UM global brand president: ‘The agency world will look different in a year’s time’

The “rubber has hit the road” with agencies making use of AI, according to UM global brand president Susan Kingston-Brown, and clients now expect them to “make full use of the AI that’s available”.

But she warned in an interview with The Media Leader that using AI risks not only incentivising a “race to the mean” but also requires retraining across the entire business.

“Everyone has access to the same algorithms, the same tools,” Kingston-Brown said. “The danger is, if we’re over-reliant on AI, all of the work, all of the solutions, all of the answers become the same, because we’re all working with the same technology.”

Weeks after this interview, which took place at The Year Ahead event at the start of January, UM revealed its new media planning proposition, Full Colour Media, which seeks to incorporate a new philosophy in reaction to AI developments that the agency’s leaders think will best make use of the talent and data at their disposal.

The news follows months of quiet retraining efforts at UM, with the aim of developing “higher-level jobs” focused around critical thinking skills development.

“This is not just about replacing some jobs or cost efficiencies,” Kingston-Brown shared in the interview. “It’s about then being able to take advantage of the brilliant human minds we have in the agency to design creative solutions, to be innovative and to be really curious about what we’re doing with our clients’ investment.

“There’s different parts of the agency that lean in fast and furious to [retraining] and there’s other parts of the agency that will just take a little more time to do so. But we have to fly the plane while it’s being built.”

She added: “The agency world will look different in a year’s time — there’s no doubt about that.”

‘Full steam ahead’

Indeed, the agency landscape is already in the process of shifting dramatically now that UM’s parent, Interpublic, is set to be acquired by Omnicom, pending regulatory approval.

While Kingston-Brown said things will remain “business as usual” at UM until the acquisition closes, she told The Media Leader that the “reaction within both groups […] is one of excitement”.

“There’s a natural fit of the two groups around the belief in agency brands,” she continued. She added that it is full steam ahead at UM for its own initiatives, including Full Colour Media.

UM unveils ‘Full Colour Media’ proposition to fight brand blandness