

This mix of content, AI-powered assistance, and technical optimisation is helping Kendra Scott maintain visibility and drive sales, even as traditional organic search channels become more competitive.

Cetaphil is leaning into AI-powered search by reshaping the ecosystem of content that AI pulls from, particularly to reach Gen Z consumers who are increasingly skipping traditional search altogether.

Earlier this year, Cetaphil launched a pilot campaign specifically designed to increase the brand’s visibility within Google’s AI Overviews. The campaign was targeted around non-branded, symptom-driven searches like “how to get rid of dry flaky skin on face.” Rather than trying to drive clicks directly, Cetaphil focused on having its products mentioned in the AI-generated summaries themselves.

To achieve this, the brand shifted its paid search strategy. It created landing pages optimised for the kinds of queries that trigger AI Overviews, and it began testing different content formats, including AI-generated educational material and user-friendly explainers. These assets were designed to align with the conversational tone of Gen Z’s search behaviour and to appear credible to the AI systems generating summaries.

In parallel, Cetaphil has expanded its PR and influencer efforts, understanding that AI engines often pull from high-authority third-party content. By increasing the number of credible mentions across digital publications and creator channels, as well as working with popular influencers such as Nara Smith, the brand is improving its odds of being included in generative responses, especially for product types where peer recommendations and reviews heavily influence purchase decisions.

Takeaways for commerce brands:

• Target how people search, not just what they search for
• Rethink paid search as a visibility tool, not just a traffic driver
• Invest in authoritative off-site content

Product discovery today happens across AI-generated summaries, social feeds, and multimodal search results, often without a single click. To earn organic visibility, brands can no longer rely solely on traditional SEO tactics. Everything from copy to design to UX must be created with both people and AI crawlers in mind. 

At DEPT®, we’re actively developing and testing Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) tools to help commerce brands adapt to this shift. That includes structured data audits, PDP enhancements tailored to AI Overviews, and experimentation with off-site content strategies to influence how and where products appear in generative search results.

Still, this space is evolving fast. As agentic AI, personalised shopping recommendations, and AI-native search experiences continue to mature, commerce brands must be able to continuously adapt. Tactics that work today to surface a product in an AI summary or a visual search carousel may be outdated in six months.

Brands that are and will continue to succeed are those that are ones designing for flexibility, testing early, and treating visibility as a holistic, AI-aware strategy. Because in a zero-click world, discoverability isn’t a byproduct of good SEO. It’s a product of smart design, partnerships, and placements.

This newly created position reflects DEPT®’s commitment to accelerating commercial performance and expanding its regional footprint, already responsible for 50% of its global revenue. Williams’ hiring will also support the momentum from the first half of the year, when the company added brands such as Lufthansa, PepsiCo, Salamander, Logitetch, and EPI/WERO to its client portfolio. 

In his role, Jack will be responsible for leading and evolving an EMEA-wide growth team focused on expanding existing client relationships, generating new opportunities, building strategic partnerships, and elevating DEPT®’s brand across both regional and local markets.

His remit will be pivotal in driving DEPT®’s commercial success and scaling its operations throughout EMEA. He will work closely with Andrew Dimitriou, Global Chief Client and Growth Officer, and the broader EMEA leadership team, including EMEA CEO Joanna Trippett and EVP of EMEA Helga Sasdi. 

Jack Williams brings a proven track record of building high-performing teams and strategies that consistently drive commercial success. Before joining DEPT®, he held senior growth roles at Deloitte Digital, ACNE, and Atomic.

Having worked on both agency and consultancy sides, Jack brings a unique perspective on the evolving marketing landscape. He believes in the power of technology to enable transformation, and his advocacy for conceptual creativity has earned him recognition as a top performer in the industry, culminating in his induction into the BD100 Hall of Fame in 2024.

The piece identified the top 10 characteristics of the world’s (then) strongest brands and provided brands with a framework to grade their performance in each area. 

