Becoming One: Our Evolution to a Creative Experience Agency

DCG ONE chief commercial officer, Andy Lueck, joins host Greg Oberst on The Whole Idea podcast. Andy offers full details on the company’s new brand positioning as a creative experience agency. Andy explains how this latest evolution of the 60-year-old company was sparked by rapid changes in technology, shifting consumer trends, and higher customer expectations. The new brand positioning comes complete with an empowering new client project tool: The customer experience portal (CXP). Listen now to the full story.   

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Transcript

March 20, 2025 

The Whole Idea Podcast 

Season 2, Episode 3—Transcript 

Becoming One: Our Evolution to a Creative Experience Agency  

Greg: 

Big changes are afoot at DCG ONE and in our sixty-something year history, it's not our first transformation because, well, that's what leaders do, evolve. Hello everyone. Welcome to the Whole idea podcast by DCG ONE. I'm Greg Oberst on the big show today is Andy Lueck, Chief commercial officer at DCG ONE, speaking from the heart of all the excitement around here. Welcome, Andy.  

Andy:  

Thanks for having me, Greg.  

Greg:  

Not sure if the paint on that new title of yours is quite dry yet, having just taken the reins from Tammy Peniston, our former CCO, how are those big shoes fitting so far?  

Andy: 

Well, those are some very big shoes. Yeah, the paint is still fresh, but so far it's going well. We're busy.  

Greg: 

Yes, it's been busy indeed, and, a big initiative you've been leading here at DCG ONE, which actually goes back to before Tammy's departure. We've been working on this for quite a while now—our transformation as a brand to a creative experience agency, which has a lot of parts to it and well that's part of the point as well, isn't it? Tell me about this phase one as we're in enterprise to agency.  

Andy: 

Enterprise to agency is really our opportunity with all of our history, largely as a print manufacturing business along the way, we decided to start up a true creative agency, and that's gone quite well over the last 15 years. And now we're at this point where we can look at new opportunities and how we can unify those two capabilities, our print manufacturing and our creative services and program services that we provide for our customers.  

So that's really presenting us with a really great opportunity in the in the marketplace.  

Greg: 

And it's that opportunity that DCG ONE is going to embrace as a now creative experience agency. Let's dive into that positioning.  

Andy:  

Yeah, let's take it word by word. Creative experience agency. On the surface, we are a full-service agency. That is how we are positioning ourselves. We are very, very capable. But we also have our roots and history in printing and manufacturing. Does this mean we are no longer a printer? No, we are absolutely a print and manufacturing business. In fact, we see that as our superpower. Let me kind of explain.  

So, Creative. Creative for DCG ONE is our ability to come up with new and innovative ideas. We have a lot of creative people here, both in our creative services, obviously, and also throughout the rest of our organization. And I think a lot of individuals, even as I'm talking about this here, may say, well, how am I creative?  

And the way that we can think about the word creative, yes, it describes someone, you could historically describe me as a creative, a creative director, you know, an art director, creative director, but it also is a way of doing something.  

In our mission and values, we talk about spark, we talk about that's our word for innovation, you know, that is a that's an example of creative. It's us thinking about how we can create different things and making unique things and then solving customer challenges. We have those every day.  

What's really interesting about our business is that yes, we're a print and manufacturing business and I like that word manufacturing because a lot of manufacturers manufacture a product or products that are very specific, and they're repeated. They're kind of stamping out that product. We do that every day, probably 100 different ways, and every day is different for lots of different customers.  

We are constantly manufacturing something new that requires a creative approach to think about how we're going to solve this particular manufacturing challenge for this specific customer on this day versus something else tomorrow. So, yes, creative, meaning we have that capability and we have those people here, but also how we think creatively for our customers.  

Greg: 

And then: Experience.  

Andy: 

OK, experience. That is a pretty loaded word these days. Everybody wants an experience and it does mean those things and we have certainly created some really exceptional experiences for our customers and their customers, both on the consumer and the B2B side, even in the employment side. We are really good at that. But if we really break it down, it really means it's something that people can interact with either digitally or physically, tangible. We're exceptional at both of those domains.  

We can create a physical thing, and we can create a digital thing. So for us, experience is really about connecting those two things and sometimes we're delivering purely a digital, you know, web application or a mobile app. Other times we are putting ink on paper and crafting something for our customer that's a book or a high-end catalog or a direct mail piece. Those are experiences, they're all the same and they all have equal value to us.  

We don't look at one having more or less value, we deliver on whatever those experiences are.  

