“It Does Feel Like You’ve Grown an Extra Hand” Indie Agencies on How They’re Using AI
The ad industry AI narrative has been dominated by holding companies shovelling millions of pounds, dollars and euros into tech and building huge ecosystems and sandboxes. But not every client is looking for a magic ‘do everything’ machine, and not every client wants to get lost in the sprawling corporate architecture of a holding company.
Indies have discovered that they can use artificial intelligence to unleash their creativity on a bigger stage without losing the human scale that keeps them tight, easy to work with and gloriously idiosyncratic.
Independents Using AI to Stay Nimble
Roanna Williams and Fran Luckin are co-chief creative officers at South African agency Boundless. It’s an independent that proudly describes itself as ‘an agency of experts’, and they’ve found that using AI is enabling those experts to get more hands on with clients and creative work, allowing them to stay lean and punchy.
“What is great about incorporating this into a smaller agency is how it does allow for that nimble agility,” says Roanna.
Laura Jordan Bambach is co-founder and chief creative officer at another indie, Uncharted, which is on a whole different continent and she believes that the paradigm of how independents are using AI in a way that amplifies rather than circumvents human talent.
“This is] so much more human as well,” she says, “and much more about people and businesses where creatives are at the centre.”
The teams at both Uncharted and Boundless are finding that using AI gives them a sense of scale that allows them to compete, without losing that fleet-footed agility.
“It does feel like you've just grown an extra hand,” says Roanna as Fran chips in”It helps you punch above your weight a little bit. ...When you're a small agency and you have to keep your overheads low, there is something in just being able to flesh out ideas to a high standard of polish in presentations very quickly."
And it’s not just the agencies that are borrowing a bit of extra scale, it’s clients too. Smaller businesses can now tell bigger, wilder, stories that match their brands without being constrained by budget.
Laura shares the example of one client, a gin brand, that had been offered a cinema screen in its hometown - an exciting platform but perhaps not one that warranted an enormous budget. Working with Luma, they were able to use a small crew to create an emotional, experimental film that made full use of the space.
Reflecting on the project, Laura says that it didn’t change her instincts or approach as a creative director. “It’s allowing us as a smaller crew to be a bit more experimental in the way we’re using it. As a creative director, I’m very visual, but I’m an emotion-first creative director. It has to feel right. And it helps me, the creative director, to get to a point where I know what feels right quicker without having to spend the money and then go... That's not quite right,” she says, adding that it also allows her to give clients more confidence.
Why the Brain Behind the Keyboard is Key
Fran believes it allows creatives to inject ‘more of themselves’ into projects. She recalls Roanna presenting some billboard concepts to a CMO who was, herself, a big fan of their Luma tools.
“She said a sentence which I find fascinating, which was: ‘I want the Ro effect’. [It was like] I want you to use this tool, but I want to use it like you would use this, and I want YOU… There's such an artistry in these tools.”
Roanna agrees that far from undermining talent, used correctly the tech makes talent more important. “What’s important is the person who's the brain behind it, because it's not going to just give you stuff” she says. “You still have to input what you actually want to achieve. I think, and a lot of clients are getting this wrong, it's very important who's operating it and who's working with it. It's still a tool at the end of the day, and you're not gonna achieve great stuff with it if you're not putting in the vision and the thinking behind it.”
As an example, Laura is using AI tools to create an Australian folk horror story about perimenopausal women (called ‘The Bush’, natch). Talk about using AI to amplify your creative idiosyncrasy. Laura also takes it as an opportunity to push the boundaries of AI, explore its biases and limitations, particularly around representation.
Choosing the Right Tools
We’re joined in the conversation by Jason Day, head of EMEA for Luma, an creative AI engine that takes any media input (text, photo, or footage) and transforms it into photoreal video, images and sound. Jason suggests that there’s something about the platform’s experience design that makes it fun and therefore allows individual creatives to express themselves.
“One of the things that we take the deliberate decision around is to try and make the technology fun to engage with,and enjoyable to interact with, so that we can get to the idea in an enjoyable way rather than just feeling like a keyboard warrior.”
For the teams at both agencies, tools like Luma that are intuitive and fun to interact with allow them to focus on the creative and their vision.
“A core philosophy behind Luma is that the experience of creation should be as intuitive and enjoyable as the idea itself,” explains Jason. “Creatives are wired to play and experiment, and if a tool feels like a chore, they're just not going to get the best out of it. We're seeing a real split between platforms that feel intuitive and those that feel like you're just bashing out commands."
He adds, "The goal has to be about helping people land on an exciting idea in a fun, engaging way. The moment it all becomes about mass-producing generic content, the magic is lost. Not just for the creative, but for the work itself. The best tech should feel like a creative partner, not a machine you're just operating.”
Approaching AI with Intentionality and Eyes Wide Open
Each agency is keenly aware of the criticisms of AI and have really thought about how to navigate pitfalls. For example, while the industry-wide narrative has been that the tech is a replacement for entry-level roles, both say that it’s as, if not more, important to train up youngsters to become the next generation of youngsters.
“We're going to intentionally make sure that we train up youngsters,” says Fran. “It's about being intentional. You don't just blindly go into something like this. You actually have to go, we have to have a stance on it. We have to use it intentionally and we have to use it like craftspeople.”
Laura, who trains students on how to use AI creatively, concurs. “That key word is intentionality, right? Like with anything, but we can't just blindly rush into it and not think about what the long-term consequences would be and how we use it to do great things for our industry.”
Fran says she’s “very anti killing human jobs, by the way, I'm just gonna come right up with that” but admits that AI helps a small independent like Boundless keep its overheads low. They don’t use the tools to produce content for public consumption, but it helps flesh out concepts and create polished presentations that build creative buy-in with risk averse clients.
This intentionality, combined with powerful but intuitive tools, means, argues Jason, that the creative ideas become more central than tech. “It feels like we’re at the beginning of a new creative renaissance. The tools are getting incredibly powerful, but that just puts the focus right back where it should always be: the idea. The key competitive advantage will always be a strong idea, and our role is to provide tools that can amplify those ideas. Craft is still completely central to that. Anyone can generate an image, sure, but what makes it meaningful? What makes it connect with people? That comes from the skill, the taste, and the vision of the person guiding the process. The best results we see are always a blend of new technology and timeless creative craft.”
Can AI Be ‘Artisanal’? These Indies Think So
Ultimately, those nifty and nimble creative shops have found a way to wield AI like a scalpel rather than a cudgel. For indies, it could help level the playing field, but that relies on using the tools in a considered way.
“It's like anything; yeah, you could use it to make very average work very quickly and make a huge margin, or you could take the artisanal approach and go, 'Okay, we're going to use it to make wonderful things that we couldn't make',” says Fran.
