Not so long ago, this question would have sounded provocative. Today, it feels practical.
AI-powered tools have put more capability directly into the hands of marketing teams than ever before. Content can be generated faster. Campaign assets can be adapted at scale. Data can be analysed in real time. In many organisations, production, performance marketing and even elements of creative execution are increasingly handled in-house.
So, it’s reasonable to ask: if brands can do more themselves, do they still need agencies?The short answer is yes. But the reason why has changed.
The paradox of AI-powered capability
AI is redefining what’s possible across marketing. Tasks that once required specialist teams can now be executed with the right tools and a capable operator. That’s a genuine shift – and one agencies need to acknowledge honestly.
But there’s a paradox at play. The more powerful the technology becomes, the more important human judgement, experience and creative orchestration become alongside it.
Anyone who has tried to produce genuinely high-quality work using AI knows this. The output is only as strong as the thinking behind it. Prompting, refinement, iteration and judgement all matter. Craft hasn’t disappeared – it has evolved.
Technology produces its best results when it’s used by people who understand the task without it.
Strategy didn’t get automated
One of the biggest misconceptions about AI is that it replaces thinking. Execution is only one part of marketing’s value chain. Strategy, creative direction and long-term brand thinking sit upstream of any tool. They require context and perspective.
Yes, AI can come up with strategies – but not in the same way humans can, which involves drawing on lived experiences. The widely celebrated Heritage Day campaign that VML produced with Vaseline last year is a prime example of this. The idea came from people sharing memories of their childhood. It was that shared human experience that audiences related to – something machines don’t have.
Creativity, at its most valuable, isn’t about making things look good. It’s about creating experiences that connect. It’s about building brand equity over years, not chasing momentary attention. The South Africans who flooded the comments with their own memories of Vaseline showed what this looks like in action.
The advantage of distance and breadth
Marketers live inside their brands. Agencies don’t – and that’s a strength. Working across multiple brands, sectors and categories gives agencies a broader field of reference. Patterns become visible. Lessons transfer. Mistakes made in one industry inform smarter decisions in another.
That outside-in perspective is difficult to replicate internally, no matter how capable a team is. Agencies can connect dots that aren’t visible from within a single organisation. They bring fresh thinking precisely because they are not embedded in one set of assumptions.
As marketing becomes more complex rather than less, this breadth of experience becomes increasingly valuable.
Digital is growing – but it’s not everything
There’s no question that digital now sits at the centre of most marketing strategies. Data, programmatic media, personalisation and automation will only grow in importance. But marketing still happens in the real world.
Experiences, environments, physical activations, brand moments and cultural relevance cannot be executed purely through software. Even the most sophisticated technology ultimately needs to land somewhere human.
Agencies are structured to integrate across these realities. They bring together strategy, technology, creativity and execution in ways that move beyond screens and dashboards.
Capability doesn’t equal capacity
There’s another question that often goes unspoken in the “do we still need agencies?” debate.
Even if marketing teams can do more themselves, do they actually want to?
Modern marketers already carry significant responsibility. They manage brand performance, stakeholder expectations, budgets, data, platforms and increasingly fragmented audiences. Adding more executional load should be a decision informed as much by capacity as cost (perhaps even more so).
Outsourcing to agencies was never only about skills. It was about focus, scalability and the ability to bring in specialised expertise when and where it’s needed. AI may change the mechanics of work, but it doesn’t remove the limits of time, attention, energy and headspace.
The agency–client dynamic is evolving, and agencies need to evolve with it.
The new marketing landscape
None of this means agencies can carry on as before. The agency–client dynamic is evolving, and agencies need to evolve with it. As clients become more technologically capable, agencies must be clearer about the value they bring beyond execution.
That means moving decisively away from commoditised service delivery and towards strategic partnership. It means using AI not just to improve efficiency, but to enhance thinking, creativity and outcomes. It means redefining creativity as an integrated process that spans strategy, technology and experience – not just output.
Agencies also need to rethink how they structure themselves, how they price their work and how they attract and retain top talent. As AI raises the creative baseline, people become the differentiator. The best work will come from teams that know how to combine human insight with technological power.
What agencies need to be mindful of in 2026 and beyond
For agencies to remain essential, a few principles matter:
- Embrace AI deeply, not defensively, and leverage it to enhance creativity, streamline operations and drive efficiency
- Lead with strategy, not output – execution follows thinking, not the other way around
- Build cross-disciplinary teams that work collaboratively, integrating data, technology, creativity and experience design
- Evolve commercial models to reflect long-term value, not transactional delivery
- Invest in talent and culture that can thrive in a tech-enabled creative environment
Agencies that do this won’t be competing with their clients’ internal teams. They’ll be essential partners to them.
Originally published in Financial Mail.
Matthew Arnold is chief innovation officer at VML South Africa. He leads large-scale AI adoption, automation and creative technology innovation at enterprise level. He has driven AI adoption across more than 85 percent of a 550+ person organisation, embedding advanced AI into everyday creative, strategic, technical, and operational workflows.
