The AI Value Shift: How AI Elevates Marketing
Authors: Cate W., Chris C.
AI enables a sharper focus on amplifying what matters most – strategy, creativity, work and results.
AI is transforming how we all work, but not exactly in the ways we all expect. In marketing, AI has been transformative to say the least. It’s created great (and sometimes surprising) opportunities to look across all disciplines and find new ways to enhance what we do for clients. It’s about using time strategically to unlock more creativity and elevate our work. Because being more efficient makes us better.
But for many agencies, “efficiency” is now a nasty four-letter word because AI is threatening how they make money — which is by maximizing billable hours. Clients are asking these agencies tough questions about how they can use AI to do tasks faster and cheaper, and if budgets should shrink if AI is doing some heavy lifting.
If your agency business is built on racking up hours every month… this is a big problem.
At LDWW, we don’t bill by the hour. That means we are free to take advantage of the power of AI to be better for our clients. We can lean into AI efficiency without feeling conflicted about how we make money.
Right now, we are using AI to work smarter, spark creativity and streamline any repetitive, time-consuming tasks. From research to ideation to data crunching, AI is accelerating how we work so we can spend more time on the analysis, insights, strategy and business counsel that drives results. We aren’t using AI to do less. We’re using it to do more of what matters to each client.
Here’s just a snapshot of the ways we’re using AI to be more efficient:
Digital/Social, Paid Media & Data Analysis: AI helps with repetitive tasks while we focus on strategy, ideation and optimizations. It improves campaigns with refined targeting, creative mix and budgets based on live signals. It streamlines measurement by aggregating data faster, surfacing new patterns and adjusting campaigns more quickly. Key tools include: Snowflake, Data Mavericks, HubSpot AI, Google Gemini, Meta AI, LinkedIn AI, Placer.ai and Digital Remedy, among others.
Creative/Content Production: AI helps us research, explore ideas, share concepts, connect insights faster and supplement content development, while we continue to ensure brand voice, standards and accuracy. Sample tools include: Midjourney, Canva AI, Leonardo, Nano Banana, Veo, Adobe Firefly, Perplexity, Capco AI, Insight Plugin, Lightroom AI, Suno, Eleven Labs and many more.
Generative AI: More broadly, we use major AI platforms to support workflow efficiency, automate tasks, save time, expedite research, brainstorm ideas, analyze trends, create concept drafts, etc. Key platforms include: ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity, etc.
Premium AI Aggregator: We also use Babbily to support workflow, including access to OVER 25 premium AI platforms for research, reasoning, writing, imagery, videos, transcriptions and more.
Audience Intelligence: AI-driven data helps inform our 360-degree targeting we call Audience Intelligence, combining AI visibility, online/social intel and a database of 300 million people who can be marketed to individually based on proprietary intent, demographics and marketing affinity data.
And that only scratches the surface of how we’re boosting our client work and efficiency with AI. Stay tuned because AI changes constantly and the only way to keep up is to keep learning, testing and evolving every day for what clients need.
Ultimately, AI is not just about cutting costs as some believe. It’s about efficiency, yes, but with the goal of creating more time for humans to be more creative and more focused on relationships. It’s about elevating the work and service for our clients. With AI, we have the ability to supercharge the true value of having an agency partner, which is knowing the client’s business inside and out and doing everything possible to help them get where they want to go. And now, every day, we are finding new and better ways to get there.