Agencies Need to “Grab AI Opportunity” to Drive New Commercial Models, says Ogilvy’s Patou Nuytemans

“It's up to us to grab this opportunity now,” says Patou.

“If we, for 20 or 30 years, have not grabbed that opportunity and made ourselves about deliverables and things like that, let’s use this pivotal moment.”

As AI promises to shoulder the burden of time consuming administrative tasks and to free up agencies to devote their resources to creative and strategic solutions, agencies need to be able to articulate the value they really create for clients. And as it also promises to reduce the time needed to bring those solutions to life, old models centred around charging for hours worked make less sense.

“The long-standing debate over agency remuneration, whether based on the value of our output or merely the cost of our input based on time, has been decisively skewed towards the latter, a trend exacerbated by three decades of marketing proliferation and crushing deliverable multiplication,” says Patou. “This input-driven model, compounded by the significant financial drain of pitching, is simply unsustainable in an era where AI's primary promise is radical efficiency.”

At Ogilvy, there’s been a resolute focus on being front footed with AI. One significant new business model that WPP has already gone to market with is to give clients, particularly those with in-house studios and smaller businesses, the ability to access their AI platforms and tools via WPP Open Pro. “Our strategy is unequivocal: we must aggressively leverage the AI opportunity to not only continually improve our internal efficiency in how we work and what we make, but also to ensure these advancements deliver undeniable, measurable benefits directly to our clients.”

At Ogilvy, their progress on driving AI adoption (which has reached an 80% adoption rate across EMEA) and this new product that allows clients to use their AI tools alone has also helped Patou and the team really distil the value the agency really offers. That is exceptional strategic and creative human talent and thinking that can make those leaps to find the truly innovative solutions and strategies that will create outsized impact.

“While we help clients embrace AI, we also need to pivot the remuneration for our creative and strategic value away from the cost of its input towards the tangible value of its output and the business outcomes it drives,” she says. “This shift is essential to justly reflect the immense investment in, sophisticated ecosystem of, and expertise our talent orchestrates to provide strategic and creative solutions with truly disproportionate impact on business results.”


Ultimately, this talk of value and commercial models links back to another cause that Patou cares about deeply – pitching. “And as we champion this necessary evolution in value, let us also collectively seize the moment to resolve the systemic inefficiencies and detrimental practices that undermine our industry, starting with the fundamental issues within the pitching process,” she says.