Greg:  

Particularly when you talk about the customer journey and the different touch points that happen along that way can be both worlds.  

Andy: 

Yeah, I'm glad you bring that up because I think again, that's where our opportunity is. Print may be our superpower, and we have these services and capabilities, but what you just mentioned is really our opportunity. How do we connect those two worlds in new ways that are meaningful, memorable, but we can also bring some insight on how they're working and how they're meeting the demand of the customer.  

Greg: 

OK, customer experience, I think we still have “Agency” in there.  

Andy: 

“Agency,” last but not least, another loaded term on the surface is exactly what we're saying. We're an agency, we're a full-service agency and you know, it really does describe what we do collectively, but it also has another meaning that I like to bring to the surface is that.  

Agency also means having the power to make choices and take action.  

So if you look it up, yes, it describes us as an organization, as a company, but it also means we have the ability to make choices and take action. We have agency over everything we do every day.  

We've written some of that in our mission and values and that we really want to empower every individual here at DCG ONE to have agency over what they do and to make those decisions, do what's right for the customer.  

And so a little bit of a double entendre there for us, but I think one that works really well for who we are and the diversity of capabilities and services that we have. But at the end of the day, we also are excited about this term agency as the organization that we are we are and that we're going to be, meaning we're going to bring great creative experiences as an agency on behalf of our customers for their customers, for consumers in new and exciting ways, and that's very unique to DCG ONE.  

Greg: 

I mentioned earlier that this isn't our first rodeo when it comes to evolution here at DCG ONE. Let's spend a minute on why change is so important.  

Andy: 

The landscape is shifting all the time. We have to stay ahead of it. In fact, that's what our customers expect from us. What we printed 20, 30 years ago and how we did it is entirely different today. We now have digital presses that can do really amazing things compared to just, you know, offset lithography or web presses, so the technology is obviously, you can see the change there, but how are we making those changes relevant to the marketplace and to our customers? That's what's driving our transformation.  

Not only are we taking that as an opportunity to evolve, but we actually want to jump ahead. We want to get even further out, and I think our biggest opportunity there is really the advent of this intelligence of AI LLMs, and machine learning. And this transformation is really the underpinning the foundation of what we're going to do next, which hopefully will catapult us even further ahead in the marketplace to offer our customers things that they may not even be ready for quite yet, but we're going to start to pave the way for them.  

Greg: 

Technology is creating the opportunities for higher expectations for customers, be they B2B or B2C.  

Andy:  

That's a really great way to summarize it there. Our customers and their customers, whether they're consumer or the business side, they're just expecting more with all the data and intelligence around all of us as individuals and these days, yeah, data, they're like you should know what I want. You should know what color I like, you know, I'm oversimplifying, but like that's the expectation and if we as an agency, a unified agency are not. Working toward that expectation to deliver on that and even expecting before our customers know it, then we're really not doing our job. I mean, that is what that is what we do here.  

Greg: 

Well, there's a pretty powerful proof point in this whole discussion about our transformation. A manifestation of our commitment to empower clients, marketers, and businesses. He even has a cool name, CXP  

Andy: 

Yeah, three very distinct letters with a lot that goes behind that. So we have an entire technology platform that we've built out. it's very robust, it's very scalable, and we can say as of today, DCG ONE is a software company. We have our own application.  

Greg: 

All right, what does CXP software do exactly?  

Andy: 

Let me kind of break it down. CXP stands for Customer Experience portal, and we intentionally labeled that because what we're trying to bring is DCG ONE's customer experience, the experience we want to create and that we want to bring to our customers and how they Work and partner with us every day.  

To kind of back up why we built this technology, and I'll kind of explain what it's doing today and what it will do for us in the future, but, but how did we get here? Why did we do this? I've been here for some time, over 11 years and largely again working on the agency side before I stepped in as chief commercial officer this year. And there was a keynote address by John Chambers, who was the CEO of Cisco Systems at the time. And everybody in the in the room, lots of different organizations, at this summit, and he basically said 40% of you will all be out of business in 10 years unless you go through digital transformation. It's a pretty big statement, and I remember that really resonated with me, yeah, right, like, OK, that's like half the room… 

Greg: That puts a lot of people in the back of their chairs… 

Andy:  

Yeah, but for me that always stuck because what I'd recognize is that, you know, our agency, our collective organization had really not been through digital transformation. Does that mean we weren't using technologies? No, we use a ton of technology. Both sides, agency and the creative services side, we actually build technology and deploy technology for our customers.  