While the marketing landscape has shifted digitally, culturally, and commercially over the last 25 years, Keller’s core principles remain remarkably relevant. If anything, they’ve become even more critical as today’s most resilient brands still tend to exhibit most or all of these characteristics. Many have simply evolved how they deliver on them, incorporating new platforms, consumer expectations, and technology along the way.

We revisited Keller’s attributes to see if they still hold true for durable brands today, and whether the top brands from 2000 have proven their longevity.

Keller opened his report card with perhaps the most foundational trait of all: great brands deliver what people actually want, both at a product level and emotionally, experientially, and even aspirationally. This is the bedrock of brand equity. But brands must anticipate customer intent, tailor experiences, and offer seamless utility across touchpoints. In short: the experience is the product.

His example was Starbucks, which at the time had evolved from selling beans to creating a full-bodied experience. Customers returned for caffeine, plus the aroma, ambience, and sense of community.

Today, Starbucks is still widely viewed as a leader in experience-driven branding. But it’s not without pressure. The rise of independent cafés, inflationary backlash, and in-store automation have prompted questions about whether Starbucks has drifted from its original sensorial appeal.

Still, Starbucks has doubled down on personalisation, loyalty, and convenience. Its mobile app, beverage customisation, and commitment to maintaining a “third space” between home and work suggest it’s still delivering on core consumer desires, adapted for modern behaviours.

Strong brands need to evolve with cultural and market changes while remaining anchored in what makes them themselves. Today, relevance is real-time. Attention spans are short, competition is abundant, and brands must adapt rapidly to trends, shifting values, identities, and expectations.

Keller’s example was Gillette, which built relevance over decades by investing in innovation and launching increasingly advanced razors. It paired this with aspirational messaging (e.g., “The best a man can get”) that adapted over time to reflect changing ideals of masculinity.

But Gillette has since faced some turbulence. While its products have advanced, it failed to anticipate deeper shifts in consumer behaviour—namely, the rise of beards and the decline of daily shaving, especially among younger men. Add to that the disruption from direct-to-consumer competitors like Dollar Shave Club, and Gillette’s relevance took a hit.

The brand attempted a repositioning with more inclusive, socially conscious messaging (remember the 2019 “We Believe” ad?), and expanded its product range to include beard grooming. While these steps intended to take the brand in the right direction, many felt they were reactive rather than visionary.

A more compelling modern example of staying relevant is Nike. Not only has Nike continuously evolved its product lines to reflect style, performance, and sustainability trends, but it’s also remained embedded in culture.

For example, marking its return to the Super Bowl after 27 years, Nike’s 2025 “So Win” campaign spotlighted elite women athletes like Caitlin Clark and Sha’Carri Richardson. The ad confronted stereotypes and double standards faced by women in sport, quickly becoming the brand’s most-watched video on Instagram. By aligning with the rising prominence of women’s sport and addressing the surrounding conversations, Nike demonstrated its ability to tap into the larger cultural landscape in a thoughtful and reverent way.

Strong brands price based on what consumers believe the product or experience is worth, not just cost or competition.

Keller used Procter & Gamble’s Cascade dishwasher detergent as an example. It briefly lowered prices by cutting corners on performance, and when that change was noticed (and attacked by competitors), it hurt the brand’s core promise and forced a reversal. On the flip side, Keller pointed to P&G’s successful shift to everyday low pricing across many product lines, where the perception of value remained intact because quality was maintained.

The lesson? Price should never undermine the brand’s promise.

In 2025, this principle still applies, but with greater complexity. Consumers now assess value on performance as well as sustainability, inclusivity, convenience, and ethics. Brands that try to extract profit margin without delivering meaningful differentiation risk quick backlash in a time when product reviews are a cornerstone of social media.

Great positioning means occupying a specific, desirable niche in the market and defending it over time through clear messaging, experiences, and product decisions. And in 2025, with categories blurring and new players emerging constantly, positioning must be sharper than ever.

Keller’s primary example was Visa, which took on American Express in the ’80s and ’90s not by copying it, but by carving out its own lane: universal acceptance. “Visa—it’s everywhere you want to be” became the essence of the brand.

