AI & the Independent Playbook

In this episode of The Edge of Influence, host Iman Issa, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of North Seventy-Five, is joined by Richard Bonner-Davis, Co-Founder & CEO Gabriel Worldwid and Arne Mosselman, Founder, CEO & Gen AI Strategist @ Ainigma, an AI transformation consultancy in Amsterdam. 

Together they unpack what AI really means for agencies, talent and leaders, and make the case for moving past a fear-based, cost-cutting mindset, toward AI as an investment in the future building it into your people and processes rather than treating it as a side tool. 

The conversation covers two questions every leader should ask - what will no longer be valuable, and what impossible things can we now? They also discuss how AI shifts an agency's value toward judgement and advice, the rise of new roles and skill sets, and the practical case for a dedicated AI line item and "playground" budget. They close on why human creativity, the tension behind ideas like "reassuringly expensive", remains something AI can't replicate.

Production Credits:

Presented by: Iman Issa
Editor: Ian Carless
Executive Producers: Iman Issa & Ian Carless
Produced by: North Seventy Five & Poddworx Dubai

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introductions

Iman 0:17

Hello and welcome back to The Edge of Influence, a podcast brought to you by the Alliance of Independent Agencies, Middle East and North Africa and North 75. I'm Imanisa, your host, and today I'm joined by Richard Bonm Davis, CEO of Gabriel, and Arnold Musselman, founder of Enigma, an AI agency based in Amsterdam. Today we're talking about all things AI, how it's changing our industry, and what it means for teams, talent, and agency leaders. We're going to be discussing the changes that take shape, how we look at investing into AI, and how we embed these new tools across the agency landscape. So, first of all, Anna, morning. How are you? How are you doing?

Arne 1:00

Good. I'm good. How are you?

Iman 1:01

Very well, thank you. Richard, what about yourself?

Arne 1:03

Good morning from beautiful Abu

What An AI Agency Really Does

Arne 1:05

Dhabi.

Iman 1:05

So just to get us started, you both individually run AI agencies. I think it'd be really great to get started by understanding, you know, what does your agency do? What makes it different, and how can we learn from you? Arna, over to you.

Arne 1:17

Thank you. Yeah, I'm the founder and CEO of Enigma. We're an AI transformation consultancy and we help organizations. And I would say one-third of our clients are agencies. I'd like to say embrace generative AI. So, how do you succeed in a strategy around Gen AI? But most importantly, how do you help all your people use it basically every day to do the most beautiful things that you could never imagine before? We're a team of 13 uh spread around sort of London, Amsterdam, uh, the Middle East, and India. And we uh and we're here to help organizations thrive in this beautiful and sometimes a bit weird era.

Iman 1:54

And Richard?

Richard 1:55

Hi, I'm Richard Buenodavis. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Gabriel. We are, I'm not sure whether we're a consultancy or an agency, Anna. I think uh hats off to you to proudly announce yourself as a consultancy. We use the phrase, the words interchangeably, actually, agency or consultancy, depending on uh the client we're talking to. What we don't want to be is to be pigeonholed as a traditional ad agency. Uh what we are is a brand strategy consultant. We describe those hells as a human-centric, uh, tech-driven agency. So we have gone in all in on AI, generative and agentic, uh, from day one. So as Pablo, my credit partner, tells clients, 80% of our team is AI, which is probably a little an understatement at the moment. But yeah, we absolutely have totally leaned into AI to be differentiated in the market uh from anybody

What Good AI Adoption Looks Like

Richard 2:50

else.

Iman 2:50

So I think that kind of leads us really nicely into the agency landscape and how the agency world is changing today. So obviously, Richard, you've created an agency/slash consultancy that is fundamentally built around using generative AI as your coworkers, building it out. And obviously, Arna, you're advising um companies and agencies on how to adopt AI. You know, when I think about the world today and the speed of which it changes, what does good AI adoption look like? And where do companies get started on this transformation journey, Arna?

