The Role of AI in Modern Marketing Agencies

At Friday Agency, we’re not afraid of that question.

It’s…

Will clients just move their advertising over to AI? Cut out the agency. Plug in the machine. Let it run…

Why not? AI can write copy. AI can pick keywords. AI can push out campaigns in half the time for a fraction of the cost.

But here’s the thing…

The clients we want to work with, and the clients we do work with, already understand that some things don’t fit into a dashboard or a data model.

AI is a tool. A powerful one, no doubt, and we really do love it. But creativity, real marketing creativity, hasn’t gone anywhere. In fact, it’s never been more important.

Let’s not kid ourselves. AI can churn. It can take a product name and throw out 200 ad headlines in under a minute. It can write a blog post about pensions or shampoo with the same relentless, well-trained predictability. It can mimic brand tone, rewrite CTAs, and tidy up headlines until everything sounds fine.

But that’s the problem. It sounds fine.

Not great. Not risky. Not original. Not brave. Just fine.

And ‘fine’ doesn’t win hearts. It doesn’t sell products. It doesn’t shape culture or create demand. It doesn’t get talked about over dinner or shared in WhatsApp groups. It’s just background noise in a digital world already stuffed to the gills with perfectly fine content.

The Myth of Full Automation

The idea that you can automate your way into relevance is a lie, dressed up as efficiency.

You can let AI run your search campaigns. And it might do a decent job. You might even get a few cheap conversions. But what happens when your sector shifts? When your competitor drops their prices overnight? When new regulation lands, or a cultural moment opens the door to a bold message?

AI won’t always know.

Not until someone tells it. Not until a human intervenes. Because creativity isn’t just about what to say. It’s about when to say it. Why to say it. And sometimes, if you should say anything at all.

The best campaigns pivot. They evolve. They live. And that requires human judgement. Human experience. Human intuition.

At Friday, we build digital strategies that move with the market. We don’t just set and forget. We don’t rely on a single ‘winner’ ad and hope the algorithm sorts the rest. We create. We test. We learn. We adapt. Every piece of creative we ship comes with a sense of timing, audience insight, and real-world relevance that no off-the-shelf AI can produce on its own.

AI Isn’t Replacing Agencies. It’s Exposing Them

Let’s be honest. Not every agency deserves to survive this shift.

If you’ve been coasting – throwing the same templates at every campaign, swapping out logos and calling it custom work – AI will beat you. If all you offer is execution, then yes, clients might wonder why they need you at all.

But the best agencies were never just about execution.

We were the ones in the room when the brand platform was shaped. We were the ones who spotted that trend before it broke. The ones who rewrote the value proposition so it meant something. The ones who asked the awkward questions when the strategy felt too safe? The ones who turned vague business goals into meaningful, creative campaigns and content that cut through the noise.

We might even know the personal preferences of your core audiences because we ASKED them. They never told AI what they were.

AI can help with the doing. And we use it every day. For brainstorming, for benchmarking, for reporting, for building efficiencies… But the spark, the gut feeling, the craft? That’s human. That’s us. Without human input, there can be chaos.

Planning Isn’t a Spreadsheet. It’s Strategy

You can feed AI all the campaign data in the world. It still won’t understand the layers behind a brief. The internal politics. The founder’s vision. The tone you struck at last year’s conference that you’re trying to evolve without alienating loyal customers. The nuance of local culture. The language of nearly right that still misses the mark.

Planning requires synthesis. You listen. You challenge. You imagine things that don’t yet exist. That’s how we work at Friday. And we’re not apologising for it.

Strategy isn’t something you export from a dashboard. It’s something you sweat over, obsess about, and shape in conversation with your client. It’s built over time. The difference between a campaign that fades away and one that rewires how a customer sees your brand – that’s not a button you press.

AI-Generated Content And Ads

Here’s what most people haven’t fully noticed yet: the platforms are already starting to push back on AI content.

Google’s algorithms are shifting. It’s not just about keyword stuffing or spammy links anymore. Pages are being de-ranked because they’re clearly AI-written. Platforms like Meta and TikTok are experimenting with labelling or down-weighting synthetic content. And that’s just the start.

We’re going to see a reckoning with trust and provenance. If your ads are generated, templated, automated – your audience will know. And so will the algorithm.

There’s nothing wrong with using AI. We use it throughout the campaign lifecycle: to test variants, write draft copy, summarise research and speed up reporting. But it’s with human oversight. Human taste. Human standards.

Because a good agency isn’t afraid to say: this headline doesn’t work. This ad is flat. This brand message is too safe. AI doesn’t care about any of that. It just executes. It doesn’t fight for the work.

We do.

What Clients Really Pay For

They don’t pay for an ad. They don’t pay for a piece of content. They pay for experience and a result. A shift in perception. A strategy that opens up new opportunities. A creative idea that resonates in ways data can’t predict.

They pay for momentum. For the confidence that someone is watching the market, responding to signals, and acting in their best interest. That’s not something you outsource to a tool. That’s a relationship. That’s trust.

At Friday, we don’t sell templates. We don’t sell hours. We sell thinking. Original, creative, human thinking – amplified by smart use of technology. That’s how you win in this market. That’s how you stay relevant.

So What Happens Next?

Agencies that resist AI entirely? Gone. Agencies that try to pretend it’s the whole answer? Also gone.

The future belongs to teams who can think creatively, act strategically, and execute fast – powered by AI, not replaced by it.

We’ll continue to use it obsessively. We’d be mad not to. It helps us do more, test more, and move quicker. But we’re not surrendering anything. We’re using it to elevate the creative and campaigns, not replace it.

So if you’re a client wondering what the future of digital marketing looks like, don’t look at the tools. Look at the people.

Are they still curious? Still creative? Still willing to challenge you?

Then you’re in good hands.

And if you’re not – well, you know where to find us.