Visa’s example remains impressively resilient. Today, the brand continues to dominate by ubiquity and reliability. In an age of digital wallets, contactless payments, and crypto speculation, Visa has maintained its position as the default, trusted infrastructure for everyday commerce. It’s still “everywhere,” and it’s still deeply embedded in global consumer behaviour. Its value doesn’t lie in flashiness, but in functioning seamlessly and being accepted without friction.

Unsurprisingly, another defining trait of strong brands is their consistency, or their strategic cohesion across time and touchpoints. Brands that veer too far off course in pursuit of short-term gains often pay a long-term cost.

Keller’s example, Michelob, fell victim to this. The company’s shifting of slogans eroded the brand’s identity, from “Weekends were made for Michelob” to “The night belongs to Michelob” to “Some days are better than others.” It wasn’t clear what the brand stood for, and sales declined.

In an age of infinite channels and touchpoints, consistency is both more important and more difficult to maintain. Brands have to adapt to new platforms and cultural conversations without compromising their core identity.

Coca-Cola continues to be a masterclass in this balance. Its messaging has evolved from “Always Coca-Cola” to “Open Happiness” to today’s “Real Magic,” but the emotional threads of joy, refreshment, and connection have stayed intact. Its logo, colour palette, tone, and experience remain instantly recognisable across packaging, social media, and global markets.

A coherent brand hierarchy is often invisible to consumers but critical to strategic success. Companies need a logical structure to manage multiple brands or sub-brands without cannibalising or confusing the market.

Keller cited BMW’s model as exemplary: The 3, 5, and 7 Series clearly denote ascending tiers of price and luxury, while maintaining a unified brand promise of performance and precision. By contrast, General Motors’ overlapping brands and shared body designs in the 1980s blurred the distinctions between Pontiac, Buick, and Oldsmobile, confusing buyers and weakening equity.

This principle still holds today, as consumers expect sub-brands to feel distinct, yet coherent within the parent brand’s values and standards. 
Disney is a strong example. The parent brand remains synonymous with wholesome, family-friendly storytelling, while its acquired sub-brands like Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar retain their distinct voices and audiences. Disney’s streaming platform subtly reinforces this hierarchy: Titles are clearly housed under their respective franchises, making the architecture intuitive for both children and adults.

Keller stressed that strong brands don’t rely on a single marketing tactic, but orchestrate a full suite of tools to create and reinforce brand meaning. His example was Coca-Cola, which, at the time, blended traditional advertising, sponsorships, packaging, and retail promotions to build an iconic brand.

This principle is more critical now than ever. Today’s marketing landscape is fragmented, fast-moving, and hyper-social. Brands must deploy a coordinated mix of paid, owned, earned, and experiential strategies to maintain relevance and recognition. Marketing is now a networked, omnichannel engine where everything needs to be in sync.

According to Keller, truly great brands are stewarded by people who understand their full meaning, rather than just how they want the brand to be perceived, but how it actually is perceived. He pointed to Bic’s misstep into perfumes as a classic case of brand misunderstanding: A company known for cheap disposables tried to enter a category defined by luxury and intimacy. The result was a disconnect that consumers rejected.

In today’s environment, that kind of brand detachment can be fatal and much faster. Consumers now have platforms to call out misalignment in real time. The brands that endure are those whose leaders listen actively, run ongoing sentiment analysis, and understand the emotional and cultural associations that consumers attach to them.

A strong example of this in action today is KFC. The brand has learned to fully embrace its quirky audience perception, leaning into its offbeat personality with gaming collabs, TikTok-friendly recipes, and playful stunts like chicken-scented merchandise. But that clarity came with some bumps. In 2009, KFC’s “Unthink” campaign attempted to reposition the brand as a healthier option alongside new menu items. But consumers didn’t want a reinvented KFC—they wanted a better version of the food and persona they already loved.

Today, by leaning into indulgence, humour, and nostalgia, KFC has sharpened its identity and built stronger resonance with modern audiences. They’ve shown that knowing what you are (and what you’re not) is foundational to brand durability.

