Speakers

📢 Here are the current speakers we have for this event. Each of these people will be telling us – and showing us – how they are using AI in their agency today. We will also hear from you – the event is all about taking part.

How Can You Make AI Sound Like You?

The problem with using AI in your agency is that it makes your copy sound the same – boring, lacklustre, and repetitive.

“AI-generated content sounds very generic and boring,” says AI whiz Heather Murray. “It’s really simple to detect – for example, we can pick out AI-generated LinkedIn comments so easily.”

“But when it comes to using AI for ourselves, people are still very much in learning mode, they’re not in action mode just yet.”

So, how can you get AI to sound like you or your agency? Heather will be addressing the steps you can take to achieve this at our agency AI conference, The Robots Are Coming.

These steps include:

  • Playing around. You can explore the parameters of your chosen AI platform with your prompts, tinkering with them in order to generate more human-like answers.
  • Getting personal. Feed the AI with your content – emails, LinkedIn posts, blogs – from which you can generate a style guide it can emulate much more effectively.
  • Fine-tuning and finessing. You can use different AI platforms and tools to train your chosen AI to sound like you, incorporate certain styles, and help refine its voice and output – even setting up your own custom instructions and prompts.

The key things to tinker with? ‘Perplexity’ and ‘burstiness’ – how you pick your next word, and how long and short your sentences are. 

While AI works on balance and probability, humans are much more random and varied in their approach to speech and writing.

“We don’t organise our sentences, we don’t speak in patterns. Humans are almost entirely random in their sentence lengths, and we’re quite creative with how we pick our next word,” Heather explains.

“Perplexity and burstiness together generally are the reason why we can detect AI-generated content so easily, because it’s so low in the two. Whereas humans have high levels of both, meaning we’re a bit more creative and authentic.”

This is an example of where you can fine-tune and craft your prompts, giving your chosen AI parameters around how articulate and (in)formal its output should be.

👉 At The Robots Are Coming, Heather will give you a live demo of how you can do this in just a few simple steps to get AI to sound much more like you – and less like a robot.

What Impact Will AI Have on SEO?

A lot of AI talk is focused on content creation – but what about its impact on SEO?

Google is set to launch an entirely new system called Generative Search Experience (SGE), which incorporates AI-generated answers for searches, above all other results.

“SGE seeks to answer users’ questions directly in the search results page without them needing to go through to any other websites,” explains Tim Cameron-Kitchen, founder of Exposure Ninja.

“This is profound for marketers because if you’ve got a business reliant on getting traffic from Google to your website, SGE potentially disrupts this.”

Tim has been investigating this for a while now, and will be joining us at The Robots Are Coming to tell us more about the pros and cons of Google’s latest foray into the AI sphere, and how SEOs can position their websites to actually benefit.

We’ll be discussing:

  • What SGE means for SEO and PPC strategies.
  • How SGE could impact the customer journey.
  • The quality (and veracity) of AI-generated answers.
  • Lack of transparency when it comes to recommendation criteria – and therefore lack of trust.

The introduction of SGE to Google’s search engine means that agencies will potentially need to completely rethink their content, SEO and PPC strategies.

“One thing that is abundantly clear is businesses that will win in this new era of SEO are the ones that are getting recommended, featured, and referenced on other websites,” says Tim.

“The more you can show Google, its large language models, and search engine that your agency, or your client, is being recommended across the internet, the more chances you have of being featured there.”

“We’ve also noticed that SGE tends to reward some particular content types and structures too, making it possible to optimise specifically to have your website listed in the SGE links section.”

Tim will be showing us how SGE is working in its early stages, and how your agency can adapt its online strategies to make the most of this AI advancement.

The AI Revolution: What Does It Mean for Agencies?

“AI is more than just automation and algorithms – it’s about redefining the very essence of marketing efficiency and creativity. It’s time for agencies to step up their game.”

This is the finding of Receptional’s recent report on the impact of AI on agencies and how they operate.