Arne 3:26

So I think that the fundamental first part of generative AI is that everybody should use it all the time. Um, so this is not a nice little spelling checker tool that helps you draft your emails, right? We can do so much more. And in general, I think it's it's quite fair to say that people who've organizations that fully use and are built around AI can probably produce three, four, five times as much output as they used to do before. Um, so I think the idea, and that means that either if you don't do it, probably the rest of the market will just go much faster, right? Because you're still in your in your horse-driven car and other people are just driving cars. So using AI is not to sometimes have it and have a little tool, but it's really thinking around how do we fully build everything we do around AI? And I think that's what in the end good adoption looks like. Uh it's your tech stack, but most important, it's your people and your processes that are fully built around AI.

Iman 4:23

But if you're an agency leader today and thinking about the new tools that are almost coming out daily or the updates to existing tools that come out every single day, how do you ensure that your team is able to stay abreast of these changes?

Arne 4:37

I sometimes like to think, ask yourself two questions. What useful thing you do will no longer be valuable, right? We work with an agency, uh, and I can't name the name, but this is they they produce this magazine and it costs them, you know, they they get paid for it millions a year. And over the course of six months, usually they create this. And suddenly you realize all the photography could be generated with AI, all the text, all the all the content could be generated with AI. So if we don't do that, the useful thing, probably in one or two years from now, AI will be able to do that. So ask yourself the honest question: what do we do that will no longer be valuable? And then the second question is what impossible thing can we do now? So if you are able, in this case, as this agency, to produce this full magazine for a client with AI, you could suddenly say, Hey, we could create this in 10 different markets, in 10 different languages. We can turn the magazine into a podcast, we create a digital version of it. So I think good adoption and change starts for the leadership to really think what useful thing do we do with our people? And what probably won't be valuable anymore? And what could this team, if they all would have amazing tools, what could they, what could they achieve?

Beyond Cost Cutting Toward Transformation

Iman 5:52

Richard, what's your perspective on this? Because I think you know, when you're building an agency and you're saying 80% of it is AI agents, AI co-workers, how does that work in reality for you?

Richard 6:03

Well, I'll I'll build on what Anne said. I think the the conversation, and it's not exclusive to our industry, but I think because we're in the servicing clients and having to deal with procurement, we're probably at the sharp end of it. Most conversations are around how can we use or have been, how can we use AI to be more efficient or to cut costs or God forbid cut jobs, right? And I think that's been part of the inertia within our industry of adopting AI because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more people are used to use AI, the more AI is going to produce on his magazine and the photo, whether it's photography, whether it's retouching, whether it's copied, printing, translation, you know, we're all out of a job. What we see fundamentally, and I believe this with every fiber of my being, and what we tell clients is AI is not about efficiency or cost-cutting. It enables you to do things that are transformational to your business or transformational to what you're trying to do for a client. So, how can you use AI to get closer to customers, to get smarter with consumers, as opposed to simply, oh, we don't need that junior researcher because we can jump onto Claw or ChatGPT and it'll give us the answer in three seconds?

Iman 7:28

But when you think about the world we live in today, so much of the conversation is genuinely around cost-cutting, job loss, better savings. How do you ensure that a client or an entity or a business is thinking about investing in AI rather than using it as a tool to change the job industry?

Richard 7:48

That's a great question. I I think it's about how you frame the the adoption of AI. So to be clear, Arne might be uh in a different place. Most of our clients are as uh as lost when it comes to AI as we are. Right. And so education is is a huge part of uh um of what we're doing for them. Not to mention the fact that a lot of these clients are outposts from a European or a North American headquarters and they simply can't get Chat GPT on their company desktop because the headquarters or IT department won't let them, right? So the role of a consultant agency with clients is as much is as much about educating them what can be done with AI, what we should do less of, what we need to be doing more of, and how they can engage with us uh to get the business um in a better way because of because uh because we're adopting Gen or a Gen T AI.