But on the print manufacturing side, use a ton of technologies to enable those capabilities and I mean it's down to physical things to regulating humidity in the room down to putting variable data through a digital press, all these technologies to help deliver. But we ourselves had not connected all those things in one unified technology, and we needed to do that. We needed to bring all that together, so that we could connect all the parts of our business as we're all working together on campaigns and projects and programs.  

And so we developed the CXP to do that and we did it because that's what our customers are demanding. They see the work that we do, they need an interface to understand where is it going, how is it tracking, how is it performing. And that's really the first reason we developed the CXP.  

Greg: 

What can CXP do today?  

Andy: 

Today for our customers, CXP can bring frontline information about any single job or project that's coming through our ecosystem, east or west. They can track that job down to where it is inside of our ecosystem, inside of our platform, from being initiated to being in production, to being in service to being delivered. They can also track delivery through the US Postal Service and through other shippers like UPS. In addition to that, they can also track some very initial reporting on the performance of, let's say a campaign or delivery.  

We do a lot of retail distributed retail environments, and a lot of signage programs. Those are really complex, delivering to multiple locations with multiple variables in terms of like structure and assets, and they're managed individually. That's very, very, very complex and to ask one individual to do that inside of a retail brand is really challenging. We're hoping to alleviate a lot of that. Check and balance through an interface where they can just track it automatically or even send them reports.  

So today we have about a dozen customers on it we're piloting with. We're looking to rapidly expand that, and our goal is that every customer who does work for DCG ONE will be connected to the CXP to understand exactly where their project, their campaign is at any given time inside of our ecosystem.  

So it's really about bringing insights and accountability immediately to our customers.  

Greg: 

Any size project?  

Andy: 

Any size project and they can be multifaceted. It could be as simple as something that we just simply print and hand off to the to the customer. It could be something that is tied to a direct mail campaign that might have a QR code attached to it across a long list of contacts or leads, through let's say a direct marketing campaign. It can also be complex retail signage programs with lots of variables. Any size project at any scale will be delivered through the CXP to our customers. Through a single sign-on, easy access, they can track it 24/7.  

Greg: 

Kind of a one-stop portal for soup to nuts information on your project.  

Andy: 

Yeah. I mean, it'll tie to things like ultimately SLAs and how we're servicing. We see it as a kind of a centerpiece to some of the servicing work we do here with our programs. We're also looking at enhancing that over time, with new features and functions, and largely those new features and functions will come from our customers' demand. What, what would they like to see next inside this portal? What would they, what would they need to make their day a little bit easier to manage their projects, their campaigns, and their programs here at DCG ONE?  

Greg: 

Anything in particular that you see us incorporating in terms of new technologies and how this might scale? 

Andy:  

The advantage we have is that we're really taking the latest technology and platform. To create a more capable and scalable set of technologies for us, for our business and for our customers. And when you think about how these systems were created 5, 10 years ago, they're very expensive, really complex, and they required a lot of interfaces, a lot of, UI, a lot of thought going through. This is really about integrations, this is really about connections.  

So for example, we can connect anyone of our customers directly to their CRM. We can connect them to other APIs and microservices that we've built within our ecosystem across the technologies that we use. So let's say direct marketing, you want to tap into a marketing automation platform, we can connect to that directly and create more automation and seamless use of our entire platform to any other specific platform, that's a lot of platforms for our customers, but primarily around the CRM and marketing automation platforms.  

What I'm really excited though is that when we constructed this new platform, we built it on the Azure OpenAI instance and that's really going to afford us to do some really interesting things in terms of innovation. Again, that spark we were talking about earlier for bringing in intelligent insights to our customer across campaigns. And that technology has such an amazing future for us and we're just getting started. So that's really the kind of one-two punch.  

We've built the portal to bring information about a project campaign to our customers first and foremost. They're going to have that, they have that today. But what we can do in the future with the platform we've built is pretty extensible. If a customer wants to know a thing or wants to automate a thing, we now have that capability to do that, whereas before, We would have to kind of connect multiple technologies cobbled together as a one-off. That's really challenging to service and scale that, and it makes it hard for our customers to move in and out of different portals. This is one streamlined brand is an interface, if you will, for our customers.  

Greg: 

Well, this is all starting to feel pretty novel to me, especially when you talk about the future potential of, of this particular CXP tool and the way we're executing it.  

Andy: 

If you think about just about any interaction you have today, there is some form of technology infused in it. It's interesting that our core business, the largest part of our business, is a manufacturing business, but so is Ford Motor Company or any other, you know, auto automotive company. I would bet that if you asked any one of their leaders what kind of business and company they were, even though we're a manufacturer, they would say we are a technology company first. We just happen to manufacture cars and that technology is completely embedded inside of everything that we do.  

