Since the 80s we’ve been worried about robots taking our jobs, and really, taking over the world. Terminator, RoboCop and others showed us insight into a robot dominated future. And while Arnold Swartnezager (probably) isn’t an AI disguised as a human sent here to assassinate Sarah Conner, we are currently living in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

In many ways, we’re at the forefront of an AI-era that we’re only beginning to understand. There seems to be a collective sense shared by most that others are leveraging AI better and more than they are individually, as a team or company. While some are skeptical and others are diving in to lead the pack, the sentiment remains that the stakes are too high to get AI wrong.

There is no argument that AI can support your marketing efforts (and obviously other efforts too). Most are comfortable with the “human-in-the-loop” approach, leveraging AI with human intervention and decision making. Regardless of how you feel about it, we are at the true age of AI. And while AI can replace humans for some things, humans should be leveraging AI to make us smarter, faster and more efficient.

AI is changing many things, including the way people consume content, research and think. Using AI for easily repeatable tasks, distilling complex information/data, providing insights, content production, etc. frees up time for humans to do things AI can’t do. The trick is to know when and how to use AI, not to overly rely on AI when the job is more suited for a human and for humans to strategically think about the outputs generated by AI. Navigating these rapidly changing waters is constantly evolving.

So, should you replace your agency with AI?

Our short answer is “No,” but your agency should be leveraging AI.

Your agencies should be using AI to make themselves more efficient, free up time for strategic thinking and provide more partnership value to you. You should be benefiting from the cost savings they have created by leveraging AI to quickly perform tasks that previously took multiple humans and much more time. In a perfect world, your agency would leverage AI across all facets of your partnership (where appropriate), increasing speed, precision and scale, while reducing costs.

Here are some of the ways your agency can be leveraging AI:

• Persona/Audience/ICP Development: Your target audience is changing, what matters to them is changing, how they consume content is changing and where they consume content is changing. Your agency should be using AI generate audience insights by building custom AI Agents, analyzing large data-sets, incorporating multiple sources of data, etc. to help you better understand your audiences across personal and professional lives so that you are connecting with them in the ways that resonate best for them, creating better results for you.
• Content & Creative: AI can write like humans, create polished creative assets, produce studio-like video content, etc. relatively cheaply and quickly. It can also help with brainstorming, ideation, refining ideas, simulate creative testing and audience feedback, creating video scripts and campaign narratives, generating moodboards and more. Your agency should be leveraging AI when and where possible to speed up testing, personalization and production.
• Paid Media: AI can forecast and predict the impact of channels and placements, dig deep into performance analytics across different KPIs, anticipate churn predictions, automate A/B and multivariate testing, optimize budgets based on best-performing channels through machine learning, automate bidding, etc. Your agency should be using AI to help you plan/buy/optimize media more efficiently and effectively, increasing impact and ROI.
• Measurement, Reporting & Optimizations: AI delivers faster and better insights than most humans - generating narrative insights, pulling rich trends and saving time (money) with analysis. Your agency should be using AI to get more from your reporting, making sure you’re asking the right questions and tracking what matters, training AI, building custom dashboards and reviewing AI-generated data for further insights.
• Project Management: AI can support task prioritization, time optimization, automated resource allocation, automatic status updates, meeting summaries, etc. Your agency should be using AI to increase efficiencies, improve decision making and reduce the potential for human error.

The truth is this: everyone has access to the same AI. Yes, you can build your own custom AI, create proprietary tools and train AI, but at the fundamental level, AI is accessible to all. It is the humans that make AI special.

This is why AI should not be replacing your agency. AI needs humans. Your agency are the people leveraging, enhancing, interpreting, training and building with AI. They are the strategic thinkers and storytellers – helping you get the most from AI.

Sure, you can educate and train your internal teams to do this work too. This is the debate that has been going on for much longer than we’ve been afraid of robots taking over the world: to in-house or outsource? Either way, AI should be enabling teams - internally and externally.