AMA #1: AI, plus moving from specialist to business development

This is the first Ask Me Anything I've published. If it proves popular (e.g. people message me saying they like it and, especially, if you ask me more questions) then I might make this a regular feature in between my other articles. Enjoy!

Are we going to see marketing agencies completely die out as more businesses start using smaller in-house teams powered by AI?

Archie Sharp

Assuming you believe that AI is better than no-AI (we’ll gloss over that one), it’s not a choice between “use AI” or “use an agency”...it’s “the client uses AI” or “the agency uses AI”. Since these things were invented, the client could manage their own Google Ads; or do their own PR; or film their own commercials; or, now, use AI themselves. In that sense, the conversation hasn’t changed. The choice, therefore, is still “employ people” or “outsource”. The difference is arguably just in the number of people.

So, the play is still convincing brands that outsourcing is better than in-housing, which is still:

• Lower fixed costs (which, by the way, are only going up because of AI right now: R&D investment(s); retraining staff; buying in tools; hiring some sort of specialist who knows how to use the tool…)
• …bringing us to “we’ve trained our people because you won’t train your people.” One of the major advantages the specialist agency has always enjoyed is X number of people with the same skillset, some of whom have been doing this for years. Even a large brand might have one or two specialists; if not a few generalists; and, unless they’re in a big city centre, is unlikely to have more than a couple of really great people. The agency might well have 10, 20, 50 clients it’s using AI to experiment on…and 10, 20, 50 (even hundreds) of staff who are all marketers and are all learning from each other…
• …and because the agency is bringing on more and more clients to use AI on, they have a hiring pipeline full of people who know how to use AI. They’ve done it a few times now and they know what they’re looking for. Does the brand? A brand, whose marketing department has probably shrunk, and is apparently looking to cut costs with AI, isn’t as likely to know where to find the people who can use the AI and how to spot the bullshitters (of which there are many right now) as an agency that’s hired 10, 20, 50 of these people
• The toolkit is changing pretty relentlessly at the moment and an agency is much more likely to buy in a new piece of software on a whim than a client is (business case is their norm and I don’t know many brands whose marketing department put whatever tool they fancy on their credit cards without some hoops to jump through and some justification why the last one isn’t fit for purpose)
• …and, ultimately, the agency will take the risk and workload so the client doesn’t have to. They’ll commit to the numbers; they’ll commit to the oversight of the (frankly dreadful, in many cases) content that the gen AI tools are producing and spend their time fixing it; they’ll produce the training manuals and vet the tools and sign the contracts with the software sharks; and so on.

If you buy my argument here, then AI is no different to Photoshop. Production becomes cheaper and more portable (and can be done by fewer people), with new specialists springing up who can use the new tools, but the fundamental decision is “do we want to employ people or do we want to use an agency” and we’ve (probably) got 3 more years of NIC hikes and workers rights reforms etc. that mean employing people is getting harder just as AI might be making things easier.

Everyone seems very excited that to get cited in LLMs you want to get mentioned in publications. Which sounds great for PR.

However, it seems like those LLMs will be taking traffic from publications, meaning they’ll make less money, make journalists redundant, and may ultimately close down entirely.

I’m concerned about the whole ecosystem and wonder how you see things panning out?

Mark Rofe

I was about to write that search engines and social media sites have been reducing the amount of traffic they send to publications for a while, then realised that they’ve been reducing the amount of traffic they send to everyone. LLMs are no different (both in the fact that they are accelerating the coming of the post-traffic world; and in the way that they will give you lots of good things and then steadily take them all away from you). There are probably some parallels between journalists and marketers in that there will be fewer of them in future.

Some (top tier) publications that have a brand and a high degree of trust, like the FT, will be fine, because they don’t rely on traffic to sell ads; others have different funding models, like a license fee; or shady billionaires who have manufactured the site(s) as a way to buy the next election for Reform; and they’ll be fine too, because traffic isn’t the business model. Regardless, I see a bunch of publications shuttering and I see more paywalls and subscription-based models.

My role at Evoluted has started to incorporate a lot more sales and business development (researching potential clients, outreaching, researching events to attend to find new clients etc.). I've always found it hard to know how best to approach drumming up new business for an agency, and how I can put my time and expertise to good use as a Head of Department.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the effective strategies and models you've seen work for agencies.

Chris Ridley

When business development is only part of the remit, it’s often helpful to think in habits:

1. You’re probably responsible for R&D, at least within your department: you can share the problems you’re trying to solve on social media (sometimes the response is “I hadn’t thought about that being an issue”…sometimes it’s “let me know when you solve that!” …either way, it’s no bad thing to demonstrate that your agency is committed to improvement); then, when you do have a solution, connecting with 2-3 people a day who you think might have the same issue is a good start
2. Many events publish their past attendees (and some have delegates who actually share that they’re going): try contacting people to ask if they might be there and, if so, would they be up for a chat about X, Y or Z…then buy a ticket if you can get a meeting set up (which is much more likely to get signed off than something totally speculative)
3. Book some time in your calendar to dedicate to content (whether it’s LinkedIn, blogging, filming, or something else): we often fall off the wagon when we suddenly remember that we haven’t published all week and have run out of time. If it’s part of your job, schedule it like you would any other task
4. Practice what you preach: Branded3 (an SEO agency) was more visible in search than every other agency for years; most of Rise at Seven’s business was PR made headlines on a frequent basis. If your expertise is ads…do some ads
5. Most of all, make more of all the stuff you do already. Evoluted is no stranger to the awards scene: how many awards entries have been turned into micro case studies for social? Interviews with happy clients? Or been made into an excuse to reach out to the other attendees or judges? That’s one example, but our industry doesn’t often have the budgets to not sweat the small stuff. Let’s get mind maps of how we can make everything we do as broad as it can be.