Agencies Reimagine Staffing Amid Growing AI Tension
Marketing agencies are rethinking team structures and job descriptions as AI adoption grows, according to Digiday. Agencies are making space for staff education to capture AI productivity gains.
Original reporting · digiday.com
Original: “Amid growing tension over workplace AI, agencies have a window to reimagine staffing”
Read “Amid growing tension over workplace AI, agencies have a window to reimagine staffing” at Digiday →
How this was written. GMS Agency Desk wrote this article with a language model from Digiday’s reporting (model: @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast); it describes that reporting rather than adding to it. The original, linked above, is the full story.
Key points from Digiday’s report
- Agencies are rethinking team structures and job descriptions as AI adoption grows.
- AI fluency is becoming a required skill in the industry.
- The over-use of AI in corporate settings is leading to tensions over individual usage.
Marketing agencies have been enthusiastic adopters of AI agents, but their team structures and job descriptions have been largely left untouched, Digiday reported. Agencies are now rethinking their approaches as AI fluency becomes a required skill.
A recent Digiday survey found that just 9% of media agencies were not pursuing agentic AI solutions of some kind. At many agencies, fluency means using and developing AI agents to automate planning or media activation work.
The over-use of AI in corporate settings is beginning to make working life more tedious and stressful, bringing tensions over individual usage of AI to the fore. Agency attendees said colleagues are using tech as an all-purpose corner cutter, speeding up some processes but skipping over opportunities for critical thinking.
Some agencies are making space for staff education to capture and institutionalize AI productivity gains. At Monks, training of junior staff and re-training of senior colleagues is seen as part of the answer, according to Gila Wilensky, evp and head of data and media, North America, Monks.
Nadja Bellan-White, group CEO of M&C Saatchi North America, said her agency has carved out an hour each week on employee timesheets dedicated to training. A learning agenda has to be operationalized throughout the organization, she said.
Agencies are only just beginning to seriously consider how teams might be organized differently. There are signs that AI is provoking some marketers to rethink their jobs, with freelance programmatic and strategy consultants becoming avid users of the technology.
Questions and answers
What percentage of media agencies are not pursuing agentic AI solutions?
Just 9% of media agencies are not pursuing agentic AI solutions of some kind.
How are agencies addressing the need for AI education?
Some agencies are making space for staff education, with training of junior staff and re-training of senior colleagues.
What is the goal of agencies in terms of AI adoption?
Agencies aim to capture and institutionalize AI productivity gains, and to make AI a part of their team structures and job descriptions.
