Not so long ago, running a creative agency was relatively straightforward when it came to tools. You used a Mac. You used InDesign and Photoshop. There were updates, of course, but they were incremental, refinements to software you already knew and had spent time mastering. A junior designer knew exactly what they needed to learn. A senior designer knew exactly what they were teaching. The toolset was stable, and that stability made it easier to build skills, processes and a consistent way of working.
AI has completely changed that, and a lot of agencies are struggling to adapt.
Agility is no longer optional
Today, something new launches what feels like every week. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. Otter, Fireflies, Plaud for note-taking. Tools for copy, for images, for briefing, for research, for project management. Each one promising to be faster, smarter or better suited than the last. For agency leaders trying to make sensible decisions about where to invest time and money, it creates a very particular kind of paralysis.
The temptation is to wait. To hold off committing to anything until the landscape settles and a clear winner emerges. It feels like the cautious, responsible thing to do. But here's the problem: that moment is never coming. The landscape isn't going to settle. AI tools are going to keep evolving, keep improving, and keep being replaced by something newer. Agencies that are waiting for the right moment to start are already falling behind the ones that got moving.
The other trap is the opposite, jumping at every new tool, constantly switching, never building any real depth or shared practice. That's just as damaging. It creates confusion, wastes time on onboarding, and means nobody ever gets good enough at anything to see the real benefits.
Think tasks, not tools
The most useful shift you can make is to stop asking "which AI tool should we invest in?" and start asking "which tasks do we want AI to handle?" That change in framing makes everything simpler.
Take meeting notes as an example. If your agency is still spending time manually writing up calls and sending summaries, that's a clear candidate for AI. The task is defined, the time saving is obvious, and there are several good tools that handle it well right now. So make a decision as an agency, collectively, and that word matters, that you are going to use AI for note-taking. Pick one tool together, get everyone using it, and build it into how you work.
The collective piece is important because it's what turns a tool into a practice. When one person uses something and everyone else doesn't, you get patchy results and no shared learning. When the whole team commits to the same tool for the same task, you start to build genuine expertise, spot the limitations together, and get far more value out of it.
This approach also makes the decision much less daunting. You're not trying to figure out how AI fits into everything you do all at once. You're just solving one specific problem at a time.
Start small and build from there
One of the most common mistakes agencies make is trying to go too big too fast. They hear about AI-first agencies, feel the pressure to transform overnight, and either attempt a sweeping change that doesn't stick, or get overwhelmed and do nothing at all.
The better approach is to start with low-hanging fruit. Find two or three tasks in your agency that are time-consuming, repetitive, and don't require a huge amount of creative judgement. Note-taking, meeting summaries, first-draft briefs, research, admin. Try AI there first. Get comfortable with it. See the time savings for yourself. Then, once you have some confidence and momentum, look at where else it could add value.
It's also worth being clear that AI and automation, while related, are two different things. Automation is about removing repetitive manual steps from a process. AI is about augmenting thinking, generating content, and handling tasks that previously needed a human. Both are valuable, but they're not the same, and conflating them can lead to muddled thinking about what you're actually trying to achieve.
Appoint an AI champion
Because the landscape moves so quickly, it really helps to have someone in your agency whose job it is to keep an eye on what's happening. Not a full-time role, most agencies don't need that, but a genuine responsibility, owned by someone who's curious about this stuff and good at evaluating new tools objectively.
Their job is to monitor what's emerging, test anything that looks genuinely promising, and bring a clear recommendation to the rest of the team when they think something is worth switching to. That might sound like: "We've been using Otter for note-taking for the past six months. There's a new tool called Plaud that handles in-person meetings much better and integrates more cleanly with how we work. I think we should switch." The team discusses it, agrees or pushes back, and a decision gets made together.
This model means your tools are always under review, but in a structured, considered way. You're not lurching from one thing to the next on a whim. You're making deliberate, collective decisions based on evidence. And critically, everyone feels part of the process rather than having change imposed on them.
Agility is even more now part of the job
The uncomfortable truth is that the stability we used to take for granted simply isn't available anymore. The idea of buying a piece of software, learning it thoroughly, and relying on it for the next five years is gone, at least when it comes to AI.
That's a real adjustment, and it's worth acknowledging that it's harder for some people than others. If you're someone who finds constant change exhausting, or who prefers to go deep on one thing rather than adapt to something new every few months, this environment is genuinely challenging. That's not a character flaw. It's just a real tension that agencies need to manage thoughtfully, particularly when it comes to how they support their teams through change.
But it's also just the reality of where we are. Technology has always moved forward, but AI has accelerated that pace to a point where standing still is no longer a neutral choice. It's a decision to fall behind.
The agencies that will do well over the next few years won't necessarily be the ones that adopted AI earliest, or the ones that used the most tools. They'll be the ones that built a culture of thoughtful, ongoing adaptation, curious about what's coming, honest about what's working, and willing to change course when something better comes along.
