Kika Douglas: full-spectrum creativity

With a father who worked at Nasa, and invented nifty bits of future tech like a phone with a screen when she was still a little girl, and with her grandfather on her mother’s side a writer from Spain – she was born in Texas but grew up in Galicia – tech and creativity are combined in Kika Douglas’s DNA. 

That was my moment of ‘we have to listen to this person more because interesting thoughts are coming out of their mind’. 

Add in a degree in psychology (“which is not really creative but has a lot to do with advertising”), a masters in advertising and comms, and years of experience working at JWT in Madrid, as well as at AKQA in Portland, Johannes Leonardo in New York, David & Goliath in Los Angeles, and for the past seven years in Amsterdam at Dentsu Creative, the Chief Creative Officer at 180 Amsterdam has a broad palette of talents and experiences on which to draw. 

Above: Douglas worked on a partnership between Dentsu, Adobe and David Bowie to offer a springboard for Adobe’s community to express themselves.

“I’ve always liked to touch different areas,” she says, “to get to know strategy and creative. That broad spectrum of knowledge really helps in my CCO role. You have to wear many different hats, not just the creative one.” She points to psychology in particular, as a powerful tool for designing experiences to create engagement.   

From the start, she had a knack of being able to get people’s attention. “I started as a creative, a copywriter at JWT. When I was an intern we did a proactive project that changed the course of my path. When you’re an intern you need to come up with something, so senior people will pay attention to you.” 

Human understanding is essential for delivering great creativity. You need to connect all these humans and be able to board the same ship on the same route and stay aligned and know how to work together.

The idea was to make ads for Spain’s struggling small shops in the same way they made ads for, say, Amex. “Everyone fell in love with the idea, not only in JWT but across the network,” says Douglas. “That was my moment of ‘we have to listen to this person more because interesting thoughts are coming out of their mind’. That was one of my first projects and it put me on the map.” She pauses. “That’s really what you have to do.” 

Above: Douglas created a campaign for Gatorade starring English footballer Rachel Yankey, which aimed to give young people more confidence to take up sports. 

She’s since created work for Diesel, Porsche, KLM and Nike Women, and picking up awards at Cannes Lions, D&AD, CLIOS and Eurobest. After five years at Dentsu Creative Amsterdam, she took up the CCO role at 180 last May. “Amsterdam is all about the work-life balance, and being very entrepreneurial and innovative in the way you think,” she says of her adopted home city. “I really admire the Dutch because of how pragmatic and direct they are, and how innovative they are in the way they think and solve problems.”  

The projects I most enjoy are always quite complex, so they involve some kind of tech, and layers of storytelling, and are somehow aligned and rooted in the zeitgeist and culture.

One way Douglas solves creative problems is by not using the internet. “Algorithms determine so much of what we are exposed to. We basically all get exposed to the same thing. So if you really want to find inspiration that is new and fresh, don’t rely on the algorithm.” She’s a voracious reader, of print magazines as well as books. “Our brain works as a creator. It goes back to this library we have and makes different connections. So if we all have the same books in our library we’ll end up with the same connections and the same ideas.”  

Above: Confidence Coaches campaign film for Gatorade 

To foster originality, creative thinking and potent ideas across 180 Amsterdam, she may wear several hats but relies on some basic principles, and the power of what she calls ‘fierce empathy’. “The first one is, you’re dealing with humans and making things to connect with humans, so understand the human. That’s whether it’s your client and getting to know them and what excites them, what matters to them and scares them, so you can build trust and take them along with bold ideas, and get them to take risks with you. That’s kind of essential.  

There are so many women in senior positions, making room for younger women to make their way. The world is hungrier for female voices.

“The same with your team – knowing them as humans, connecting with them and understanding how to give feedback to each type of person. And we’re doing things that have to connect with people, so it’s trying to understand our audience in depth. By that I mean going beyond the data, because everyone has access to the same data, so you need to understand what are the stories behind that data, and to use that data to reveal insights. That human understanding is essential for delivering great creativity. You need to connect all these humans and be able to board the same ship on the same route and stay aligned and know how to work together.” 

Another magic ingredient for success is what may have killed the cat – curiosity. “You’re not going to make great stuff just by reading the industry bulletins,” she says. “You need to be curious about the world and nature and understand how things work. That’s how you’ll find that small little fact that turns into a crazy good idea. It’s basically those two things – being curious and being human.” 

Above: Artwork created as part of Dentsu's Adobe x Bowie partnership, which won a Grand Prix for Digital Craft at Eurobest 2022.

Being a woman, and a creative in the industry, has not been an easy path. Douglas recalls being the only woman in the creative team, saying something “and hearing crickets, as if I’d said nothing. I wondered, do I never say anything valuable? Then I realised no, it’s how the world works. Now there’s such a difference. There are so many women in senior positions, making room for younger women to make their way. The world is hungrier for female voices, and that means it’s making room for them to shine – but there’s still a lot to do in the daily environment in every company, still behaviours that are a bit discriminative, it needs to continue evolving.”  

As a creative tool I don’t think AI will ever replace the capability humans have to create emotion.

One of the female-focused works she’s most proud of is the recent Gatorade campaign, Confidence Coaches. It features England international Rachel Yankey OBE, watching her teenage self on a screen, and reflecting on the struggles she went through in order to play football. Not girls’ football. Football. 

“The projects I most enjoy are always quite complex, so they involve some kind of tech, and layers of storytelling, and are somehow aligned and rooted in the zeitgeist and culture,” says Douglas. “We brought her younger self to life, which is Ray, to tell her story, so we recreated her with AI. And even though her story is from years ago it is still incredibly relevant today, about how she had to go through al these difficulties and how she realised no one could stop her playing, except herself.”