AI and the Agency: This blog has been written by a human
Almost everyone is trying to make sense of AI right now. We’re wondering: Will it replace me? How will it change the work I do every day? What does it mean for my business and the industry I’m in?
In the branding world, those questions feel especially close. We feel the pull to use ChatGPT for copy. We see ads for tools like Looka promising instant logo design. We’re both excited and uneasy. We know we need to learn how to harness AI’s power, but we also wonder what that power might take away.
At the same time, this moment invites something deeper. It asks us to think about what it means to be creative. What it will take for our agencies and our clients’ brands to stand out in a world where computers can generate almost anything. And what all of this means for us as thinking, feeling humans.
This is our attempt to explore those questions and define the role of the creative agency in the age of AI.
Where We Are and What’s Next: The Generative AI Era
We are living in the era of Generative AI. These systems don’t just analyze. They create. They generate. Today, tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Claude can produce fluent copy, polished images, music, videos, even code with only a sentence or two of instruction. But already, the next evolution is appearing. Walk around San Francisco and you’ll see the word “agentic” everywhere. Agentic AI refers to systems that can take action independently. They don’t just respond to prompts. They pursue goals.
For example: You might say, “I’m traveling to New Mexico next month. Plan the trip.” An agentic system could research destinations, book flights, reserve restaurants, and add everything to your calendar with minimal human involvement.
What comes after that is anybody’s guess. And yet, even if the technology only moderately improves from where it is today (which is extremely unlikely), AI will still transform creative work and the agencies built around it.
What Generative AI Is Doing to Work
Recent economic research from Erik Brynjolfsson, Danielle Chandar, and Lindsey Chen shows that AI is already reshaping the workforce. AI excels at automating codified knowledge: tasks with clear rules, predictable outcomes, and standardized “right answers.” What it hasn’t replaced are the human abilities of judgment, persuasion, intuition, and emotional understanding.
Because of this, younger workers whose roles rely more on repetitive or structured tasks feel the impact first. Meanwhile, work rooted in experience and tacit knowledge remains more stable. Creative agencies sit right on this dividing line. AI is shifting value away from execution and toward discernment. Away from producing and toward deciding.
The Idealistic View: AI Can Never Replace Creativity
First, a quick story. For decades, chess was held up as a game that represented the high point of human intelligence; a game that computers would never master like a human could. Then DeepBlue beat Gary Kasparov, and things shifted. For years afterward, we told ourselves the best chess player would be some form of human + machine. A cyborg. Today, it’s not even close.
The best chess players on earth are AI systems alone. A fundamental question that can be applied across industries and tasks is: Is this something that, like chess, is closed, finite, and ultimately inevitable for AI domination? Or is this something with a human moat, where rules change, context matters, and meaning isn’t computable?
How does creativity fit into this? What do we mean when we say we “create” something? In her book God, Human, Animal, Machine, Meghan O’Gieblyn argues that what we value in art and creativity isn’t novelty or randomness but a point of view — a sense that a fellow human felt something and attempted to translate it into artistic expression.
The AI we experience today is disembodied. It can remix pre-existing patterns in an impressive way, but it has no sense of stakes, no lived experience in the world. When we learn that a piece of “art” was created by a machine, our sense of its value changes. It no longer feels like a connection to another human being. It feels like content.
As long as this remains true, the door for human originality and creativity remains open.
The Reality Check: AI Will Majorly Disrupt Agencies
Now here is where the scary part of the story takes over. O’Gieblyn tells the story of her reaction to AI-generated writing. She sees that it’s a bit derivative and lacks originality. But she’s a writer. Most people see it as just as good or better than a human’s creation. When she sees AI- generated design and visuals, she is impressed. Her designer friends have the same reaction she has to the writing. They have trained eyes and think it’s a bit derivative but perhaps good enough.
Most buyers, most audiences, most clients, most people will accept “good enough.” What does that mean for the agency world? Much of the market today would be satisfied with a fast logo, a decent PPT template, acceptable copy, and landing pages. AI will devour this part of the market.
This will not make the craft of an agency, or the craft of storytelling, irrelevant. It will make it rarer and potentially clearer. Generative AI is squeezing the middle of the agency world. On one end, “good enough” production will become automated. On the other end, truly creative work that shifts perception, shapes culture, and earns C-suite conviction becomes more valuable.
The leading agencies of the future will know how to leverage the tools of “good enough” production in ways that don’t flood their creative zone or smother the flourishing of their creative human talent. And they will also cultivate and own the ability to deliver high-judgment transformation for high-stakes moments.
The agencies who create belief, and help their clients behave like they believe it, will win.
Appendix for the Branding Nerds: Positioning in a New World
Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout is perhaps the founding text of modern branding. The central point is the human mind has limited space. People can only remember a few brands in a particular category. Brands win by identifying a specific idea or mental shelf in the customer’s mind, claiming it with a simple idea, and defending it over time.
Put simply, positioning is the battle to take and keep a distinct place in the mind of the customer. The fundamental psychological truth behind the theory remains unchanged. What has changed is the supply side of marketing. Generative AI makes it effortless to create pretty good creative andto flood digital channels with messaging. The result is an oversupply of content. But the limitations of humans, and the demand for meaning, remain the same.
As a result, the bar for owning a position is dramatically higher. It’s not enough to just have a clever tagline. A brand needs to prove what it stands for. In this new world, positioning shifts from a distinct message to a distinct and believable meaning. A meaning that is embodied in how the organization thinks, behaves, sells, communicates, and shows up in the world.
The role of the brand, and the task of an agency, moves from the marketing department into the operating system of the company.
