‘There Has Never Been a Better Time for Challenger Agencies to Get on Board With the Power of AI Than Now’

Independent agency Schafer Condon Carter (SCC) recently hosted an AI Summit focused on “Building AI Systems That Drive Growth.” The Summit was the first in a series of quarterly “Challenger Brand” sessions being planned by the agency that will focus on topics of interest to challenger agencies and brands within the advertising and marketing communities.

Noted author and marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Jim Lecinski, served as the keynote presenter at this inaugural event.  Jim recently entered into a partnership with SCC to be a Senior Advisor to help spearhead the agency’s efforts to leverage AI to drive growth for its clients. SCC is a challenger agency built for challenger brands.

Lecinski believes there has never been a better time for challenger agencies to seize the moment and take the lead in unlocking the potential for AI to transform businesses.  In his view, two-thirds of marketing leaders don’t fully understand the benefit of AI. And two-thirds of company CMOs who are employing AI are applying it for efficiencies, rather than growth, which is the number one priority for these executives.  

Here are four key learnings that were shared as part of Lecinski’s presentation:

1. Marketing’s function is largely to classify, predict and generate outcomes. In other words:  Where are we? Where do we want to be? How do we get there?  And how well are we doing?  Challenger brand leaders – not laggards – recognize that AI’s capabilities align with these services. 

2. The best practices for unlocking AI’s potential include: use cases, a roadmap and the discipline to implement. The best use cases start by asking and understanding what benefits they are seeking via AI and who is the beneficiary e.g. internal, external, both. 

The most successful users of AI follow a clear roadmap, involving five steps – none of which can be missed.  These steps touch on building a foundation by compiling data about what they know and what they need to know, and then proceeding through experimentation, expansion, transformation and monetization.

And then they identify the best forms of AI to implement their plan, often choosing between ChatGPT, Claude or Genesis.

3. In the case of challenger brands, their leaders are focused on growth. They recognize that AI is NOT a tool. Rather, it’s a system, from doing the work, to setting the rules; from going beyond a focus only on speed, to becoming a central part of how a company works and approaches its business problems.  

4. Successful companies that employ AI recognize the importance of doubling down on craft. In the case of agencies, this means their creative judgment because, in the end, someone has to be able to determine whether the conclusions suggested by AI do, in fact, make sense for that particular company or business

As Lecinski said, “AI is the key topic of conversation in every boardroom, at every conference…now is your moment, challengers; now is the time for you to figure this stuff out and get going; and it’s your chance to run faster, to have more success, to beat out those with bigger headcount and brands with bigger staff and bigger budgets.”

Video highlights from Lecinski’s keynote presentation can be seen here and here.  His book is “The AI Marketing Canvas.” 

Both Jim and SCC agency CEO Ben Behrman could be available to dive deeper into a discussion of “Building AI Systems That Drive Growth.” Visit www.schafercondoncarter.com. 

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