FOR MARKETING & FULL-SERVICE AGENCIES
Modernise your agency. Keep what makes it yours.
Clients want more for less and are watching how you use AI. Your team is split between enthusiasts and sceptics, and you’re worried about what it means for your juniors. I help marketing agencies bring AI in across the business, without losing the culture and judgement clients hire you for.
I’ve run an agency for 20+ years and spent the last three changing how agencies work with AI, starting with my own.
- Agency owner since 2005
- Eight of my own businesses rebuilt
- Hands-on, not slides
JAMES ANSELL / FOUNDER OF CODE23, FRACTIONAL AI CONSULTANT
SOUND FAMILIAR?
Clients want more for less.
And brands now look closely at how agencies use AI before they hire.
Half the team is in, half isn’t.
Adoption stalls because AI feels like extra work, not less.
Short on capacity, not ideas.
Too many hours go on reporting, admin and production.
The junior question.
You don’t want to raise a generation who can only type prompts.
THE WORRY UNDERNEATH
“Will AI replace our agency?”
Agencies that lead the change and teach clients how to use AI will be worth more, not less. The ones that wait will be doing the same work for less. The aim is an agency that’s faster, still human, and still growing its people.
HOW I HELP
Six ways I help.
FOR MARKETING AGENCIES
Across the whole agency.
Delivery, reporting, new business and the back office, prioritised by where the time really goes.
A team that owns it.
Champions in each discipline, hands-on sessions, and a path for juniors to think, not just prompt.
Lead your clients.
Help you show clients how you use AI and what it means for them, so you’re the one they turn to.
ACROSS YOUR AGENCY
Price the value, not the hours.
When AI makes the work faster, hourly pricing works against you. I help you rethink how you price, package and propose, so the time saved shows up in your margin.
The right tools, & fewer of them.
Cut the licences nobody uses and connect the ones that matter, so AI saves time instead of adding another login.
Win work & run the agency faster.
Proposals, pitch research, onboarding and admin, sped up across the business, not just in delivery.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
A client’s monthly
reporting & planning.
BEFORE
Every discipline assembles its own report, someone stitches them together, and planning starts late.
AFTER
Agents pull and combine the data, your leads add the insight and the plan, and the client meeting is about what to do next.
THE FIRST 90 DAYS
Month 1
Blueprint, champions picked in each discipline, one cross-team job.
Month 2
Standards written in; the first workflows on live clients.
Month 3
The team onboarded, a junior pathway agreed, a clear view of the capacity gained.
HOW I BRING YOUR TEAM WITH ME
Empower the team.
Don’t scare it.
AI rolled out as a mandate makes good people want to leave. I’ve seen it. So I do it the other way round.
Start with a champion.
Someone the team already listens to, who wants this to work.
Build something real in a day.
Hands-on hackathons on your own work, where the team sees what’s possible for themselves.
Write your standards in.
Your way of working goes into the agents, so the work comes back looking like yours.
Safe with client work.
We agree which tools touch client data, and nothing goes live without your team’s sign-off.
- years running an agency
- 20+
- businesses of my own rebuilt with agentic AI
- 8
- AI agents at work in my own business
- 30+
- of UK SMEs now use AI, up from 35% a year ago (BCC & Atos, 2026)
- 54%
53%
of brand-side respondents expect to reduce agency spending because internal AI tools will make more work possible in-house.
SOURCE: LUMA, 2026
The agencies that lead the change keep the relationship.
HOW IT WORKS
Start with one change.
- STEP 1
AI Blueprint
£2,500FIXED · ABOUT 2 WEEKS · + VAT
A written plan for your agency, yours to keep.
- STEP 2
Then a plan
£1,250FROM · PER MONTH · + VAT
Advisor, Lead or Embedded.
PRICES ARE PLUS VAT.
QUESTIONS