The 4As hosted a roundtable with Ad Age and seven industry leaders from holding companies and independent agencies at Advertising Week New York to discuss some of the most pressing issues facing executives today.

Lindsay Rittenhouse reported that the roundtable included a lineup of executives spanning a wide range of roles and companies: 4As CEO Justin Thomas-Copeland; Stacey Hightower, CEO of Omnicom Specialty Marketing Group; Frances Webster, CEO of independent agency Walrus; Tracey Faux-Pattani, CEO of independent shop Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners; Chris Foster, CEO of Omnicom Public Relations Group; Ian Grody, chief creative officer of independent shop Giant Spoon; Joe Baratelli, executive VP and chief creative officer of independent agency RPA; and Nada Bradbury, CEO of Ad-ID, which sets a standard for the industry to identify advertising assets across all media.

These leaders discussed a wide range of topics, including how they are using AI in their day-to-day; how they are driving value in their agencies; the means to stand out in an increasingly crowded market; and what talent they are hiring.

Some takeaways from the conversation:

How agency leaders are using AI

Webster said Walrus is using AI to respond to an “RFI right now … it’s helping us with upfront strategy and segmentation.”

“It’s like the internet from the ‘90s, you’ve got to surf the wave and you can’t have a two-year plan,” she said. “It’s a three-month plan or a six-month plan. But if you’re not engaging with it, you’re out.”

Hightower said Omnicom Specialty Marketing Group has been using AI in Europe “for quite some time.” He said the agency created a call center that has been using AI to speak with customers who dial in on branded hotlines. It’s also now bringing internal efficiencies. For example, Omnicom Specialty Marketing Group uses AI to sift through resumes.

“We do probably 5,000, on average, hires a year in Europe … We can’t get to every resume that comes into our inbox,” Hightower said.

“We’re an indie shop, so we’re bootstrapping everything,” Baratelli said. “We’re using it around the stuff no one wants to do, reporting, scoping.”

The conversation came on the heels of Madison Logic releasing new research from a Harris Interactive survey of more than 300 business-to-business marketing leaders. It found that three in four of those surveyed believe the future of advertising will be defined by AI-driven creative processes (73%) in the next five years. Two in three of those surveyed predicted personalization at scale and immersive advertising (66% each) will become more prevalent, and 84% believe traditional advertising will be dead by 2030.

Still, all of the executives agreed that advertising is a relationship business and nothing will change that.

“It’s important to point out that these are all really responsible uses of AI,” Ad-ID’s Bradbury said. “What we are seeing on our side is folks trying to understand the various uses of AI. So everybody does all this great work [and] we’re getting calls saying, ‘Can you help verify this for me? Is this a product that came out of an agency? There’s this other layer that you just can’t control [AI] that we need to start to wrap our arms around it.”

Strategists are in demand

AdAge asked what jobs are most in demand right now and strategy was the one definitive.

Faux-Pattani said BSSP is always on the hunt for great strategists, but noted that the shop sometimes struggles to find truly top candidates in that space. She said curiosity is always needed in that role, but the agency has had a hard time finding candidates who have curiosity that is “intuitive” versus “data curiosity.”

The strategy role is also shifting and putting more pressure on professionals in those roles.

Since clients are buying more “connected solutions,” agencies need strategies to be adept in everything from “commerce to brand, to media, to analytics, to creative understanding,” Thomas-Copeland said. “I don’t know any strategies that can do all of those things really well. And then at the same time in the room there was a call for strategy as a function to be front-of-house with clients. So suddenly they’re in a new environment.”

Webster argued that strategists and account people now have to “battle together … as an account strategist, you really need to understand your client’s business much better than they do.”

Hunting for new business opportunities

Most of the executives said there is a lot of opportunity to win new pieces of business, but they are far-ranging in size. Industry and agency leaders also have to be strategic in deciding what accounts to go after. 

Health care agency reviews are on the rise, for example, and Faux-Pattani said she sees a lot more “emerging brands” looking to hire shops right now.

In terms of the boon in health care agency reviews, Thomas-Copeland said that category has always been more “resilient” to macroeconomic factors. Still, 4As agency members have told the organization that even within health care marketing, “projects are not being solidified … in terms of planning and commitments, there’s a bit less of that,” he said.

Thomas-Copeland said agencies are having to place “their bets on where they’re going to look for opportunity, and trying to get really good at judging what is an opportunity that looks like it has some longevity, versus the one-and-done.”

“We’ve been very selective over the past 18 months or so in terms of the clients that we pursue from a business perspective and it’s worked,” Giant Spoon’s Grody said. “Over the last six months, we’ve won 67% of our pitches. The reason is we go after fewer, bigger, better and then we find smaller clients where we see that profound growth potential.”

Webster said Walrus has had success going after emerging brands that have reached $200 million to $400 million in revenue and are “ready to spend. They’re either getting ready for an IPO or sale, or they’ve just sold and need to show return on that investment,” she said.

For Omnicom Public Relations Group, Foster said it’s a much different situation.

“We will probably chase 2,500 RFPs in the course of a year,” he said. “We’re doing 100 or so a week as a network, if not more. The deal flow is very different in PR than advertising and media … in Europe, I’m seeing competitive consolidation in the marketplace, and so the deal sizes are small because there’s just a lot more competition.”

How to stand out in a crowded market

Faux-Pattani said she’s starting to see more intimate pitches with two or three competing shops, versus somewhere between four and six, which she welcomes. She said she sometimes will turn down a pitch if there are too many shops vying for the account.

That might be good for the agencies invited to pitch, but that means there are even fewer opportunities to get a foot in the door. The executives discussed how they are standing out in an increasingly overcrowded market that sees new agencies popping up seemingly every day to compete with holding company shops and independents alike.

“There are 14,000 agencies out there,” Webster said, making it more pertinent to understand your niche and where it makes sense for you to show up as an agency. Walrus, she said, goes after the opportunities it wants, rather than waiting for them.

“We have a robust sales department, PR program and outreach program,” she said. “For these smaller pieces of business, too, it’s much easier to hunt—to prospect, build, identify opportunities and make relationships, so we’re not actually having to go into a pitch. We close a lot of business that way.”

Hightower said Omnicom Specialty Marketing Group promotes itself through “product innovation and storytelling.”

“In Europe, we will pitch a suite of modalities, so we’ll say, ‘Give us your budget and we’ll figure out the best way to implement your spend across a number of modalities,” he said. “That has resonated well in that marketplace. In the U.S., it’s been through technology, building platforms where we are able to acquire data about the client, about their value chain, and then providing them feedback that can help them reduce costs and get more bang for their buck.”

Despite the conservative backlash to diversity initiatives, the executives said they remain committed.

The state of DEI

“From a 4As standpoint, the focus will continue to be on inclusive teams, and inclusive teams are great for business, they’re great for being an economic multiplier, they’re great for brands being much more in tune with the market,” Thomas-Copeland said.

Webster reiterated that point, saying companies with diverse boards and teams outperform those that are not.

“We’ve always been committed to inclusivity,” Grody said. “We remain committed to inclusivity. Nothing has changed.”

Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!

Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.