Humans as the Bottleneck on Purpose, with Vaibhav Gupta

Do you think that's the reason why you're kind of slightly controversially saying that agencies aren't going to survive? Well, not all agencies, but a lot of agencies won't survive because that process is often being outsourced from a client to an agency, hasn't it? So is it going to be the case where we can do it ourselves as businesses now?

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I'm being a bit cheeky there when I say agencies won't survive.

What I mean mostly is the current version of agencies might not survive.

So I think the agencies that are able to adapt to the next pace will most likely survive.

taking a step back, maybe most of your listeners or maybe some of your listeners don't know the agency model in marketing specifically.

So allow me to take a minute to explain.

So the advantage of using a marketing agency was instead of hiring three people, I can get them at a fraction of that cost through an agency that has those three people, but serving, let's say, five clients or six clients.

And it allowed you to sort of get economies of scale without really having that level of scale.

And then, of course, came expertise and everything else.

The advantage of AI systems now is that those experiments can be done, as you rightly said, can be done in-house now.

So a graphic can be created and everything else.

I feel the smarter agencies will need to move away from I'll give you a resource to I'll give you the results.

in the sense that you should actually hire me not because I can do this task, but it's also because I can do this task well.

And that positioning is something that I don't think most agencies have yet.

I think some are figuring it out, but I think that will be the next, if I have to guess, the next stage of evolution for marketing agencies.

Yeah, I love that thinking because one of the things that I can remember from, you know, back in the day when I had what I would describe as a real job was actually working on client side rather than sort of consulting or in an agency.

And one of the things that, you know, if we would put out to an agency pitch, for example, it would be, you know, has to have kind of some kind of level of strategic ability.

And so many agencies would come back, oh, we're strategic.

they had no idea what the meaning of the word strategic was.

And in fact, you know, it was almost embarrassing when they used to come back with their strategy because it was just a bunch of tactics.

And for me, that was really important, this whole ability to think and help a client with a medium to longer term view rather than just, yeah, we can do a great campaign for you.

We'll be strategic in our campaign, which actually didn't mean anything.

So do you think this whole idea of I think a more kind of holistic brand view as an agency, even if it's for supporting, say, a small local business, is going to be much more important because that feels the differentiator.

If you can actually support a client with something that is much more tangible for the longer term, well, that's what we're all going to need, isn't it?

Correct.

Do you think that's the reason why you're kind of slightly controversially saying that agencies aren't going to survive? Well, not all agencies, but a lot of agencies won't survive because that process is often being outsourced from a client to an agency, hasn't it? So is it going to be the case where we can do it ourselves as businesses now?

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I'm being a bit cheeky there when I say agencies won't survive.

What I mean mostly is the current version of agencies might not survive.

So I think the agencies that are able to adapt to the next pace will most likely survive.

taking a step back, maybe most of your listeners or maybe some of your listeners don't know the agency model in marketing specifically.

So allow me to take a minute to explain.

So the advantage of using a marketing agency was instead of hiring three people, I can get them at a fraction of that cost through an agency that has those three people, but serving, let's say, five clients or six clients.

And it allowed you to sort of get economies of scale without really having that level of scale.

And then, of course, came expertise and everything else.

The advantage of AI systems now is that those experiments can be done, as you rightly said, can be done in-house now.

So a graphic can be created and everything else.

I feel the smarter agencies will need to move away from I'll give you a resource to I'll give you the results.

in the sense that you should actually hire me not because I can do this task, but it's also because I can do this task well.

And that positioning is something that I don't think most agencies have yet.

I think some are figuring it out, but I think that will be the next, if I have to guess, the next stage of evolution for marketing agencies.

Yeah, I love that thinking because one of the things that I can remember from, you know, back in the day when I had what I would describe as a real job was actually working on client side rather than sort of consulting or in an agency.

And one of the things that, you know, if we would put out to an agency pitch, for example, it would be, you know, has to have kind of some kind of level of strategic ability.

And so many agencies would come back, oh, we're strategic.

they had no idea what the meaning of the word strategic was.

And in fact, you know, it was almost embarrassing when they used to come back with their strategy because it was just a bunch of tactics.

And for me, that was really important, this whole ability to think and help a client with a medium to longer term view rather than just, yeah, we can do a great campaign for you.

We'll be strategic in our campaign, which actually didn't mean anything.

So do you think this whole idea of I think a more kind of holistic brand view as an agency, even if it's for supporting, say, a small local business, is going to be much more important because that feels the differentiator.

If you can actually support a client with something that is much more tangible for the longer term, well, that's what we're all going to need, isn't it?

Correct.