And so, yeah, so your interface, whether it's, you know, through the dashboard or through unlocking it or whatever, there's a platform of technology that sits inside of that and that's not how we see what we do that, you know, not only moving through our ecosystem. But the next frontier for us is how do we now infuse technology in some of the products and solutions that we're creating. And that's probably a whole other podcast of some of the innovation that we're looking at.  

But what kind of new products, specifically in tangible forms, let's say like print, like direct mail, or maybe in a retail point of purchase display, what kind of technology can we infuse inside of there to connect those two worlds? And that's the most exciting part for us here.  

Now that we have this platform, it allows us to go dream big, if you will, and imagine what might be possible. And some things will work and some things won't, but we do believe there's opportunity there to infuse technology and intelligence into something as simple as paper. So that's what we're looking at for our next phase.  

Greg: 

And the rebranding efforts typically include an updated or new set of vision and mission statements, value pillars. You alluded to one earlier. What are those new brand attributes for DCG ONE?  

Andy: 

I have an idea. How about you read them off to me… 

Greg: 
You got them there?  

Andy: Yeah, yeah. And why don't I try to unpack them? How's that sound?  

Greg: 

Okay, sure. OK, let's look at vision first of all then: To be the best strategic partner for the most ambitious brands.  

Andy:  

Yeah, you know, the word strategy is a very loaded term here, but we really look at it as, yes, it could be a standalone thing that we do, but really it's just infused in our DNA. Everyone here across our entire organization thinks strategically and we're always trying to find better ways to Deliver for a customer, whether that be speed or you know through efficiency or saving them money or getting better results. That is just woven into our DNA here.  

I think that comes from a long history of just intention and craftsman and we want to partner with brands that have ambition. Goals and set high standards both in quality and the performance of what they want to do with their marketing or their business and so we're really just kind of, you know, laying claim to what we bring to the table and who we're looking for in a partner. Bring your ambitions and dream big.  

Greg: 

OK, let's move on to one mission to make every customer experience more meaningful by transforming creativity, discipline, and innovation into strategic partnership.  

Andy: 

You know that really stems from the new positioning as a creative experience agency and that we believe no matter what experience comes through our organization and is delivered and whether that's delivered through digital means and let's say a web application or an interface or it's something physical and tangible that can be sent through the US Post Office or shipped directly to a retail environment.  

Those are all experiences and whether we've shaped that from beginning to end and created it or we've just had a touch in moving it forward for a client, we are delivering a creative experience and it is going to be meaningful and memorable, and we're going to focus on what our customers need first and foremost, and we're going to make sure we're delivering on that every day.  

So we've really written that into this new positioning, creative experience agency, and we believe it, we do it every day.  

Greg 
OK, that's the vision and mission. This next one, I like this: One Team. As One Team, we work hand in hand across the organization because it guarantees the success of our company and our clients.  

Andy: 

This is an interesting one. When I first started here, I was part of the naming process to become DCG ONE.  

Greg; 

You have been here a while.  

Andy:  

Been here a minute, yeah. And so I was reflecting on that a little bit and this is my favorite one because In order for us to go do all of these things, to, to dream big as we were saying earlier, and to go deliver on these experiences, we can't do it as separate divisions or entities. We have to do it in a unified way. And so the sum of our parts being the print manufacturing work that we do and the creative and program services that we have, those need to be threaded together.  

And the more that we unify those things and we're all rowing in the same direction, we're going to deliver exceptional value for our customers, but we can't do it apart and we have a range of talent and experience here like no other agency, and we have crafts people that have been doing this for a long time.  

We have, you know, more junior talent have come into this business with ideas and innovation and we're trying to combine all those things into to new things as as one. So it's an exciting time to be here. And that statement alone is, is really, really the reason for the transformation that we're going through as an organization.  

Greg: Very good. One set of values, what should our work be? And you've got 3 points to this one.  

Andy:  

All right, bring all 3.  

Greg: 

The first one: Do what's right for the customers.  

Andy: 

Yeah, I mean, you know, at the end of the day, if, if we're doing any particular task or something around a campaign or a project, and it doesn't feel right for our customer. We got to stop and ask ourselves, is this the way we should be doing it? It has to start there. And I think we're hoping that that statement will empower individuals at every level to make choices, make decisions to improve whatever we're doing for that customer right there and then.  

