It's Time to Rethink Your Agency

How Loop's AI transformation process helps agency leaders put people – and value – first

“I need your help creating the agency that will replace my current agency because AI is going to shut it down.”

“I didn’t realize until recently that AI was going to be existential for us.”

These two quotes are from recent conversations I’ve had with agency CEOs. They were both reflecting on the real impact AI will have on their agencies – and the need to get started today to get ahead of (or at least not fall too far behind) the AI curve.

The urgency is real. AI is already impacting agencies of every size – I’ve talked with CEOs of 10-person agencies, 100-person agencies, 200-person agencies, and 300-person agencies, and they’re all saying the same thing: We need help figuring out what this means for us and how we can adopt and adapt while keeping the trains running at our current agency.

Even the massive agencies aren’t immune. Last week, WPP, the $20 billion goliath, slashed revenue projections for 2025, and Ogilvy recently announced a 5% layoff. Not all of this is related to AI, but it’s a major contributing factor.

It’s not all doom and gloom, of course. I was utterly energized in May when I attended and spoke at the Mirren Live Conference in NYC. I saw demos of the incredible platforms that Razorfish and Accenture Song are developing that bring AI to bear along the entire agency continuum – from planning and strategy, to creative execution and analytics. These platforms are the result of massive investments by very large companies, but the spirit of what they’re doing is relevant to agencies of all sizes: they’ve embraced AI with a combination of realism, optimism and urgency.

It's this attitude that I think will ultimately determine who wins and who loses in the age of AI. In talking with agency leaders in the last year, I’ve noticed two very distinct camps: the curious embracers and the cautious rejectors.

At an event earlier this year, I had an agency COO say to me, “Our designers got together and decided they weren’t going to use AI.” After picking my jaw up off the floor, I gently suggested that perhaps that wasn’t the right approach for the long-term health of the business.

But I’ve often had the opposite experience, even with agency leaders whose businesses are square in the middle of the bullseye for AI disruption (content creation, media buying, SEO, etc). They’re actively seeking to embrace AI in ways that make sense for them and their clients and discussing how to reframe their value proposition.

“When AI can do almost everything better and faster, what will you spend your time on?”

Whenever I do an AI workshop, I start by asking this question because it gets at the crux of the peril and potential of AI. It’s true that AI technologies are already better at many things that marketers do, which can cause panic. But it’s also true that marketers are spending a lot of time and energy on repetitive, less-valuable tasks that take them away from the things they love – and that ultimately bring the most value to their clients.

That’s where the opportunity lies. Not just in using AI to save time, but in using it to reimagine what your agency is built to do – and how. Over the last year, I’ve worked with agency leaders who are doing just that: evolving their business models, refining their service offerings, and rethinking workflows from the ground up. Not by chasing shiny tools, but by aligning AI adoption with real business goals.

And that’s exactly what we help agencies do at Loop.

We built a process designed specifically for agencies: strategic enough to guide major decisions, but practical enough to work alongside real client demands. We start by helping agency leaders pause – just briefly – to assess where they are today. Then we help them define what they want to become and take focused action to start building toward it.

Here’s how it works:

• Assess: We evaluate your current workflows, tech stack, talent structure, and client services to uncover inefficiencies and identify high-potential opportunities for AI adoption.
• Envision: Together, we map out what a smarter, AI-powered version of your agency could look like – redefining your value proposition, revenue model, and roles.
• Pilot: We test a high-potential use case that improves efficiency, creativity, or profitability – and gather real data to prove what’s possible.
• Scale: When the pilot works, we expand it – codifying it into processes, training, and reusable assets across teams.
• Embed: We help you build the policies, training, and culture that make AI a long-term strategic advantage – not a short-lived experiment.

It’s not about replacing your people. It’s about freeing them up to do the work only they can do – while AI handles the repetitive, the tedious, and the easily automatable.

If you're leading an agency right now, you don't need a hundred AI tools. You need a focused, forward-looking plan – and the confidence to execute it.

That’s what we’re here for.