When you sit down at your desk to think about AI, what question is your brain trying to answer?
Are you trying to work out what’s going to happen? How it will change your agency?
You should stop focusing on the change, and instead think about what’s going to stay the same.
Technology plus the economy makes for a pretty chaotic system.
But it’s a system you’ve already been operating in. So clearly you can handle it.
What got you this far?
Because AI is about to turn the change up a notch.
What are you going to turn up in response?
Turn up the thing that makes you valuable.
There’s never a bad time to consider what that thing is.
So thank you AI, actually.
Why agencies exist
Why do clients actually hire agencies in the first place?
It has little to do with how you get the work done and it’s not only about the results you get.
What clients are actually buying is:
Accountability
Someone who will hold themselves responsible if things don’t work.
A custom process
They want things to work on their terms without having the effort and expense of completely changing how their business thinks and works.
Easy relationships
They want expertise without the people problems. The agency side of the relationship adapts and proactively sorts out communication problems.
In other words, they’re buying the relationship and the responsibility - not just the deliverables.
When someone hires your agency, they’re essentially saying “I want this problem solved without having to manage all the details, and I want someone accountable if it doesn’t work.”
If you were to sum it up you would say that agenciesreduce risk.
Why you’re more valuable than AI
The reduced risk that clients are actually buying is something you are better at than AI.
There’s a reason that every single set of brand values ever contains some variation on “We are human.”
In brand terms it’s intended to mean we are nice people and love our mums. But there’s something more important to it.
Human means we obey the unwritten rules of business and social norms.
We fear the consequences of failure.
This applies to mistakes but also to not achieving the outcome our creativity and processes are designed for.
AI can help with or even replace some of that creativity.
AI can certainly replace some of your process.
But it can’t be accountable to the outcome.
AI doesn’t even care about the outcome.
We do without having to be prompted.
So rather than worrying about competing with AI we should be leaning into the areas we can win.
A client’s dream
So how is that side of your business? Do you know how happy your clients are?
Look at the end-to-end journey someone has when they hire you. And think about that risk they are trying to mitigate.
What are you doing that adds value here? Who in your agency is incentivised to make this amazing?
Investing here is safe from AI takeover.
And investing here will compound.
The more clients that experience your exceptional client service the more you’ll get a reputation for it.
It becomes part of your brand.
And that reduces risk too.
When you hire an agency with a track record, you’re buying their past successes as a guarantee against future failures.
This could be the single most important thing to stand out in the market for.
A risk reduction machine
How…. uninspiring.
Look, sometimes my job is just to remind you of a fundamental truth.
I’ll going to leave it there and it’s up to you to use your entrepreneurial skills and creativity to work out what being a dream for your clients to work with looks like for your agency.
It’s up to you to make this exciting.
Start from the understanding that they are looking for a partner. Someone invested in their success.
AI has no skin in the game.
If you are worrying about a world where AI can deliver at the same level as your agency or beyond.
Then skin in the game is all you’re going to have.
So start working at it now.