Independent creative agency ATime&Place has launched DEEP, a new Digital Experience & Entertainment Practice designed to help brands build always-on, interactive digital worlds that extend beyond traditional campaign thinking.
The new practice expands the agency into brand-owned entertainment, end-to-end digital product development, customer experience design and gaming, bringing together product, creative and technology capabilities across native apps, e-commerce, loyalty programs and community ecosystems.
It comes as Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences – expected to command more than $12 trillion in global spending power by 2030 – increasingly favour interactive digital environments over traditional campaign-led marketing.
Speaking to B&T, Hansen and Lawson said DEEP is designed to close what they describe as “a widening gap between ideation and realisation”, with a focus on building environments audiences can actively participate in, rather than passively consume.
DEEP will be led by Hansen and Lawson, with creative director Chris Jovanov – who joined the agency six months ago from AKQA, R/GA, Leo Burnett and Clemenger BBDO – also working across the practice.
Dumb Ways to Die
What began as a simple rail safety message in 2012 for Metro Trains Melbourne quickly became one of the most successful public service campaigns ever created.
Instead of fear-based messaging, Dumb Ways to Die leaned into humour, music and colourful animation — turning a serious message into something audiences actually wanted to watch, and share.
The campaign’s now-iconic characters met absurd, exaggerated ends before landing its core point: many real-world train accidents come down to small, avoidable mistakes.
It didn’t stay a campaign for long.
The film became a global cultural moment, and in 2013 evolved into a mobile game that invited audiences to actively participate — not just watch — by trying to save the same characters from danger.
From there, it expanded into merchandise, spin-offs and ongoing digital experiences, becoming a sustained entertainment ecosystem rather than a one-off execution.
For DEEP, that evolution isn’t just a success story, it’s also the blueprint.
Hansen said the campaign proved how value compounds when ideas are built as platforms, not moments.
At its peak, she said, Dumb Ways to Die generated $10 million in additional revenue outside of ticket sales, alongside more than 7 billion game sessions.
“It starts to work out real different return on investment models when you start to look at inhabiting these worlds and having your own platforms and products,” she said.
Lawson said its longevity is what makes it significant.
“It is a really good example, because it just shows a train safety campaign created a world that still lives on,” he said. “There’s people still playing the games.”
The fight against the ‘blandscape’
DEEP launches into what its founders see as a rapidly shifting creative landscape — one where AI is fuelling an explosion of content, but also a creeping sameness.
Lawson warned that efficiency may be coming at the cost of originality.
“With the rise of AI… content is cheaper to generate than ever,” he said. “But the big fear is we will enter a world of a blandscape for brands — a monotonous mush.”
The answer, he argues, isn’t more content — it’s better worlds.
“We see ourselves as the world building business,” Lawson said. “Those worlds will be given depth through digital experiences that provide real utility and real entertainment.”
Building worlds people return to
At its core, DEEP is about shifting brands away from short-term bursts of attention and toward always-on ecosystems.
That means playable experiences, branded games, loyalty and community platforms, e-commerce environments and interactive digital products — all designed to evolve over time.
Rather than treating digital as a channel for campaigns, DEEP positions it as the foundation for continuous engagement, where ideas grow and adapt based on how audiences interact with them.
Hansen said that shift requires a rethink of how success is measured.
“We’re changing KPIs to things like dwell time, share rate and K-factor – which is virality,” she said.
It also changes how ideas are developed in the first place.
“We don’t just come up with the idea,” Hansen said. “We’ll do the commercial forecasting on what that idea could bring, and what the 12-month roadmap actually looks like.”
A world ‘people actually want to live inside’
The launch comes as gaming platforms and interactive environments continue to reshape how audiences engage with brands — particularly younger consumers who expect participation, not interruption.
Lawson is careful not to overstate the ambition, positioning DEEP as a formalisation of where the best work is already heading.
“We don’t want to be that audacious that we’re going to say this is going to redefine digital marketing,” he said.
“But this is what the best of digital marketing and brand experience are doing.”
The real shift, he suggests, is structural.
DEEP aims to scale that thinking into a dedicated practice — one that treats entertainment, gaming and interaction not as extensions of campaigns, but as the core of modern brand building.
“The question is no longer just ‘what’s the campaign?’” Lawson said. “It’s what world are we building that people actually want to live inside?”