Greg: 

OK, this next one in under Values: We're tied to our mission.  

Andy:  

When we go through a new rebrand and positioning and develop these mission and value statements, you know, we need to really make sure that we're, we're adhering to those. They're created for a purpose. It's not just something we're going to put on the wall. We're going to try to our best every day to live and breathe that mission, those values. So, you know, our customer always comes first, but second to that, and these are in priority is, are you tied to our mission? You know, are you here to help us achieve this as one organization?  

Greg: 

And then finally under values we have: We're here to be better than ever.  

Andy: 

That's a loaded one. I mean better than ever for obviously our customers and our organization, but also for ourselves and how can we together bring us all along for this journey to go hopefully succeed for our customers and for ourselves. And yet every day there's an opportunity to do it maybe a little better, a little differently and Whether that's innovation or just something really simple in terms of a process, it can be better every day, and we should rally everybody around that.  

Greg: 
Finally here, under One Team values is this: How do we accomplish all of that? You have here first: We stressed the details.  

Andy:  

Yeah, it's one thing to say, hey, go, go act this way, go achieve, you know, this mission, but what I think you'll find throughout our 60-year-plus history is that the details are always what set us apart from our competitors and customers come back to us and even if there's a challenge, or there's always going to be a challenge, what we pride ourselves on is that the details, the little things are actually going to go a long way. Yeah, I'd like to compare it to something that goes out through delivery here.  

We deliver it to a lot of different, you know, individuals, a lot of different locations. I mean, it's pretty incredible the amount of reach we have. That last touch point as soon as it's put into an envelope or it's put into a truck to be shipped somewhere, that is the last touch point. That is a very, very specific detail. We need to stress it all the way down to that. That's our last chance to impart or influence that that experience. So that's a, that's a detail. Details matter. Stress details for us and for our customers.  

Greg: 

Yeah, for our client, that's the unboxing experience we're sending down the road there.  

Andy: It's, it's a great way to put it, yeah.  

Greg:  

And then: Sparked the conversation.  

Andy: 

This is my favorite. We're trying to look back again in our history and you know we have this history, especially on the manufacturing side, where we'll see a problem or a challenge and we'll invent something right there on the spot. It might actually be a physical like piece of hardware or machinery that we will machine and create to do an intentional job. And I just like that that's the spark of an idea and we want to carry that throughout our entire organization that we want power everybody, you know, from, from the top all the way down, like you have an idea, you have a thought, you've sparked a notion, act on that. Say something. How can we do it better? And ultimately that conversation sparked by a thought or idea that will lead to innovation or maybe an efficiency or something entirely new.  

Greg: 

Yeah, and your last one here is very connected to that as well: Push the possible.  

Andy: 
Yeah, it's almost kind of a one-two punch there. I think too, you know, with our new technology that we've unified under, the new organization, changes that we're looking at through transformation, we can really push the possible into areas that we don't even know about yet in terms of new solutions and offerings for our customers. That's the most exciting thing for me here.  

We have this entire set of capabilities and services that If we push a little bit further of what what's possible today, we're going to find new things that we didn't even know existed and things that will work and resonate with our with our customers. That's an exciting place for us, and we, we're built differently.  

We have a little different superpower as an agency with our print manufacturing delivery, that puts us in a different place.  

Greg: 

Andy, thanks for joining us on the podcast today and telling us about our transformation.  

Andy:  

Yeah, thanks for having me, Greg. We're looking forward to the next chapter for DCG ONE. Exciting time to be here and exciting time to be a customer. Look forward to talking about it more.  

Greg: 

Yeah, more to come.  

Here are my key takeaways: DCG ONE is now a creative experience agency, brand stewards with exceptional and integrated capabilities for digital and physical marketing. All touch points, not to mention strategy expertise, print superpower, all working in concert to deliver meaningful and memorable experiences that meet or exceed our customers' higher expectations.  

As for the customer experience portal or CXP, think of it as centralized and streamlined access to key systems that power client projects from strategic tools to metrics that help optimize campaigns to production and shipment tracking, transparency, visibility, and empowerment, all to be more efficient than ever.  

My thanks again to Andy Lueck, chief commercial officer at DCG ONE. If you have questions for Andy or want to talk further about the customer experience portal or DCG ONE as a creative experience agency, feel free to drop us a line at podcast at DCGONE.com.  

Thank you very much for listening. Our Whole Idea podcast producer is Kelcie Brewer. I'm Greg Oberst. Watch this channel for our next podcast and more expertise, insight and inspiration for whole idea marketing.  

Take care.