Keller emphasised that building a durable brand requires long-term investment. Cutting marketing or innovation budgets to boost short-term margins may temporarily improve financials, but risks eroding hard-won equity. His example was Shell, which had strong brand differentiation in the late 1970s, but let it erode after pulling back on advertising. By the 1990s, Shell was just another oil company in the eyes of consumers.

The warning still holds. Today’s brand landscape is volatile as attention spans are short, competition is global, and social sentiment can shift overnight. The brands that persist are those that remain committed to the long game, avoid knee-jerk reactions, and continue to fund equity-building even amid disruption.

eBay has weathered decades of digital transformation by consistently supporting its core brand positioning: the marketplace for value, rarity, and discovery. Even as competitors rose, eBay continued to invest in customer trust programmes, seller tools, and a refreshed UX. Its recent focus on enthusiast communities (e.g., trainers, collectibles, and pre-loved fashion) is backed by targeted marketing, not just platform tweaks.

The best brand managers build systems to track how customers feel instead of simply assuming. Keller described brand audits, tracking studies, and formal equity reports as critical tools to understand how a brand is performing and how consumers actually perceive it.

This is arguably the trait that has evolved the most. In 2000, brand tracking meant surveys and focus groups. In 2025, it means leveraging real-time data from search, social, CRM, product usage, subscriber churn, and even biometric UX testing. Brand health is a living, breathing dataset, and the strongest brands build feedback loops between data and decision-making.

Apple, for example, monitors its equity with precision. It tracks customer satisfaction post-purchase, brand favourability in key markets, and loyalty across product cycles. Its response to moments of criticism, such as “Bendgate,” or privacy concerns, often includes both technical improvements and messaging updates. Apple’s ability to spot a shift in sentiment and respond with clarity is a key reason it remains the most valuable brand in the world.

Ultimately, Keller’s point was that brands can’t be managed on instinct alone. Even the most iconic brands need a dashboard. And the best ones don’t just track awareness or recall—they monitor trust, meaning, and alignment with evolving customer expectations.

In the 25 years (or what feels like the blink of an eye) since Kevin Lane Keller introduced his Brand Report Card, its ten characteristics have remained an impressively durable lens through which to evaluate brand strength. In fact, they may be more relevant than ever.
As consumer expectations shift in real time, channels proliferate endlessly, and brand trust proves fragile, the fundamentals Keller outlined — delivering real value, staying relevant, maintaining consistency, and investing in long-term equity — remain the key factors that separate the enduring from the expendable.

What has changed is how these traits manifest in society. Relevance now means aligning with both rapidly evolving culture and technology, alongside enduring values. Pricing strategies blend affordability with signalling purpose and worth. Marketing is less about broadcasting and more about creating a feedback loop. And truly understanding what a brand means to people requires equal measures of empathy and analytics.

Keller’s framework still provides a strategic blueprint. But today, durable brands must operationalise it at the speed of culture, across a vast ecosystem of touchpoints, with a deep understanding of what people want — often before they even say it out loud.

In a constantly shifting world, our commitment to our values stands firm. We believe in taking a pragmatic yet principled approach – rooted in impact, transparency, and accountability – because it makes us a better company and a more resilient one. 

In 2024, we worked with clients all around the world – including ReflexAI, Ocean Spray, the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, and SIGNS (NVIDIA) – to leverage new technologies such as AI to create digital products, experiences, and marketing campaigns that have a lasting positive impact.

As a result of these efforts and the initiatives we’ve taken across the full scope of our business, we achieved our first B Corp recertification in early 2025.

The DEPT® 2024 Impact Report chronicles our proudest accomplishments, our biggest learning moments, and our plans to continue helping our clients leverage digital as a force for good in 2025 and beyond.

Whether we are building accessible digital platforms, shaping AI governance strategies, or advising on sustainability communications, we help clients embed ethics, responsibility, and long-term impact into their digital evolution. 

