Reframes the AI threat narrative. The real risk isn't AI, it's commoditised agencies that don't add strategic value. A sharp take on what makes agencies irreplaceable.
AI is not coming for good agencies.
It's coming for average ones. And average ones should be worried.
This distinction matters — both for agencies evaluating their own position and for clients evaluating who to work with.
What AI Actually Replaces
Let's be honest about what AI is good at in creative and marketing work.
It replaces the production layer. First drafts that follow established patterns. Research synthesis. Stock copy for components. Predictable outputs from clear inputs. Work that is primarily about execution rather than judgment.
This is work that average agencies have been charging premium rates for. It's now substantially cheaper and faster to do with AI assistance. The price umbrella that covered this kind of work is collapsing.
If an agency's primary value proposition is "we can produce a lot of things quickly," that proposition is in trouble. AI does volume without overhead. It doesn't need account managers or timesheets.
What AI Can't Replace
Strategic value is different from production value.
Understanding why a particular market doesn't respond to conventional positioning — because the founder has talked to a hundred buyers and knows what keeps them up at night. Recognising that a client's real problem isn't brand awareness but internal alignment on who they're serving. Knowing when a rebrand is the right move and when it's avoidance behaviour.
This kind of judgment is built from experience, pattern recognition, and genuine engagement with a client's world. It can't be prompted. It requires the kind of contextual, stakes-laden thinking that only happens when humans are actually accountable for outcomes.
Creative vision is similar. AI produces combinations of what already exists. It doesn't produce work that makes people feel something new — the campaign that reframes how an industry thinks about a problem, the brand identity that expresses something about a company that the company hadn't been able to say.
The best agencies produce work that couldn't have been predicted from the inputs. That's irreplaceable.
The Honest Self-Assessment for Agencies
Here are the questions every agency should be asking itself right now:
- Is our value primarily in doing things, or in knowing things?
- Could our strategy work be substantially replicated by a skilled person with AI tools?
- Do our clients work with us because we're efficient, or because our judgment produces outcomes they can't get elsewhere?
- Are we building genuine, proprietary expertise in specific areas — or are we generalists competing on delivery?
The uncomfortable truth for many agencies: a significant portion of what they charge for is production. Research. Copywriting. Templated strategies. Deliverables that follow established formats.
AI doesn't eliminate the need for these things. But it compresses the cost of producing them. Agencies that can't demonstrate value beyond production are going to face pricing pressure that only increases over time.
What This Means for Clients
For anyone hiring an agency, the AI moment is actually clarifying. It makes it easier to distinguish between the two kinds of agencies:
Agencies that charge for doing: Their value is production volume. Faster and cheaper alternatives are emerging. These agencies will either automate (reducing costs) or struggle to justify rates.
Agencies that charge for thinking: Their value is judgment, strategic insight, creative vision, and the specific expertise that comes from deep focus in a domain. This value is resistant to AI substitution — in fact, it may become more valuable as the production layer commoditises.
When evaluating agencies, ask: what am I actually paying for? If the answer is primarily output — number of deliverables, hours of work, volume of content — the value proposition is fragile. If the answer is judgment and expertise that I can't build internally or find cheaper, you're in different territory.
The Opportunity for Good Agencies
This moment isn't a threat for agencies that have been doing genuinely valuable work. It's a clarifying moment — and, arguably, an opportunity.
AI compresses the cost of production. Agencies that use it well can deliver more strategic value per engagement because they're spending less time on the execution layer. The best thinking can now be applied more efficiently.
The agencies that emerge from this transition strongest will be those that have always led with judgment — and now use AI to make their judgment even more impactful.
[Monkey Minds] exists to provide the kind of strategic value that AI can't replace — and we use AI intelligently to make it more efficient. [Let's talk] about what that looks like.