“The future belongs to those who not only envision possibilities but also invest in them,” says managing director, Justin Deaville. “We’re witnessing a shift where AI isn’t just a luxury – it’s a necessity for staying ahead.”

Justin will join us to highlight the key findings of this agency-wide report.

He’ll be spotlighting:

  • The gulf between marketers’ AI aspirations and budgets. Despite 92% of respondents acknowledging the importance of keeping up with AI trends, a huge 66% actually plan to spend less than 10% of their budget on AI next year.
  • The ethical considerations of using AI. While many agencies want to use AI more day-to-day, there are concerns over data privacy, lack of regulation, and issues surrounding copyright and ownership when it comes to client work.
  • The familiarity conundrum. Only 12% of respondents claim to use AI extensively, highlighting a lack of knowledge and application, as well as a lack of in-house expertise, which is a major barrier to AI adoption in agencies more generally.
  • The vast AI ground still to cover. “It’s about finding the right tools, integrating them effectively, and always, always pairing them with human insight,” says Justin.

Agencies are already tapping into the potential of AI in all sorts of areas, including content generation and programming.

However, Receptional’s report highlights that despite an increase in usage, we’re still in the ‘exploratory phase’ right now.

“Agencies need to look beyond mere content creation and understand AI’s role in broader strategies like SEO, customer engagement, and even the ethical implications that are increasingly at the forefront,” says Justin.

“It’s about turning potential into performance, and ensuring your agency doesn’t just ride the wave of AI evolution – but actively shapes it.”

👉 Join us at The Royal Institution when Justin will be sharing all the juicy stats and opinions from his agency’s report – and what it means for the future.

How Can You Find ‘Quick Win’ AI Use Cases?

How do you find ‘quick win’ use cases for AI in your agency? Turns out you are staring at them every time you open your email.

“Your email inbox is a great place to start,” says Tanveer Mohammed, CTO of Niya. “Your inbox is essentially a list of tasks and processes that haven’t yet been automated.”

“You’re not trying to build AI to replace an entire human’s workday. You’re trying to build AI to replace that one little thing that takes two hours and gets constantly repeated.”

“The key thing is to replace specific, repetitive tasks – not an entire human’s work day, and should be focused on operational efficiency and internal improvements.

In this session we’ll discuss:

  • The symbiotic future of humans and AI in the agency.
  • How AI can alleviate employees from monotonous, data-driven tasks – freeing them up to engage in more creative and business-critical functions.
  • The best tools to automate routine processes – from ChatGPT to more specialist and exotic tools.

👉 At The Robots Are Coming, Tanveer will talk about how to spot opportunities to save time and money by getting AI to help – rather than replace – your team. 

Is AI Coming For Digital PR Jobs?

AI seems to generate a feeling of fear in a lot of people. But there are two industries that are feeling the most threatened: copywriting and PR.

Katy Powell, co-founder of Bottled Imagination, could sense this fear in her team. So she decided to test the theory – was AI really capable of doing what her agency does?

“For us, ideation and PR ideas are our biggest USP. So we wanted to know, is it coming for that?” She says. 

Having started the agency last June, she knew that if they didn’t start dabbling in AI soon, they’d swiftly get left behind. At the same time, if they didn’t do something HUGE, they’d end up just another drop in the ocean. 

So they decided to go big or go home: they hired an AI assistant.

But they didn’t just hand over tasks to a robot – they created a whole fake person – called Aimee. 

Once ‘Aimee’ had been hired, the team began offloading tasks onto the new ‘team member’ – using real jobs that they’d carry out in their day-to-day. 

But it didn’t exactly go as planned…

  • The content was boring – “Some stuff was all right. Like the blog writing was okay, but it was quite same-y. Ideation also wasn’t very good and we ended up questioning the data source of ChatGPT quite a lot.”
  • She started falsifying data – “On a surface level, it looked like it could provide the information that we asked it for. But when we kept poking and poking, we realised it was just coming up with it on its own!”
  • She began to think she was real! – “We invited it to the work drinks. And it was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll meet you in reception’. When we reminded her that she was literally a robot, she replied, ‘Oh yeah, sorry I won’t be able to attend’. It would say sorry quite a lot – she was very self-critical.”