Iman 8:47

So I feel like some of the things that you're mentioning there are around obviously privacy data protection. You know, some companies will be able to use certain tools at an enterprise level if you are to go into a large-scale firm and advise them, these are the type of tools you can adopt, this is how it works, this is how you can train your 600-person firm. That's a very different conversation to potentially a creative agency that's sitting here using the tools on a day-to-day basis, adopting those tools to produce creative output. So I think they're two very different conversations. And I think I want to center the conversation more towards the agencies, which is what do we do for agencies to ensure that they are able to answer clients' questions around better, smarter, faster, more creative output. And Arno, I think potentially you'd have a point of view on that.

Agency Value In A Gen AI World

Arne 9:35

Yes, and I think it's it's really time to be real. Like we, whenever we engage, especially with agencies, the first thing we do is we we interview and we survey the full team. And I re and I and I really recommend every agency leader to do that. What do your people feel about it? And we tend to see that employees, between 40 and 60 percent of them, say they're afraid of their job. So, and and it's naive to as as leaders just say, oh no, AI isn't gonna replace you. We're just gonna do extra things. Because the reality is that a lot of the things that people do, so that they're good at, even with their skills, skill set, can be can AI now do. I remember we worked with a researcher, strategist, a junior, and she said, I think the output actually is really good, but I really like to do this research myself too. And that's a confrontational thing. I and Iman, we used to work together. I really like to write, I really like to write manifestos, and and part of this new world is also to acknowledge that part of me now maybe becomes a hobby because that's that skill isn't valuable anymore. So I think part of it for agencies is to really look at what do we do to add value? Because that's what you are as an agency. You have a client and you add value, and that value might be creativity, that value might be smartness, that value might sometimes be an extra pair of hands. And what agencies need to discover, how do we in this new world add value to clients? And there's one thing for sure: clients will expect you to really master these tools. So you can walk in and you can say, now we've got those tools and we add it to our research, we can deliver more personalized research, or because we use Claude Code, we can build you a tailored dashboard. We no longer need these super expensive tools that only the holding companies can sell and say, Oh, look at this, we've got this dashboard. You can build your own dashboard and it can be a personalized tailored dashboard with insights for your clients. You can suddenly say for an internal comms campaign, usually they have less budget. You can say we can create internal podcasts for a fraction of the price. So it's really thinking about value. And the only way as an agency to understand that is to let your people use it at the maximum possibility so they can start to discover hey, this is what I need, and this is probably how AI can help me. Let's sell it to a

AI Content Systems Plus Human Judgement

Arne 11:59

client.

Iman 11:59

I think what you're also talking about here is value looks different, and the value that looks different is we as individuals, by using AI in a really powerful way, have the ability to be much more agile, to be much more creative in what we can produce on behalf of the client. So a document that potentially could have taken X amount of time, we're now saying that we as individuals are still going to use the human intelligence or we'll be powered using these AI tools so that you can adopt that strategy or you can adopt that change quicker. Is that kind of a fair summary, Richard?

Richard 12:35

Yeah, I uh it's but bang on. I think that what AI does is democratizes intelligence and information. Right? And it does so in six minutes, three minutes, twenty seconds, depending on what your what the prompt is. What our value is as agency partners is our judgment. Right? What is the right intelligence that we should move forward? What are the right insights and what is the right thing? So I'll give you a perfect example, and it's it's not something we um particularly want to do, but we've got a couple of clients who wanted to move into AI um specifically around social media content. So we built a platform, and we Gable has a platform where we train up to 18 agents, and we have trained these agents to work across image, voice, video, copy, editing. So we use Midjourney and Sora and everything else that everyone everyone needs 11 less voiceover, topaz for uh our direction resizing. And we have a client that produces 10 reels a month across four social media platforms. So from brief to posting on Instagram is under 20 minutes now, right? And the beauty is that Arna talked about the dashboard. We we have a dashboard that shows the efficacy of individual executions, individual reels. Um, and so the client goes, okay, these are the three that seem to be pulling. Now do me an Eid campaign using these as benchmarks, right? So we've totally automated the system for them. It sits on our platform, they do all the work, they prompt, they brief, and they approve. But 100% of the time they ask our point of view, what do you think? I've now got 17 executions, which of the 10 shall we post this month? Or do you like this one? Do you think it'll work? Right. So it's our judgment is what our clients see value in, as well as the system uh and the tech stack we built.

