AI is dominating the marketing conversation, but not everyone is convinced by the hype. Among the voices calling for a more measured approach is our Co-Founder, Kate Ross. Speaking ahead of her appearance at Built to Withstand, a new agency leadership conference taking place at Shoreditch Treehouse on Thursday 2 October, Kate makes her position clear: “I’m very anti-AI hype. It’s not about jobs disappearing overnight – it’s about which tasks are losing value, and how agencies adapt to that.”
Kate has been navigating her agency through the rise of generative AI since 2022, when ChatGPT-3.5 hit the market. Like many, she initially worried it might upend the business. But the reality was more nuanced: AI has real potential, provided it’s applied selectively. Today, eight&four uses AI tools for translation, tone-of-voice alignment, and adapting content at scale for global markets — but never as a replacement for creative thinking.
Her warning is sharp: agencies that hand over core creative to AI risk eroding their own value. “If you hand core creative over to AI, you’re telling clients the machine is better than you. That’s commercial suicide.”
Instead, Kate champions strategies that protect human creativity, maintain premium standards, and guard against the risk of commoditised services. At Built to Withstand, she’ll share her approach to making smarter AI choices — deploying the technology where it drives real value, and pushing back where it doesn’t.
The event brings together a range of agency leaders tackling today’s toughest challenges:
- Tom Salmon (Agency by Agency) on how agencies are adapting and thriving.
- Rich Brett on the financial levers and operational controls that keep agencies profitable.
- Scoro’s Harv Nagra on unifying operations into one smart platform to eliminate clutter and improve connectivity.
With frank insights, hard truths, and practical examples from client work, Kate’s session promises to offer agencies a roadmap for surviving and thriving in the AI era.