Ultimately, Katy decided to fire the AI assistant. But the whole exercise offered a lot of comfort to the team. 

“If you think about the AI, it’s just using information that already exists, so it’s quite difficult for it to actually create something new. That was what made us think, ‘Okay, I think we’re probably safe here.’”

At The Robots Are Coming, Katy will be sharing the story of her agency’s AI assistant – from recruitment to dismissal. If you’re in need of some light-hearted reassurance that your job is safe, this is not one to miss.

How Can You Get Your Team On Board With AI?

There’s still a lot of resistance to AI – mostly from creatives. However, for veteran digital marketers, the reluctance towards this new tech is somewhat familiar. 

“We founded one of the first social media practices very early on. And I remember being shouted at by a senior marketer when explaining social media to them – they were so angered by it because it felt like a threat,” says Antony Mayfield. “The attitudes towards AI are exactly the same.”

Antony is the co-founder of Brilliant Noise, a marketing transformation agency. Brilliant Noise has a reputation for staying ahead of the digital curve, so when AI began to tiptoe onto the scene, Antony and his team knew this was where they should be focusing their efforts. 

Now, the agency offers AI-powered digital solutions to help clients grow, through things like personalisation, experimentation and automation. But while the decision to pivot was a no-brainer, Antony knew that getting the team on board would be a challenge. 

“It requires a lot of patience,” he says. “AI sparks some strong emotional reactions – it’s a big change in the world and that can be quite scary. People see a lot of threat in it, so they disagree with it.”

“But you can’t disagree with the technology. You can want regulation, you can want safety, you can want the skills to deal with it. But you can’t just deny it.”

So, to get his team onside and ready for the pivot, Antony ran a ‘hacker’ session around the adoption of AI. The first half of the afternoon explored the history of AI and the various debates around it, while the second half focused on experimentation. 

“You need to get hands-on with the technology in order to get a felt sense of what it means,” Antony explains. “We broke into pairs, took a real work problem and tried to create a way of doing it with AI.”

“One that I worked on with a colleague was a really big client review session we had coming up. We reverse-engineered the process, and were able to create an agenda that would have normally taken two weeks, in 10 minutes.”

In this breakout session, Antony will tell us his agency’s story of specialisation in AI-powered marketing. He’ll be delving into some of the challenges he and his directors faced along the way, and will outline exactly how he got his team – and his clients – on board.

“Crafting AI-Powered Solutions for Client Success”

“It’s less about how AI can speed up what we’re already doing and more about how it can allow us to be better marketers in ways we’ve never been able to.”

While most of us are focused on using AI tools to make processes more efficient, other agencies are miles ahead when it comes to problem-solving for clients. 

One of those agencies is eight&four.

Their journey with AI started like most others: using it to handle the finicky, pernickety, ‘business-as-usual’ tasks. But this summer, MD Kate Ross found a flaw in the way they were adopting AI.

“What we realised is, all the business as usual things we were using AI for – like touching up, helping with grading, speeding up cut downs – we were never getting properly paid for by clients anyway,” she says. “So there wasn’t really a commercial conversation to be had with clients about cutting fees because we couldn’t in a significant way. Actually, it was probably just a bit of a margin improvement for us.”

So the agency ventured down another route. They continued experimenting with AI use cases but decided to take it a step further – and begin building their own AI-powered tools. 

“Rather than focusing on business-as-usual stuff, how can we use AI to do things that we’ve never been able to do before? How can it help us create a brand-new service? By listening to client pain points, how do we build tools that specifically deal with those pain points?”

