Almost half (46 per cent) of marketers in the UK now contact their agencies less than once a week. That’s according to new research from global insights company GWI.
The research, which surveyed nearly 500 UK marketers to uncover how AI is redefining marketers’ roles, also revealed that 16 per cent of marketers admit they only speak with their agencies once a week, with only 29 per cent maintaining daily contact.
For many marketers, AI may be the cause of this reduction in external collaboration, as it’s now deeply integrated into workflows. More than a quarter (27 per cent) of marketers say it’s improving time efficiency, while 24 per cent cite productivity gains, and 21 per cent point to cost savings as a benefit.
Common uses of AI include content creation (28 per cent), virtual assistants or chatbots (27 per cent), customer service operations (24 per cent) and personalisation tools (22 per cent).
As AI replaces many agency functions, marketing teams are pulling more work in-house. That can work if teams keep audience insight at the heart of their marketing efforts, but cutting back too far on external collaboration risks losing the outside perspective that keeps content effective.
In a survey of UK and US consumers, nearly half (44 per cent) said they would like content less if they discovered it was made using generative AI tools.
And when looking at apparel specifically, nearly a quarter (24 per cent) were less likely to actually purchase clothes or shoes if they were designed using generative artificial intelligence tools.
The findings also revealed that only 17 per cent of consumers feel that AI can be more creative or innovative than a human, a perception shared equally by marketers.
For marketers scaling back on agency contact and turning to AI to manage more in-house, success will depend on three things: which tools they use, what tasks they give them, and how strict they are with keeping humans in the loop.
Birthe Emmerich, CMO at GWI said, “While AI can manage repeatable tasks with ease, its creative ideas and creative outputs need interrogating, and this is where the client-agency relationship is redefining itself.
“With many agencies proving their value as strategic partners over content generators, marketers need to balance using AI to do more with less, without negatively impacting how consumers receive their marketing efforts.
“The real value of marketing lies in human insight and understanding what your audience thinks, feels, and cares about. The marketers who succeed will use AI to work faster and more efficiently, while anchoring every decision in real audience insights and strategic counsel of partners.”
To help strike this balance, GWI has announced a new integration with Anthropic’s Claude, which combines AI with audience intelligence and survey data to help marketers and their partners ensure that every decision is grounded in genuine human insight.
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