Iman 14:37

I think just on our judgment, one of the conversations I was having with someone recently is by using and relying on AI tools, does the next generation of agency leaders or those graduates that come into the business, do they develop that kind of skill set that you can sit in a boardroom and you can do that type of advisory and you do the prompting quirky and you use your AI statents as your co-workers and still be able to sit in the boardroom, have the boardroom conversation and give that level of advice if you're relying on the tools?

New Skills Risk Bias And Governance

Arne 15:09

I think it's um in a way, we live in a very similar situation as 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. You would sit in a boardroom and you would talk about an event or a production or something you would do, and you'd say, Oh, well, we need to get permits and we need to fly people in, and this is complex, and we might need an uh an audio or a video grader there, and we're gonna bring in our research specialist. So for seniors to really think, and also for clients to think, wait a minute, there's just different things I need to do right. The difference is that now in the past, you would really think of that as a sort of series or complexity of people, and now what adds to that is that you will have very smart people, you will have smart people who can understand the tool. So you might think, oh, we need a prompt engineer who's really good at video production. So we need to add somebody who's good at that to the team, and then also to discuss with the client what sort of video tools do you want to use? There's video large language models that, for example, are trained on licensed materials. So some clients say we don't want that because we are afraid of, you know, maybe reputational backlash if artworks are used to train models. So suddenly we we need to advise and help clients understand what type of tools to use, what types of models, how to work within legislation, how to deal with bias. You know, there's so much bias in in a lot of these tools that in a region with so many nuances is so important. And clients really don't have the time and the expertise to think about this. So they'll they'll expect you to have a point of view and a specialism. So I really believe that what you do as an agency leader or as a in a boardroom is point a direction, right? A strategy is to show this is the path through this very complex world. And with AI, yes, we can do more, but it doesn't become easier. So the creation of the output might become easier, but actually the field is way more complex. And clients need advice on that. And really, your job as agency leader or somebody in your team is to help surface this complexity. Don't talk about, oh, it's super easy, because the reality of these projects, most of the time, it's not. It's a struggle, it doesn't work. The prompts are great, there's a new model, GPT 5.5 releases, suddenly the same prompt doesn't work anymore. What to do if you build a tool around one or two LLMs and suddenly they are banned? How do you then continue your operation?

Iman 17:34

The other point that you're mentioning here is actually new job creation. So these are new emerging skill sets. So if you're a new individual entering the job market, everything that you've mentioned there are new pathways into agencies. And I think if you're currently sitting in an agency, it's also looking at some of the roles that we have and thinking, how could I change this individual's role so that they're much more skilled to deliver this type of advice to a client? And I think that's a fair summary of what you have just said. And I think that's also the direction in which, Richard, you've taken your agency, correct?

Richard 18:08

Yeah, absolutely right.

Budgeting For Tools Training And Play

Iman 18:09

So the the the next kind of question I want to do, because we've probably got about five more minutes of time here, is really to think about the practical steps that agency leaders need to take to undergo a transformation. And I also want to touch about touch on the cost and the investment that's needed here. So when you look at your PL and you think about your IT costs, or you think about your innovation costs, or you even think about the type of costs that we as an agency will have, how do you start to pass this on to a client as well? So from a budgetary and a monetary perspective, where do you get started?

Arne 18:44

I'm curious, Richard, you said 80% of our staff is AI. Yeah. It's also 80% of your cost of staff than AI.

Richard 18:52

Not quite. Humans are more expensive. We have two fundamental AI budgets. We have our tech stack, and that has a monthly fee against that, and we, you know, um have tokens, and we we we know we know roughly what we use on a monthly basis. That's one budget. The other budget, which to put it into perspective, is about 20,000 dare, $5,000 a month, is to play. There's a new tool, there's a new app, there's a there's something new, and let's go play with it, let's see whether it's a value, right?

Iman 19:27

Do you do you think that message of we have assigned every person in our agency a monthly sum in dollars, euros, durings, whatever the currency is, to say we are asking you to use this amount every single month to go away to play with the technology and to come back to us and think about how we can integrate it into our agency? Would that be a fair piece of advice or should it be top-down?

