• by Maarten Albarda , Featured Contributor, 11 hours ago

I saw a commercial for a large global consultancy today. The ad grabbed my attention, because in it, a business leader interacts with all sorts of people throughout a busy work week. He has business meetings, conference calls, downtime on the squash court, and more. All he hears from anybody he talks with is “AI, AI, AI, AI, AI.” Those are literally the only words uttered by his counterparts.

The marketing news is like this man’s work week: “AI, AI, AI, AI.” The earnings reports from Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft sounded exactly like that. And all our industry news continues like that.

Noted industry oracle Michael Farmer argues that brand growth is virtually nonexistent over the last decade, and that this “slowth” (a word that I just invented to be the opposite of “growth”) occurred at the same time when advertisers switched on the digital output machines largely driven by tech. And this appears to be one of main reasons why marketing procurement teams pursue lower agency costs: It can, and is expected to be, done easily and cheaply at scale.

Before the machines, we spent decades treating marketing as a growth engine: a machine where you pour in media dollars and creative hours to get sales out the other end. But in a world of infinite complexity and, yes, infinite AI-generated noise, the job isn't just to drive; it's to find the path through the fog.

Farmer argues that we haven't just hit a rough patch; we’ve hit rock bottom. For over a decade, holding companies have "milked" their agencies, focusing on cost-cutting and reorganizations rather than helping clients actually grow.

We’ve replaced "value-added" partnership with "commodity-level" delivery. The result? Stagnant brand growth and a combative atmosphere where nobody wins. When agencies are squeezed on fees, they respond with “creative” income sources like principal-based media, and by staff-loading with juniors who don't have the experience to be the "navigators" clients actually need.

My fellow Media Insider Cory Treffiletti noted this week that the "agentic agency" is also coming for the big consultants. For years, big shops like Accenture, PWC and Deloitte won by offering scale and process. But now? Cory argues that a nimble, five-person agency with a sophisticated AI stack can match the operational output of a legacy consultant. The infrastructure advantage that protected the giants and their income justification for 30 years is evaporating.

The danger is that the industry uses the new tools to simply do the wrong things faster -- the things that are contributing to more “slowth.”

So, how do we stop the "AI, AI, AI" chanting and actually fix the business?

We need to stop billing for "activities" (which AI could do “for free”) and start billing for "outcomes." If an agency helps a brand grow, they should be paid a premium. If they just "produce and place content," they are a utility.

If you are a consultant or an agency, your value is no longer in "capacity." It’s in "judgment." Use the time AI saves you to understand your client’s P&L the same way as their CFO, their consumers as well as their CMO, and their path to purchase as well as the chief commercial officer. Or even better.

It is time we stop chanting “AI, AI, AI,” and start using it to excavate the value we buried under years of bad processes and commodity pricing.

PS: That commercial? It was for PWC.