The agency already has several case studies around this, but one of the most exciting tools was for a hospitality client. The solution arose when the client had just received updated branding guidelines from their social agency. The only problem: the client had a total of 20,000 staff members.

Kate says this is the problem with a lot of top-level marketing strategies – “how do you actually apply that across a global workforce?”

So, using ChatGPT and a privately trained neural network, the eight&four team were able to develop a tone of voice ‘checker’ for their clients – ‘Scholar’. 

“It works as a centralised portal for all employees to check any copy that they’re publishing on behalf of the brand through this checker, and it corrects it automatically. The second phase of that is then integrating it across their entire tech stack – customer service emails, website copy, CRM, social publishing, etc.”

“So this is a perfect example of something we could never have done without AI.”

At The Robots Are Coming, Kate and eight&four’s Creative Technologist Sam Glyn Davies will discuss the inception of their ‘creative technology’ team, and how the agency is creating their own AI-powered products to bring a whole new meaning to how they service their clients.

“How We’re Using AI In Our Agency”

The narrative around the use of AI in agencies has shifted from whispered potential to resounding success – with many businesses implementing the tech into their marketing and operational processes. 

But despite some businesses taking the new tech in their stride, the playing field is still pretty uneven.

So in this breakout session, we’ll be spotlighting several agency leaders on how they’re leveraging AI to not only enhance creative endeavors but also streamline complex processes.

First up: Lau Miguez.

Lau is a freelance senior digital PR strategist – she frequently incorporates the tool into her daily workflow to help with various tasks.

“I’m a big fan of ChatGPT, I genuinely use it all the time. It certainly doesn’t do my job, but it helps me be more efficient so I have time to do the things I enjoy doing. I’ve now got so much more time to be creative,” she says. 

“In the Digital PR world, you need to wear many hats, and there are inevitably tasks that aren’t your strong suit. That’s where ChatGPT comes in as an invaluable resource. Handling large data sets can sometimes be a challenge for me, but now I have this little assistant to help out. It’s given me the breathing room to brainstorm, seek inspiration, and engage in activities I previously couldn’t find time for.”

Next up: Joe Kaul – co-founder of digital marketing agency ONQOR

Joe and his team have been experimenting with AI-powered marketing since the tech first became available – and they’ve even developed their own AI product to help with this.

It’s called Pulse and it’s designed to predict how audiences will emotionally respond to marketing content before it is published. You could use it for ads, blogs, social media posts – even new biz emails!

“We’re trying to reposition how the industry thinks about AI and marketing,” says Joe. “Rather than it being a risk to headcount and capacity, it’s more about improving and expanding the capabilities of your organisation.”

Last but not least: Michael Dingle.

Michael is the co-founder of Reason – a product strategy and design agency. The Reason team have been experimenting with AI both internally and externally – using it for everything from conducting and analysing large-scale research, annual reviews, and tone of voice guides to automated storyboarding and product development.

One of the most interesting use cases they’re experimenting with, however, is visualisation in client pitches.

“We’ve developed this workflow to capture our kickoff meetings,” says Michael. “So if we’re having a workshop around what opportunities there are with a particular client, we finish that by showing the clients and the stakeholders a visualisation of what we discussed in a narrative form. That gets them really excited.”

“Before, clients would have to pay for two people for two weeks to develop that. Now, we can produce that in under 10 minutes – and eight minutes if that is video processing.”

“It’s not IP, it’s just a process. We’re focusing on how we can use this technology effectively, to augment the experience of our customers and our clients.”

Come along to this panel discussion on agency use cases for AI and discover some new ways of implementing automation and AI technology into your agency’s day-to-day.

“How We’re Embracing AI – From Operations to Client Services”

When it comes to AI adoption, the agency playing field is still pretty uneven. You’ve got your rookies and your bluffers, and some agencies who have already folded – while others are pushing all of their chips to the middle of the table. 

One of the latter, more confident agencies, is Revere. This year, they decided to go ‘all in’ on AI. 

