DPDK’s creativity series part 3: rethinking CX as the Creative Experience

We’re living in the age of the customer. Brands are hellbent on providing the best customer experience (CX) and are embarking on all kinds of CX initiatives. Even so, most of today’s brands struggle to offer memorable experiences that set them apart from the crowd. 

Why do you think that is?

The way I see it, brands are missing an essential ingredient of an exceptional CX: creativity. Creativity is crucial to providing engaging experiences and inspiring customers. So much so that I’d even go as far as to say that we need to rethink our understanding of what CX stands for and start looking at it as the Creative Experience. 

Many of today’s digital experiences lack the creativity they need to resonate with and engage their audiences. Without creativity, brands end up creating vanilla experiences that have nothing special or notable to offer. It’s no wonder CX has become stagnant over recent years. 

The key to tackling this CX standstill? The Creative Experience. 

You’re probably wondering what I mean by that. I like to think of the Creative Experience as CX 2.0: a CX that focuses on leveraging creativity as a differentiator and applying it to each and every customer touchpoint. 

Creative experiences bring more to the table than fast-loading websites, apps with seamless navigation, and portals with personalized customer journeys. Don’t get me wrong - all that is crucial to a superior CX. But just as important is offering out-of-the-box experiences that evoke customers’ curiosity and leave a positive mark. 

Think about how Build-A-Bear Workshop revolutionized the stuffed animal toy market by offering a unique, interactive in-store experience and giving customers the chance to build a customized stuffed animal. Or how Spotify conquered the world by combining creativity and technology to offer an unparalleled listening experience. These brands are successful because they make creativity a priority in the experiences they create. In doing so, they leave lasting impressions that keep customers coming back for more.

Some of our own work can also attest to the power of creative experiences. Like the fizzy, bubbly, award-winning website we created for 7UP. 

Using 7UP’s graphic legacy and product portfolio, we designed a vibrant and fully animated website that leverages creative storytelling to depict what 7UP is all about. A combination of photography, illustrations, and animations were developed to make the site pop and fizz just like a 7UP bottle. Each page offers a tantalizing experience through unique animations and themed transitions: from bubbles to bursts, it’s all there. 

The website brings 7UP’s heritage to life with bright colors and playful interactions that take site visitors on a journey through the brand’s story and products. Each animation, theme, and page is designed to tempt visitors to gulp down a bottle of 7UP. 

Another great example is our work with Naturalis, one of the world’s top natural history museums. We helped them redesign their website and develop a web application that offers visitors an intriguing virtual exhibition featuring the most admired masterpieces from Naturalis’s collection. 

We used creativity as the guiding principle and designed a website that attracts site visitors with bright colors, high-quality photos, animated flora and fauna, and motion design. The site draws visitors to learn more about the collection while representing what Naturalis is all about: the beauty of nature. 

Apart from the website, we developed a museum app that displays Naturalis’s top 200 masterpieces in an enticing and educational virtual exhibition. The app offers interactive tours and enables users to seamlessly browse through the collection to discover nature’s treasures. Both the website and app were designed with the goal of encouraging museum visits, and creativity played a big role in achieving that.

More recently, we joined forces with HKliving and developed a customer-centric, future-proof website with an integrated e-commerce store. Unlike most e-commerce platforms, which tend to prioritize functionality over design, HKliving’s website was built by combining form and function to offer an unparalleled digital experience.  

One of the ways we did this is with the site’s horizontal scrolling panel, which enables site visitors to browse through different content or navigate directly to what they’re looking for, all while offering a differentiated experience. We also designed a digital catalog on the site to bring the feeling of flipping through a physical catalog online. This way, site visitors can browse through products, get inspired, and directly add items to their shopping cart. 

Our work with 7UP, Naturalis, and HKliving are a testament to what can be achieved when creativity takes center stage and leads the way in the experiences you craft. 

Customer expectations are at an all-time high and connecting with customers is becoming more difficult by the day. Not to mention competition is only getting fiercer. Which is why creative experiences are key to grabbing customers’ attention and differentiating your brand. 

It’s time to embrace creativity as our superpower and make it a priority in the experiences we curate. I’d like to say that the C in CX should stand for “creative.” In fact, we have a whole guide to back me up on that.

That isn’t to say that we should ignore our customers. Instead, we need to create experiences that intrigue and entice them. Think of creativity as the means to the end: your creative experiences will play a big part in how customers remember your brand and whether or not they come back. Because truth be told, creative experiences sell. Let’s get creative and delight our customers with experiences that they can’t get enough of.