Dolsten & Co. is an AI-first creative agency founded by Simon Dolsten, a seasoned creative director with a background in crafting premium brand narratives. After leading creative work for global brands like Michelob Ultra and Volkswagen, and producing Emmy-winning and Super Bowl–level campaigns, Simon set out to build an agency designed for a new era of creativity, where technology accelerates imagination rather than limiting it.
Dolsten & Co. works with a wide range of clients, from personality-led brands to large enterprise organisations, helping them tell stories that connect emotionally while keeping pace with today’s fast-moving world. While Simon’s grounding in storytelling remained central, traditional production models made it difficult to experiment, prototype, and bring ambitious ideas to life quickly.
HeyGen gave Dolsten & Co. a way to create, iterate, and deliver high-fidelity creative work in days instead of months, unlocking ideas that earlier felt impossible.
Big ideas held back by traditional production
Before using HeyGen, Dolsten & Co. faced the same challenge as most creative agencies: the need for speed. Turning an idea into something clients could actually see and respond to required extensive upfront work.
“You couldn’t really create a prototype or proof of concept quickly,” Simon explained. “You’d have to take clients through a long script or a 100-page deck.”
In traditional advertising environments, producing even a 30-second ad could take months and cost millions of dollars. Once production wrapped, creative teams were often locked into what they had captured on set, with limited scope to evolve or iterate.
“For creatives, that’s limiting,” Simon said. “You want to keep building, testing, and improving, but the process doesn’t allow for it.”
This slowed collaboration, increased risk, and made it more difficult to explore bold ideas, especially those involving emerging formats such as interactive avatars or AI-driven narratives.
Using HeyGen to prototype, iterate, and create quickly and efficiently
HeyGen has fundamentally changed how Dolsten & Co. works with ideas. Instead of pitching concepts through scripts or static presentations, the team can now bring clients something functional and fully realised within days.
“With HeyGen, you can bring something that already has high fidelity and strong capability,” Simon said. “Working together to create something impactful becomes much faster and easier.”
The platform allows the team to prototype ideas instantly, iterate based on feedback, and evolve concepts over time. Unlike traditional production, where footage is fixed, HeyGen enables continuous refinement.
“You can create the first version, take it to a client, and then keep building on it,” Simon said. “That ability to evolve is incredibly powerful for creative professionals.”
HeyGen also made it possible to bring together storytelling and technology in fresh ways. Dolsten & Co. began experimenting with digital twins and avatars that could educate, entertain, or deliver corporate messaging with realistic detail and emotional nuance.
“What surprised me the most was the functionality,” Simon said. “You can build knowledge into them, make them educational, entertaining, or aligned with your brand. They can take on so many different roles.”
Bringing to life ideas that once felt impossible
As the team took the platform further, HeyGen made it possible to run projects that went well beyond just quicker ads or basic prototypes.
Dolsten & Co. created a one-hour AI-generated feature film with realistic dialogue and natural mouth movements, something Simon describes as earlier unimaginable. What once felt like a distant concept was produced and taken to market in just a few weeks.
“HeyGen enabled us to do things that were far beyond anything we had imagined,” Simon said.
The team also explored immersive, one-on-one interactive experiences using realistic avatars. These experiences helped build trust with consumers, clients, and even the press by combining advanced technology with a human face and voice.
“The aim is not to replace human interaction,” Simon explained. “It is to enhance it.”
HeyGen also made localisation and scaling dramatically easier. A single story could be brought to life in multiple languages, allowing brands to reach global audiences without recreating content from scratch.
Quicker delivery, stronger momentum, and clearly measurable impact
The impact on speed and efficiency was immediate. Work that earlier took six months to produce could now be completed in as little as six days.
“That speed changes everything,” Simon said. “We can sell more work, clients get results faster, and the quality remains high.”
Beyond metrics, HeyGen created momentum. Seeing ideas come to life quickly energised both internal teams and clients.
“When I watched the first video we created with HeyGen, it felt almost magical,” Simon said. “You could finally create at the pace you actually want to.”
That momentum made collaboration easier, feedback more actionable, and creativity more iterative. Instead of waiting for months to see results, clients could respond to finished work almost immediately.
For Simon, the true value of HeyGen is in bringing together human storytelling and advanced technology.
“You still need to say something meaningful,” he said. “You still need to craft the narrative. HeyGen simply speeds up the process of bringing it to life.”
By removing friction from production, HeyGen enables Dolsten & Co. to concentrate on what truly matters: emotion, dialogue, interaction, and impact.
“HeyGen unlocked what earlier felt impossible for us,” Simon said. “It turned into reality ideas that we could earlier only dream about.”
