Is AI about to steal your agency?

Imagine you’re working for a large brand as a Marketing Manager.?

You roll out of bed at 10:30am in your hilltop penthouse overlooking Hoxton and check in with your hardworking agency about your latest campaign. Is it trending on social? Do you need to speak to the ecom guys about sales? How have the ads impacted awareness? There are many data points and so many connections needed to pull a full dashboard together quickly before the meeting (requested at 5am that morning) with the CMO. And you just know they’re hangry, got mud on their brand new white Air Force 1s and YOU are set to be the target of their fiery -? yet trendy - ire.?

What if answers to these kinds of questions didn’t need agencies, tools or processes? What if you could ask the question and get everything you needed in one place??

It’s a brave new world.?

If you’ve played around with ChatGPT, you possibly can see that vision. The first time you ask a question and it doesn’t say “I don’t understand that”, you know the needle has truly shifted.?

But, it’s a bit of a pipedream. People are liberally sprinkling the word AI into their cornflakes and every press release they do. It often has no real meaning or context outside of a core group of early adopters - this article delivering a giant salty wedge of irony there too, I know.

While ChatGPT feels like the biggest step in AI, one that has unlocked a wave of tools and interest in AI, there are loads and loads of individual tools that perform set tasks. For ChatGPT’s part, the limitation is in how it works (to date) - it's trained to a single point in time. It’s not "connected" to the internet and can’t actually perform tasks in the wild.?

Enter into the chat Google’s Bard, and suddenly ChatGPT is on the phone with a sore throat and symptoms they’ll spare you from - they simply won’t make it in today. Bard is a level up from ChatGPT - it’s real time, connected to the internet, feels much more natural and can actually do things (or will soon…) and that’s where things get interesting.?

The ecosystem of MarTech means that often you need multiple tools and multiple people across multiple companies and agencies to get a view on campaign performance. Often these are jerry-rigged together to provide some kind of dashboard, but, in practice, they still need a lot of work to work properly - or just to keep working.?

And this is just step one. When AI truly comes together and is integrated into all areas - maybe you don’t need a social listening tool, the AI can do that for you and alert you when something trends, simultaneously suggesting social posts. Ads? It’s controlling them and making new imagery and new copy based on performance. OOH bookings and press? AI has done it based on weather and events. And, it’s all in one place. Forget 8 tools or services or waiting 2 hours for an Account Exec to send the report back, it’s all in one box.?

There are an awful lot of sweaty palms in the creative space about AI right now.?

I get it, it’s quick, often unusual and doesn’t get moody with feedback.?

However, while I can see how AI can help in creative, I don’t think it will ever replace the core skills or people. It might shift some aspects; repeatable and mundane tasks - but not ideas and vision. Operations, however, is somewhere I think it will be a game changer, impacting the value of multiple tools, companies and agencies.?

Why would you need a media agency if AI can simultaneously plan and execute a media campaign across multiple channels??

Suddenly a boozy lunch isn’t quite the ROI you’re after…