Each one of these projects leverages the power of technology to drive groundbreaking innovations that leave a lasting impact on our world. Impactful work comprised nearly 10% of our overall global revenue in 2024.

As DEPT® has grown, so has DEPT® Cares. Once a single-afternoon activity for a handful of Depsters in Amsterdam, we expanded this beloved tradition to a month-long initiative in 2023, giving Depsters around the world more opportunity to close their laptops and make a hands-on difference in their communities. 

This year, we celebrated the biggest DEPT® Cares ever: 800+ Depsters – from Melbourne to Boston, Buenos Aires to Berlin, Skopje to Mumbai – showed up for dozens of volunteer opportunities organised by our local teams. We also introduced DEPT® Cares: Holiday Edition, giving Depsters a second opportunity to spend time giving back to their local communities.

Additionally, we gave back 1.2% of our profit, a decrease from last year, but still surpassing our commitment to donate 1% of profit through pro bono work and charitable donations each year.

2024 was a year of transformation, alignment, and foundation-strengthening for DEPT®. Internally, we remained focused on uniting our Depsters under a shared vision – to create a workplace that is not only high-performing but also deeply connected.

To tangibly streamline our operations and move toward a more unified, client-centric approach, we restructured the organisation into regional teams that enhance both commercial and creative excellence.  

2024 laid the foundation for a more cohesive, unified DEPT®: one where our people feel supported, engaged, and inspired to push boundaries for the better of our clients – and the world – together.

In 2024, we took a significant step forward in maintaining DEPT®’s environmental commitments by introducing a new partner: 51 to Carbon Zero. 

51 to Carbon Zero helps us measure our emissions and work closely on reduction, and we have already made valuable improvements to our reduction strategy, including submitting science-based targets. However, our carbon footprint increased by 25% due to improvements to our measurement approach. 

Nevertheless, we remain confident in our ability to mitigate our environmental impact. Going forward, we’ve adjusted our environmental strategy with several initiatives – including a locally-led Housing Strategy – in order to align with the Paris Climate Agreement’s pursuit of “net zero” emissions. 

The 2025 edition presented a new level of creative and operational challenge: coordinating sponsors and stakeholders across multiple time zones and managing logistics for screen activations across Europe and North America. In collaboration with Global, blowUP media, adtrackmedia, and StandardVision, Studio Dumbar/DEPT® embraced this complexity, elevating the creative direction, technical execution, and logistical orchestration to meet the moment.

For the third iteration of the Design in Motion Festival, we developed a new visual identity to reflect DEMO’s international expansion. A distorted, playful globe emerged as a key motif, complementing the festival’s iconic motion-first design language. The DEMO logo and typographic system stayed central, while we evolved the brand colour to complete the RGB cycle: red in 2019, green in 2022, and now blue for 2025.

To extend the experience beyond physical locations, we launched the DEMOverse, an interactive digital universe built in collaboration with VLGE. Comprising 10 thematic 3D worlds—each populated by wandering DEMO letters—the DEMOverse brought the entire motion collection online, accessible to anyone, anywhere.

Sound presented another frontier for creative experimentation. Drawing from IDM, ambient, and hardcore influences, our team developed a full sonic library in tandem with motion tests—layering ethereal atmospheres with textured rhythms to elevate each screen’s emotional impact.

And in partnership with Italian sportswear company Macron, we created a limited-edition DEMO 2025 jersey that turned motion design into wearable art.

Designers from 92 countries submitted more than 5,300 motion works—surpassing all previous records. From that, our curatorial team selected 600 artworks to display across 250 digital screens in global hubs, including Amsterdam, Brussels, Hamburg, Madrid, Barcelona, Cardiff, Leeds, Los Angeles, and Vancouver. The animations were made to fit bespoke screen dimensions, turning each public display into a curated exhibition space.

DEMO 2025 reached millions of people, transforming how we engage with public space and visual culture. And with the DEMOverse, that reach extended far beyond physical borders, cementing DEMO’s position as the leading global platform for motion design.