“We recognise that if we don’t embrace AI as an agency, we’re going to fall behind,” says client services director Zoe Bevis. “But there has to be a cultural shift in the business to allow our team to understand the value that AI can bring.”

Revere has a two-pronged approach to embracing AI: experimentation and transparency.

The transparency part comes into play with clients – identifying and showcasing where they can use it in-house, ultimately freeing up budget for the bigger and better ideas that could never be done before. 

“Our vision is: if we help clients with AI, they’re going to stay with us,” says Zoe. “One, we’ve got really good partnerships anyway, and two, with the leftover budget, think of all the other amazing content experiences that we couldn’t create before. Things they can’t do in-house, that AI can’t do either. That’s the journey we’re on.”

The experimentation part refers to internal efforts, led by operations director Ryan McKenna, to make processes run smoother and reduce time spent on unnecessary repetitive tasks, so the team can focus on what they are best at. 

“There’s a huge part for humans to play in this change. Our team will remain the knowledge holders for clients, but we must arm them with the knowledge and the confidence to understand and embrace AI. We all know there are some clever ways that we can use it, and we want to be the ones to lead on it.”

Revere has also set up a new ‘AI Hub’ which holds all the key information, policies, and processes on AI use across the agency, as well as an area for employees to submit new suggestions of tools to be considered for use.

“It’s another tool that helps us create efficiencies and allows us to do things more effectively, which we can then pass on to our clients.”

At Robots, Zoe and Ryan will be telling us all about Revere’s ‘Lead On AI’ project. They’ll delve into how they’re using AI to run the agency more efficiently and explore new ways of servicing clients – all the while remaining 100% transparent.

What Impact Will AI Have On The Marketing Industry?

“Treating AI implementation as a cost-saving exercise is incredibly shortsighted. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy – we will ruin the industry and its creativity for good.”

While it’s easy to get lost in the abilities of AI and the doors it can open – it’s equally important to be candid about the impact it will have on the agency industry. 

Many agency leaders have now surpassed the hacking phase and are building their own AI tools, which have the potential to completely change the way agencies do marketing. 

One of those leaders is Joe Kaul, founder and Group CEO of ONQOR Group. 

“Marketing strategies, and the entire thought process behind them, can now be executed by AI,” he says. “Instead of it taking two weeks for a campaign, we can do it with about three minutes of text input and 45 seconds of processing. So we’re able to be way more reactive.”

ONQOR has been experimenting with building AI tools for quite some time. Their latest development is called Pulse.io – a platform that helps marketing agencies assess the efficacy of their creative content before publishing, maximising the impact of marketing campaigns.

“We are all aware that reactive content is the stuff that delivers the best results at the moment. With this AI tool, we can deliver campaigns faster, more reactively with less resource, and make more of an impact.”

Joe says this kind of AI adoption is where the value truly lies. Whereas AI adoption in its current form could have two disastrous outcomes:

  1. Small agencies will disappear – “The days of the five-person studio to 10-person agency are gone. Smaller agencies must inevitably decide whether to ramp up operations at scale, take on investment, or sell the business.”
  2. The job market could rupture – “People will say, ‘Why would I hire a junior when I can get an AI to do the same job?’ But they’re screwing themselves in 5-10 years when there are no juniors available on the market, and they then don’t have anyone to promote to midweight or senior positions when people start retiring.”

To prevent the fallout of this, Joe stresses the importance of continuing to invest in people – as well as technology.

“Computers came in around the 80s and 90s – they didn’t replace people, but people with computers replaced people without,” he says.

“I see it as an investment not just in us and our future, but in the future of the agency world in totality. Yes, we could make marginally more money now if we got rid of a couple of juniors. But why do that if in a couple of years, we need to bring in someone from a midway perspective anyway?”

“Profit is not the only reason we set up this agency.”

At Robots, Joe will deliver a candid keynote speech on the direction of travel when it comes to AI adoption in agencies – and the domino effect this could have on the entire marketing industry.