“Confidence Comes from a Lack of Knowledge” Report Reveals the Paradox of the AI Skills Gap

“ A lot of people don’t know what they don’t know. The confidence comes from a lack of knowledge sometimes.”

As the Industry Club’sZoe Edwards introduced a new state-of-the-industry white paper on how agencies are addressing skills and talent in the age of AI(and where the gaps lie) she alighted on a paradox at the heart of the conundrum: the more structure and strategy leaders have in place and the further along they are in their AI journey, the more apparent it is how changeable and hard to grasp the whole thing is. Those organisations that are nearer the experimental fun phase, tend to under-estimate the scale of the challenge faced by and change needed by their organisation.

When platforms and tech are changing so rapidly, where specific technical knowledge can be rendered redundant in an instant, the challenge is less about tools and coding and more about culture and curiosity.

Artificial intelligence holds the promise to revolutionise the advertising and marketing space, so we’re told. It will make marketing harder, better, faster, stronger. But what about the humans in the middle, making it all happen? How can agencies ensure that they’ve got the skills?

It's a live challenge that has no one-size-fits-all solution. At the launch of The Industry Club and Spark AISkills and Hiring Benchmarking Report 'The Future of Skills and Hiring in the Age of AI', The Industry Club’s Melissa Smith chaired the panel which brought together Vix Jagger head of creative innovation and AI at Droga5 London, Robin Garton, ECD at SkyCreative, Natalie Winford, chief solutions officer at Brandtech Group-owned agency Jellyfish, Charlotte Mulley, head of planning at MullenLowe UK and Laura Jackson, head of strategy at Not Actual Size.

The discussion took place in the context of the The Industry Club + Spark AI Skills & Hiring Benchmarking Report, which explores how UK agencies are really adapting to AI and where the gaps lie

Drawing on insights from 149 senior leaders across independent, network, and in-house teams, the report finds a sharp divide between optimism and readiness: 63% of leaders say they’re confident their organisations “AI ready,” but more than a third still use the technology only sporadically and without strategy. Skill gaps are less about coding and more about applying AI commercially — selling its value, integrating it into workflows, and using it creatively.

Training and culture are fast becoming the new competitive advantage. Most agencies (68%)  plan to invest up to £15,000 in AI training this year, with over half prioritising upskilling their existing teams over new hires. Leaders increasingly value adaptability and curiosity over technical know-how, as AI expertise on specific platforms and tools can rapidly become outdated. Yet while most focus remains on efficiency gains, the report warns that the real opportunity lies in using AI to drive growth, innovation and talent engagement. Ultimately, it argues, the next wave of transformation will depend less on tools and more on leadership, structure and mindset.

However, right now, there’s also a major tension between the promise and reality, with 44% of agency leaders feeling AI will save on margins and cost but there’s also a keen awareness within agencies the challenges that AI poses, notably the time and resources needed to execute at a high level.

“We can’t be overpromising that there’s a magic button for clients because at the moment there isn’t,” said Vix, who argues that clients and leadership are often misled by AI start-ups keen to drum up business. “There’s a huge amount of hype… the bit that we’re not talking about is all the generations it . People are quite surprised when I open my Midjourney and my WeVe and I show them all the assets and all the really weird things where AI gets it really, really wrong. At the moment we see the 1% of hype online with ‘we did it in two minutes’ and they don’t see the pile of shit that went into it.”

The whitepaper delineates different phases of organisational AI readiness that moves from the disorganised ‘Experimentation’ phase, through Adoption and then Optimisation all the way to Innovation. According to Robin, at Sky Creative different pockets and teams are themselves at different stages.

“It’s not a uniform picture and I think that fits with how we make changes. We start in small spaces, create an area of expertise and then people follow. So I’m glad we have someone in that innovative space and hopefully that means it spreads out in the end,” he said. “At Sky we’ve got the benefit of being an entertainment and tech company…. From the exec down there’s a drive that this is going to be the future of our business as a whole so we’re in quite a different place to most in-house agencies.”

At an individual level, the panel had plenty of insights and provocations for people navigating a shifting career in the age of AI acceleration. Longer term, some panellists mused that AI would render job roles more porous and fluid, with curiosity and adaptability becoming key attributes. However, in the shorter term Jellyfish’s Natalie Winford had some concrete advice.

“What we’re seeing is really what you need is an AI transformation lead. Anyone who’s an account director in any agency at the moment, I would Google that job description, I would work really hard to see how you could potentially take on some of those responsibilities within that role,” she said. “Customer success manager is a huge, huge, huge job looking forward. These are the people who understand the features of the tools… they’re going to sit with your client, look at your client’s activity and plans over the year and look at where that innovation comes in.”

One of the big talent questions that AI poses is what it means for junior talent. More basic, repetitive tasks, often given to newbies is now falling to artificial intelligence. Charlotte Mulley at MullenLowe reflected that jobs that she was given as a junior like competitor analysis or finding (in order to discount) the more generic insights are fodder for AI – but that’s not to say that the industry should write off junior talent, which is being hired at lower rates (whether because of AI or other economic factors).

“I do think it’s short termist because we’re an industry that’s about ideas. We absolutely need to get fresh thinking in. We need to get to the new generation of consumers that are coming in. If we don’t have those perspectives in the building and fresh ideas and diversity of thought, we’re really going to be making our own industry redundant. My personal hope is that we can basically move all strategists upstream.”
That fresh perspective also helps organisations to define their approach to AI. Laura Jackson at Not Actual Size reveals that a politically-engaged younger cohort also provides much-needed provocation.

“I don’t know if this is just anecdotal, I think our juniors are probably the most vocal about being anti AI, which is kind of interesting, primarily because of the big tech power dynamics and how it’s playing out,” she said. “That is quiet interesting because they bring a bring a fresh perspective on ethical uses, and this more pure ‘how can I use this to enhance creative?’ rather than how is it creating efficiencies? I think they are actually helping us shape our approach to AI.”

Laura at Not Actual Size shared her agency’s experience helping a client to develop an AI copywriting tool. She said that they found that the AI could not match writers who had worked with the brand for many years and were immersed in its tone of voice, but that it could probably do an equivalent job to a human writer new to the brand. She admitted a real risk that the agency may lose that copywriting work with that client, but on the other hand their role in developing the tool had proven their strength as a strategic partner.

Ultimately, the advice from the panellists was to put more of a structured plan around AI use – loose experimentation is a beginning but not an end goal. Vix reflected that it’s “impossible” to put too much structure around AI, noting that it allows organisations to deal with the sudden changes, updates and drops that comes with the rapid pace of AI development. That speed of change can make leaders retreat to their comfort zones, fearing that new ways of working can lose clients and revenue.

“I think we’re in this very awkward time where we’ve come off the back of the cost of living crisis, Covid, and everyone’s trying to cling onto the business that they’ve got,” said Vix. “I think that makes it very difficult for legacy agencies or even clients to move at speed, because when you’re trying to keep u client relationships it’s a risk to suddenly go, hi, we do this AI. You might lose that client, or not. So think it’s this weird time where you need to push yourself to change.”

Download the report here.​