Arne 19:50

What I would say is if people use Gen AI all the time, they become at least 20% more productive. So my advice to agency leaders is to say for the next year, while you maybe still can pass on some of that budget to your clients, get that 20% of your uh of your costs and and allocate that to Gen AI spent, whether that's on training, whether that's on tools, because most tools are $20, $30 a month, to be fair, whether that's on credits, whether that's on hiring somebody to maybe build your own prompt infrastructure. So spend 20% of your budget this year to really try to make the next step. And then I think you said what do you advise them to do? I would say get a point of view to the rest of the world, but to your people, what do you expect from them? What do you expect from your people? I would recommend mandating all the time AI use, but explain why, and explain more the less the efficiencies and more the what you think you want to achieve. So tell your people that we think we can do so much more with AI and say, I it's my dream in the next 12 months that we are to be able to deliver this, this, and this. And now all let's get together, and everybody contributes their part through using AI to getting in that in that position.

Iman 21:02

So effectively, we should all be having a line item that sits on our PNLs that is specifically for AI innovation and AI playground.

Richard 21:11

And and and keep all auctions when it comes to whether it's a tool or a platform, and work out what can be more efficient through use of AI, what can be totally uh given to AI, a sort of co-worker. What frankly, and we've got three what we call of AI native roles. So we have three agents who are responsible and accountable to me for an aspect of our business uh that no human goes anywhere near. And for the humans, what more can you do when you're 20% more efficient, as Anna said? Yeah, what value can you bring to the business or to clients that you couldn't have done 12 months ago because you were writing a conference report or writing an email?

Iman 21:58

Yeah, I think uh I think there's a lot to think about here and there's a lot to unpack. But fundamentally for me, the the takeaway from today is how we make sure that agencies are transitioning from being slightly fear-based around this is going to disrupt our industry. Potentially we need to use it for staff cost savings, and it needs to be much more. This is an investment in the future of the industry. There are new skills, there are new ways that we can advise client, there are new ways in which we can produce better, faster, smarter output whilst retaining a human lens at all times. And I love this kind of line item that's come away for me, which is the investment piece, right? You should all have a line item where you say we are investing in the future and we are encouraging everybody to have an AI playground so that they can experiment and become future leaders in

Why Creativity Still Needs Humans

Iman 22:50

this space.

Richard 22:50

I will, I will, if we just wrapping up, Emman, I would finish on a bit of positive, you know, the running crash of the humans amongst us, right? You know, we're in the creative business, and I think that AI has not cracked, and I don't believe it ever will crack the sweet spot of creativity and what we do, which is yeah, creativity lives in that that that area of tension, right? That a rational, logical, information giving, information sharing piece of tech can never get to, right? Uh and wonderful communications lives in that area of tension. So sort of a stellar artways, reassuringly expensive. I do not believe Arnie might disagree with me. I do not believe an AI tool, model, or platform will ever come up with a phrase like reassuringly expensive, which says this is good because it's it'll cost you more. I mean, that's irrational, right? There's a level of tension in that. Or Melbourne Metro's Dumb Ways to Die campaign, right? I mean, so I think creativity lives in this space where where beautiful things can happen because they are slightly off the wall or slightly different to what you expect. So AI can be used to create information systems, tools, processes that give you everything you need to do, but the real human insight and ability to create something that moves people and gets them to get their wallet out and pay for your client's product is, and I believe always will be the fundamental role of a human.

Iman 24:30

And that's the beauty of the human mind. It's ultimately always curious, always looking out for cultural cues, you know, creativity, artistry, all of those things that can't be replicated, and that's what we we see and do every day.

Richard 24:45

Absolutely right.

Iman 24:46

Thank you both so much for your time.

Richard 24:48

Thank you.

Iman 24:50

The Edge of Influence was brought to you by the Alliance of Independent Agencies, Middle East and North Africa, and North 75. The executive producer was myself, Iman Issa, and the producer was Ian Carlos. And this podcast was produced by North 75 and PodWorks Dubai.