Commentary

How Leading Agencies Are Evolving for Digital-First, High-Volume Content Demands

by Renee Ellis , Op-Ed Contributor, May 20, 2025

As the pace of digital transformation accelerates, the marketing landscape has shifted irreversibly. The demand for high-quality, high-volume content is no longer a luxury, but rather the baseline. While it's tempting to jump straight into tactics, real success begins with a solid operational foundation. Agencies that are rising to meet today’s digital-first demands aren’t simply producing more, they’re operating differently from the ground up.

According to new research from the 2025 Cella Intelligence Report, 75% of creative work is now focused on production, ranging from design adaptation (34%) to asset delivery (41%), meaning efficiency and scalability are essential for creative teams.

To thrive in this environment, agencies must focus on operational strategies that drive sustainable scalability, creative excellence and client partnership. Specifically, three areas are critical to get right from the start:

Operational Agility by Design – Move beyond surface-level Agile to build truly adaptive systems, modular teams and frictionless workflows that respond in real time to creative needs and market shifts.

Human-Centered + Fused Operations – Combine people-first practices with integrated delivery models that align incentives, embed cross-functional talent and co-own outcomes between agency and client.

Technology as a Strategic Engine – Leverage AI, automation, and interoperable platforms not just for efficiency, but to fuel creativity, insight, and collaboration at scale.

Once these core strategies are in place, the tactics to produce, personalize and optimize content become not just possible, but powerful.

From Process to Mindset: Operational Agility Reimagined

Agencies must move past treating Agile as a checklist. Real agility isn’t about standups, it’s about systems that adapt to client needs, market shifts and creative momentum in real time.

This means designing modular team structures, building adaptive operating models, and removing friction points to enable creativity at scale, most importantly, without burning out the teams who power it.

In a digital-first world, where content must move fast, scale smart and perform across platforms, interconnectivity and cross-functional collaboration are critical. Agencies must become unified ecosystems of strategy, creativity, production and media that move as one.

Fusing Empathy with Efficiency: Two Models, One Mission

Modern agencies don’t choose between speed and soul. They know long-term success depends on blending Human-Centered Operations with Fused Operations, or systems that scale creativity without losing authenticity.

Human-Centered Operations prioritize people by:

Embedding talent closer to clients: Physically or virtually, proximity enhances collaboration, strengthens relationships and ensures deep brand understanding.

Aligning incentives and culture: Moving from siloed KPIs to shared goals builds trust and drives shared accountability.

Developing hybrid skill sets: Teams fluent in data, content and platform-specific storytelling can adapt faster and deliver smarter solutions.

Fused Operations prioritize scale and speed with:

Cross-functional client pods Unified teams that co-own outcomes reduce handoffs, accelerate decision-making and elevate campaign velocity.

Connected platforms: Shared dashboards and tools provide full visibility into progress, performance and priorities to ensure transparency and trust across agency-client teams.

Open-access collaboration models: Open-source frameworks and shared environments empower clients to actively participate in development, reinforcing co-creation and joint accountability from brief to delivery.

By blending these models, agencies orchestrate true creative agility that moves seamlessly between personalization and production, innovation and execution.

Workflow Orchestration: From Agile Theater to Real Impact

Many teams have adopted Agile in name only, most going through the motions without realizing the intended benefits. A recent Gartner survey found that 84% of marketing leaders and employees experience high levels of "collaboration drag" due to excessive meetings, feedback loops, and unclear decision-making authority. Rather than accelerating work, these broken processes slow teams down.

High-performing agencies are breaking free from Agile theater by:

Tailoring Agile to creative rhythms: Instead of rigid frameworks, agencies create sprint models that match the pace and nuance of creative work.

Accelerating brand immersion: Deep upfront discovery reduces revisions and enables more purposeful sprints.

Operating in always-on content modes: Blending breakthrough campaigns with evergreen content streams ensures continuous value, not episodic delivery.

Simplifying approvals and silos: Unified workflows and clear decision rights unlock speed without compromising quality.

Tiering content by complexity: Strategically allocating resources to flagship, mid-tier and high-volume work helps teams scale without sacrificing craft.

The agencies that rise above today don't just follow Agile, but rather lead with it, aligning operations to impact and co-owning outcomes with clients.

Technology as a Creative Engine

To deliver high-volume content at speed, technology can’t stay in the background. It must lead from the front as a creative partner, fueling bold ideas, smarter decisions and faster execution. Agencies are rethinking their stacks not as toolkits, but as transformation engines by:

Shifting analytics upstream: Leveraging predictive data and AI/ML tools not only to inform briefs and shape content strategies before production begins, but also to enable dynamic creative optimization (DCO) in real time.

Activating AI agents for orchestration: Deploying intelligent agents to manage tasks like brief intake, asset tagging and content optimization.

Creating immersive, real-time environments: Spatial computing and AR tools replace static decks with co-creative spaces that speed alignment.

Automating with intention: Applying selectively, and only where it enhances scale without sacrificing brand integrity or creative quality.

Building interoperable ecosystems: DAMs, CMSs, and performance platforms must connect to reduce duplication and accelerate localization.

Co-developing with clients: Building tech solutions together to ensure seamless integration, shared IP and mutual ownership of outcomes.

The goal? Using technology to power creative at scale, not just production at speed.

The Moment to Reinvent: Leading with Scale, Soul, and Speed

Digital-first marketing is rewriting the rules for how brands connect, create and compete. As one industry observer noted, “The nature of work will change because we can throw more scale at it than ever before.” But the real transformation doesn’t begin with more content, rather it begins with smarter operations. Agencies poised to thrive in this environment aren’t just accelerating production; they’re fundamentally rethinking how they operate from the inside out.

agency, content, management

Next story loading