What If the Agency Industry’s Biggest Problem Isn’t AI at All?

Patou Nuytemans believes the industry’s real challenge has been building for decades. Now she’s making the case for a new understanding of agency value — and a different way forward.

Artificial intelligence is transforming the agency business. It is accelerating production, changing the economics of execution and challenging long-established assumptions about the value of human work.

But what if AI isn’t the real problem?

Patou Nuytemans believes the agency industry has been confronting a more fundamental challenge for decades — one that AI is simply making impossible to ignore.

After 30 years at Ogilvy, most recently as CEO for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, overseeing 35 markets, Nuytemans has witnessed virtually every major transformation of the modern agency business. Now, as the Ambassador for Agency Value at EACA (European Association of Communications Agencies), she is making the case for another.

And this time, the change isn’t primarily about technology. It’s about how agencies understand, communicate and capture the value they create.

A Business Model That Never Quite Caught Up

Over the past three decades, what agencies do for clients has changed enormously. What hasn’t changed nearly enough, Patou Nuytemans argues, is how they sell that work.

She remembers the transition from media commissions to billable hours. As channels proliferated and marketing became more fragmented, the model initially worked. More work meant more billable time.

But eventually, agencies were expected to deliver increasingly complex work within the existing — or smaller — budgets. At the same time, the industry became increasingly focused on measurable execution rather than the broader business contribution of creativity, strategy, and differentiation.

The result was a growing disconnect between what agencies actually contributed and what clients were paying them to deliver.

AI has exposed that contradiction.

As technology takes over more execution, an industry whose economics depend on selling execution faces an uncomfortable question: what happens when the work becomes faster, cheaper or increasingly automated?

For Patou, the answer begins with recognizing that the value agencies create has not disappeared. The problem is how that value is defined and sold.

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From Services to Solutions

One of the most important distinctions Patou Nuytemans makes is between selling services and selling solutions.

Agencies have traditionally defined themselves by what they do: advertising, PR, content, social media, CRM, digital experiences or consulting. But clients don’t ultimately need a collection of services. They need problems solved.

A solution, in Patou’s definition, addresses a meaningful client need through a distinctive, repeatable methodology designed to produce identifiable outcomes.

Consider an agency helping a heritage brand become relevant to a younger generation. The work might involve research, strategy, creative development, content, creator partnerships, and execution. Traditionally, these activities would be scoped and priced as separate deliverables.

But the client’s real objective isn’t to purchase those activities. It’s to build relevance and future demand. That distinction changes the conversation.

Instead of negotiating how many hours or people are required, the agency and client can begin by agreeing on what needs to change, how progress will be measured, and what that change could ultimately be worth.

This is the shift advocated in the EACA and VoxComm guidance, Redesigning the Agency Value Model. It is not simply a new pricing formula. It requires agencies to develop a different commercial capability: defining what they are uniquely equipped to solve.

Value Isn’t the Same as Performance

Another important distinction in her argument is that value-based pricing and performance-based compensation are not interchangeable.

Agencies can influence business outcomes without controlling every factor that determines them. Sales, for example, may depend on distribution, competitive activity, media investment, pricing and broader economic conditions. That makes compensation based entirely on sales results difficult, particularly when the agency’s contribution may create value over a longer period.

Patou Nuytemans suggests separating three questions:

• What is the client buying?
• How should the price be established?
• And should some portion of payment depend on results?

These questions are related, but they are not identical.

An agency might commit to defined strategic and creative outcomes, establish meaningful performance indicators, and negotiate a price that reflects the work’s potential value rather than simply the hours required.

The distinction matters because it offers a practical route toward value-based relationships without pretending agencies can control every business result.

A New Conversation With Procurement

Perhaps one of the most interesting implications concerns procurement.

Agency leaders frequently describe procurement as a source of downward pressure on pricing. But Patou sees an opportunity to change the nature of that relationship.

When agencies sell undifferentiated services, procurement naturally focuses on comparing costs, staffing levels and rates. However, when agencies can demonstrate distinctive expertise and clearly defined outcomes, the conversation can become more strategic. Procurement can negotiate value rather than simply the building blocks of delivery.

That doesn’t eliminate the need for accountability or cost discipline. It changes what is being evaluated.

And it requires marketers, agencies and procurement professionals to develop a shared understanding of what success looks like.

This connects to a broader challenge emerging across the marketing profession: the need to move beyond measuring activity toward understanding contribution.

When AI Makes Difference More Valuable

Patou Nuytemans is realistic about the disruption AI will bring. More execution will move in-house, and many established agency activities will become easier to automate.

Yet she is optimistic about the continuing importance of human expertise.

AI can make work more efficient. But when everyone has access to similar capabilities, efficiency alone becomes a less compelling source of differentiation.

The opportunity for agencies lies in the things that make meaningful differences possible: imagination, judgment, critical thinking, strategic decisions, relationships and the ability to bring people together around change.

She also sees renewed importance in physical experiences, human interaction and the ability to break through an increasingly crowded communications environment.

In other words, AI may make producing more content easier. It doesn’t necessarily make it easier to create something distinctive. And distinction remains central to how brands grow.

Building the Agency of 2030

Toward the end of our Trendsetters conversation, I asked Patou what she would do differently if she were building an agency for 2030 instead of transforming one built for an earlier era.

Her answer was surprisingly straightforward.

• Start with deep expertise in solving a particular client problem.
• Develop a distinctive methodology.
• Use AI to strengthen delivery.
• Package that expertise into clear solutions.
• Establish the outcomes and indicators against which the work should be judged.
• Then expand from that foundation.

“Rather than beginning with the ambition to do everything,” she says, “begin by becoming exceptionally good at something that matters.”

It’s a compelling vision of a more specialized, adaptable and potentially more valuable agency landscape.

But perhaps the larger lesson extends beyond agencies themselves …

For years, the marketing industry has become extraordinarily sophisticated at measuring what it produces, distributes and delivers. It has not always been equally effective at explaining the value of what those activities make possible.

AI is forcing that distinction into the open.

The future of the agency business may depend less on how efficiently agencies perform the work they have always done … and more on how clearly they can demonstrate the difference their work makes.

And that is a conversation worth having across the entire marketing profession.

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