MenuClose
Ever since AI became part of the creative workflow, there’s been ongoing conversation around whether agencies are becoming less necessary.
After all, if AI can generate headlines, visuals, campaign ideas, strategy decks, and even social content within seconds, what happens to the role of agencies?
But the more AI becomes integrated into the process, the clearer one thing becomes: AI is only as good as the brief behind it.
A weak brief still produces weak work. The only difference now is that bad work can be generated much faster.
That’s why the real issue isn’t whether AI will replace agencies. It’s whether brands and agencies are prepared to think more clearly, ask better questions, and define problems more specifically.
Because in an AI-driven landscape, clarity becomes a competitive advantage.
Traditionally, agencies were often valued based on executional capabilities—how quickly teams could produce assets, adapt campaigns, or roll out content across platforms.
AI is changing that.
Execution is becoming more accessible. Production is becoming faster. Outputs are becoming easier to generate.
What clients increasingly need from agencies isn’t just faster production, but clearer thinking.
As a result, the value of agencies is slowly shifting upstream, away from pure production and closer towards strategic thinking, problem framing, creative direction, and decision-making.
The difference between average work and meaningful work now depends heavily on the quality of input.
And that input usually starts with the brief.
Across conversations with business development and account servicing teams, one point keeps coming up: strong briefs aren’t the most detailed ones; they’re the clearest ones.
A strong brief should clarify four things:
Campaign Objectives
Target Audience
Category Context
Brand Direction
According to Amanda Ting (Business Development Manager), one of the biggest misconceptions about briefs is that brands focus too much on deliverables instead of the actual business problem.
“Bad briefs are usually broad and vague, and not specific enough on the outcomes they want to achieve,” she explains. “Good briefs clearly communicate the real marketing and business challenges, because that gives agencies something solid to anchor ideas around.”
She also notes that long-term brand ambition is often overlooked.
“It’s important to understand what the brand wants to represent in the long run. Whether it’s positioning as a challenger or a market leader changes how far agencies can push strategically and creatively.”
That context matters. A challenger brand might be more open to disruption, while a market leader may prioritise consistency and trust. Those are fundamentally different creative starting points.
The same applies to audience definition. There’s a big difference between “targeting Gen Z” and understanding which behaviours, cultural spaces, and motivations actually matter for the brand.
Without that clarity, creative work tends to become generic, especially when AI tools are involved.
We’re already seeing this play out in practice. Two teams can use the same AI tools, but the output can look completely different depending on how clearly the problem was defined at the start.
On the other hand, weak briefs tend to look familiar:
These briefs often sound something like:
These aren’t necessarily wrong requests, but they skip the more important questions.
Sometimes, the disconnect goes even deeper. Agencies are asked for breakthrough ideas while also being expected to guarantee performance before anything has been tested.
As Constance Chong (Business Development Director) points out, brands often want “never-been-done executions” while also asking for existing data to prove that it will work in advance.
Other contradictions include asking agencies for innovation but within safe boundaries, expecting precise targeting without clear brand context, and requesting platform-first ideas with unrealistic budgets.
When expectations, objectives, and reality aren’t aligned, even strong ideas get diluted. And when briefs lack clarity, agencies and AI end up making assumptions, which always lead to safe work.
This issue doesn’t only sit between brands and agencies. It often happens internally too—when briefs lose clarity as they move across teams.
That’s why account servicing plays a critical role in translating intent across strategy, creative, media, and production. If the brief shifts meaning along the way, misalignment is inevitable.
This is also why briefs must be human-led before they are AI-supported.
AI can accelerate output, but it cannot interpret ambiguity or challenge unclear thinking.
AI will absolutely reshape how agencies work. Some parts of production will become faster and more automated.
But that doesn’t make strategic thinking less important. If anything, it makes it more valuable.
The most important agencies going forward won’t be the ones producing the most content. They’ll be the ones best at:
As Kelly Hiu (Digital Account Manager) notes, strong briefs always start with a clear marketing challenge anchored in brand positioning.
And as Grace Lee (Senior Digital Account Manager) highlights, overloading briefs with too many competing objectives is a common reason campaigns lose direction.
“When everything is a priority, nothing is,” she notes.
In many ways, agencies are becoming strategic translators.
Most brands do not actually struggle with a lack of content. They struggle with a lack of clarity—and AI cannot compensate for unclear thinking.
Even with access to powerful tools, what still separates strong work from average work is human judgment: knowing what is relevant, meaningful, differentiated, and culturally resonant for the brand.
Ultimately, better work comes from better collaboration.
Good creative work requires openness from brands. That means it's not just about deliverables, but about:
At the same time, agencies also need to be willing to push back, challenge assumptions, and ask uncomfortable questions when needed.
The best creative partnerships have never been about clients handing over instructions and agencies blindly executing them. It’s about both sides working together to solve the same problem.
AI may change how work gets made, but it doesn’t replace the need for strategic clarity, human judgment, or strong creative thinking.
In fact, the more accessible AI becomes, the more valuable clear thinking becomes. When everyone has access to the same tools, the real differentiator is no longer execution speed. It’s the ability to define the right problem in the first place.
Thank you for your enquiry! We'll respond shortly.
