By Amelia Boyce, Account Director, Initials CX
If there was ever a microcosm of agency life at its most relentless, it was the last time I wrote a thought piece.
Aside from taking two weeks, multiple re-reads, wrangling a bullet-point draft, gathering notes from colleagues, and relying on teammates for final corrections, the process was both slow and exhaustive.
This article? Two hours thanks to the help of AI.
Of course, such a dramatic difference leads to inevitable questions. Does completing a piece more quickly, by enlisting the help of digital tools, somehow devalue the work? Worse, does it devalue me and my brain?
For many, the speed of AI feels like it comes at the cost of craftsmanship, but perhaps that’s the wrong way to look at it…
Teamwork makes the dream work
Increasingly, clients want measurable outcomes, not just a tally of hours. And we’re seeing this reflected in our finances with agencies shifting from traditional time-based billing to value-based pricing.
In an industry constantly tied to deadlines and overflowing with to-do lists, maybe we’ve been approaching value through the wrong lens. If technology lets us focus on what truly matters and deliver impactful work faster, is speed not just another lever for value?
Still, the doubts linger: is AI the antithesis of creativity? The death for humanity’s ability to market to fellow humans? At what point does agencies try to replace human touch with lines of code?
Here’s where we need a new perspective.
The perfect balance isn’t a pure handover of our creative instincts to the machine. It’s a partnership. A symbiotic mix where AI and human ingenuity work together, different and unexpected, but perfectly suited for the task. The aim isn’t to surrender creativity, but supercharge it, freeing minds to focus on the magic that only humans can provide.
I’m not advocating for AI to dabble in the minds of our creatives. It shouldn’t intrude that sacred space, where raw ideas become insights, and spark into campaigns.
After all, you can’t brief AI to feel something. You can’t prompt it into a lightbulb moment at 11pm when a line finally clicks.
That ability remains exclusively human.
But for all the other facets of agency life, AI has become an indispensable ally, and its true value lies behind the scenes.
Behind the scenes
Take account handling, for example.
Here, AI can quietly take on the repetitive tasks that consume so much time and energy. First drafts of emails, meeting summaries, and status reports can be generated in moments, allowing account managers to direct more attention to high-value client interactions.
When a simple brief comes in, AI can build out client-ready timelines and schedules, ensuring details are never overlooked. After meetings, notes and action points are automatically organised.
If you’re prepping for a client WIP or internal review, AI can suggest agenda structures, keeping discussions focused and productive. And with sentiment analysis, teams can quickly assess the tone of client feedback, allowing for better, faster adjustments in response.
On the production side, AI seamlessly handles the everyday tasks that don’t require human intuition. Artwork and assets can be resized and reformatted for different platforms within seconds. Tedious jobs like removing backgrounds, cleaning up visuals, or generating basic mock-ups happen in the background, enabling designers to concentrate on important creative decisions.
Archiving and tagging assets, so often dismissed as dull admin, is handled automatically by AI, which catalogues and retrieves files at a moment’s notice. When the time comes to build a presentation, placeholder content and layouts for decks are only a click away, and brand templates are pre-populated in full compliance with guidelines.
What’s left is the ‘beautiful mess in the middle.’ That glorious, irreplaceable space where strategy forms, insights are unearthed, and creative sparks ignite.
It’s here that we, with all our flaws, quirks, and understanding, add the magic that makes agency work truly meaningful. Machines can support, accelerate, and enhance, but they can’t substitute for the creative leap or the subtlety of true understanding we possess.
In the end, the real danger isn’t that AI will strip us of our creativity, but that we’ll cling to tasks better served by machines and waste the talents that only humans possess.
By letting AI handle the mundane and the labour intensive, we make way for the thinking, crafting, and connecting that sit at the core of our work.
So ultimately, AI isn’t the enemy of creativity, it’s its greatest enabler. Creativity remains sacred, human connection irreplaceable and together, that’s where the future of value lives.
