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In recent months, we’ve seen headlines filled with major holding companies from WPP to Publicis pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into building their own AI systems. As an agency leader, it would be completely natural to feel the urge to follow suit; if you’re seeing these headlines, you’re likely wondering, “What do these large agencies know that I don’t know? Do I need to start building an AI system before I get left behind or competitively disadvantaged?”
But before you rush to allocate resources, it’s essential to take a step back and consider the landscape and pace of this new technology. The reality is that generative AI is less than two years on the scene and is advancing at such a rapid pace that the frontier systems emerging over the next couple years will likely be incredibly capable—far more than any in-house system an agency could develop on its own today.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be piloting your own AI applications—but be sure to do so based on your own understanding of how to best leverage AI, not FOMO. I recommend following this playbook to strategically embrace and apply AI.
Get educated and proficient with generative AI
This first step is crucial to move beyond buzzwords and get yourself to a base level of AI literacy so you can make informed decisions about how AI can best serve your agency and clients.
Generative AI is not a monolithic tool but a suite of technologies with varied applications. Invest in training your team on AI, engage with AI experts, and explore the tools that are already on the market. You will be able to come up with innovative AI applications for your agency that make sense in terms of tech investment and ROI.
Establish governance and ethical guidelines
As with any powerful technology, the adoption of AI comes with significant ethical and operational considerations. Before diving into AI-driven initiatives, it’s essential to establish governance frameworks that ensure the responsible use of AI within your agency.
AI’s potential to amplify both the positive and negative aspects of human creativity is immense. Therefore, put safeguards in place that address issues such as confidentiality, security, transparency, and copyrights, among others, to protect your agency and clients and build trust with the broader public.
Set up an AI council within your firm, one loaded with the right cross section of leaders that have taken the time to become AI literate and up to speed on the fast-moving landscape. They can help develop and oversee the appropriate AI use policy for your firm that will ensure compliance with ethical standards, prioritize and manage AI pilot ideas, as well as champion and propagate AI proficiency and usage throughout your agency.
Assess opportunities to partner with AI
Once your agency is equipped with the necessary knowledge and governance structures, you need to assess where AI can add the most value. Rather than diving into building proprietary systems, consider how you can leverage existing AI platforms to enhance your agency’s offerings.
The most successful AI implementations often come from actually building strategy with the AI—working with it as a strategic collaborator rather than just a writing or analysis tool. Asking, say, ChatGPT to “play the role of AI consultant” can provide strategic guidance and roadmaps for decision-making with applied AI. Simultaneously, it can be the very tool you build upon, leveraging its text-to-code conversion, vision processing, and agent-like capabilities.
In essence, this is an approach where AI is both the tool and the guide; use it to help you navigate the overall landscape while building applications on top of it. As “meta” as this approach may seem, the best way to adopt AI is to use it to assess where and how it can be integrated into your operations most effectively.
This approach takes advantage of the Swiss Army knife aspect of AI systems. It allows you to tap into the latest model capabilities to build strategy, identify new opportunities, streamline operations, and deliver more personalized experiences to your clients—all without the burden of maintaining your own AI infrastructure. The key is to be strategic and selective, focusing on areas where AI can drive the most impact.
Don’t reinvent the wheel
The end result of taking the three steps above not only ensures that you are making informed, strategic decisions with AI, but also prevents you from falling into the trap of FOMO that can lead to hasty and costly investments.
The generative AI systems of the near future will be incredibly powerful; these systems, as early as next year, could swallow up anything custom that you build. Take a lesson from the financial industry or medical industry that spent millions of dollars building their own fine-tuned gen AI models, only to find that the generic models from OpenAI and others performed as good or better out of the box.
Your focus should be on how best to harness AI, not necessarily building something that may quickly become obsolete. That said, as you follow this approach, you will likely come up with some really good ideas for custom projects and applications to build on top of (and with) the AI systems of your choice—but only do so after you have the right building blocks and foundation in place.
By following this playbook, you can position your agency not just as an early adopter of AI, but also as a leader in leveraging AI to drive business success. The race isn’t to see who can build the biggest AI system the fastest—it’s to see who can use AI most effectively to deliver value to clients.
