Event
Dopamine: The Agency Creatives Conference
Event details
Meet other creative directors and share how you’re balancing creativity with commerciality.
Get first hand knowledge on how to find your unique agency footprint on a well walked road, and discover ways to educate clients on the importance of creative teams.
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Event Manifesto
The Creative Leadership Conference
Event curated by:
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Abi Donoghue
Agency Hackers
“Advertising isn’t in a wonderful place. The next few years are going to be brutal.”
The creative industry is in a strange place.
AI is still accelerating. Everything is starting to look the same. ‘Good enough’ work is taking over. Clients are flakier than ever. Storytelling is beginning to feel like a lost art. And some creative leaders are wondering if the creative sector is losing its soul a bit.
But something else is happening beneath all the chaos.
Despite the rise of AI, automated, and templated content, people are already starting to look for actual human creativity. Lived experiences, emotions, and stories that can’t be replicated by AI. Work that’s fully shaped by real creatives is beginning to stand out more than ever.
“Being human on purpose still has the most value,” and having real creatives in the industry still matters.
This is where Dopamine comes in.
It’s a space for Creative Directors to talk honestly, and reconnect with the craft, the people, and the purpose behind the work.
At Dopamine, we will be talking openly about the pressure to stay original when everything is so easy to replicate. About how teams are losing curiosity, attention is shrinking, and how to find an identity in an oversaturated market.
You’ll hear the real stories from your peers, from the doubts to the breakthroughs to the frustration.
Because in a world where everything is accelerating, automating, and optimising, creativity’s future depends on what’s always made it powerful – you.
SPEAKERS
⏳ Your speakers
How Customer Insight & Brain Science Build Campaigns AI Can’t Imitate
“Storytelling literally gives you a dopamine hit,” says Charli Edwards, creative director at Cavendish.
Charli’s job is to make “boring” brands feel anything but. From water companies to data centres, she leads campaigns that use insight and behavioural science to change real-world behaviour.
Storytelling isn’t just fluff, it’s neuroscience.
AI can do a decent enough at mimicking words these days, but it can’t trigger emotion.
Charli will be talking how dopamine, oxytocin, and empathy drive behaviour change.
She will share how testing and behavioural insight reshape creative work even when clients resist.And why the agencies that master human stories will outlast every algorithmic trend.
How Team Knowlton blends AI and human creativity to win big campaigns
“We use AI as a tool to enhance what we do as humans – not to replace it,” says Dan Knowlton, co-founder of creative agency Knowlton. “It’s about getting better outcomes, not cheaper work.”
AI can’t replace creativity, but it can accelerate it.
Team Knowlton uses AI to enhance human expertise, not erase it. From sales calls to storyboards, it’s about efficiency and empathy.
Dan shows how to build campaigns that win hearts – and clients.
This is creativity with a human edge, powered by smart AI use.
Being Human On Purpose
“We’re human on purpose,” says Lee Bofkin. “That’s what keeps us safe from being replaced.”
AI is changing how we create and how we think.
Advertising has become an offshoot of tech, chasing metrics not meaning.
But for every trend, there’s a counter-trend, and Lee, co-founder of Global Street Art, thinks that humanity is the counter-trend.
Lee argues that “human on purpose” work is the only real differentiation left.
This is a call to stay messy, tactile, and defiantly alive in a pixel-perfect world.
Workflows for Originality
“Originality isn’t magic, it’s a workflow,”
When AI can replicate almost anything, the real edge lies in how human brains generate ideas.
Dan Caplin’s spent the last year helping ADHD founders and creative leaders design what he calls dopamine-driven workflows.
“Attention is collapsing. Curiosity is fading. Teams stop asking why, and originality dies,” he says.
In this talk, Dan explores how neurodivergent minds fuel originality through their own unique wiring, non-linear thinking, emotional reasoning, and pattern-spotting that machines can’t mimic.
He’ll also share why most agencies accidentally smother creativity with over-process and “just-ship-it” culture, and how to rebuild environments that protect curiosity instead of crushing it.
By the end, you’ll see creativity as an intentional dopamine-powered workflow – and you’ll walk away with a 10-minute creative reset you can use tomorrow to restore curiosity, storytelling, and real originality in your team.
Asking Better Questions in a World of Answers
“If AI is the answer machine, then curiosity is the question machine.”
For Nikki Fraser, founder of Curious London, curiosity isn’t just her agency’s name, it’s their creative engine.
She says, “Curiosity is our basic human state. It’s the thing that drives everything we do.”
Now, as the industry rushes to embrace AI, Nikki argues we’ve never needed curiosity more.
“Algorithms are built on certainty, predicting the next word based on what’s come before. Curiosity is the opposite. It’s the desire for the unknown, for what’s around the corner.”
She believes that the best creative work starts not with what clients ask for, but with why they’re asking.
“If a client says, ‘We want a rebrand,’ that’s never the real brief,” she says. “It’s usually that something’s changed. It could be their market, their team, their ambitions. You can’t fix that with just a logo.”
In this session, Nikki explores the biological and creative power of curiosity, from the ‘seeking system’ in our brains to the rush of connecting unexpected dots.
It isn’t a soft skill, it’s your differentiator. We’re in a world with infinite answers, so the agencies asking better questions are the ones that will continue to grow.
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