I know next to nothing about Artificial Intelligence. Despite this, I’m often asked by other brand strategists to offer a point of view on the technology’s impact: on jobs; on consultancies; on the future of our profession. My first thought is that I haven’t got the faintest idea. I’m a dinosaur. I’ve presented using acetates. On reflection, perhaps I have a more helpful perspective to offer: I may not know much about AI, but I do know how brand consultancies work and what makes them work well. So here’s a more nuanced point of view, based on 27 years of seeing how some consultancies fail and others succeed.
Consultancies (and agencies) typically employ three types of person: hunters, farmers and workers. Workers attract the most attention, particularly in the context of AI: these are the people who carry out the research, crunch the numbers, do the thinking, come up with the ideas and develop the advice. Most of the stuff I write focuses on this aspect of the job: how to think about brands and how to dispense better advice. When people ask me about AI, it’s often in this context: can AI tools be used to find better, faster ways to carry out work? This is also where agency owners take an interest in AI: can it be used as a cheaper, faster, less bothersome alternative to employing workers. For aspiring brand strategists, this is an existential issue: if AI can deliver better work more quickly and more cheaply, is there a future for human brand strategists?
The answer lies in the two other types of employee, since both are fundamental to company success. Hunters generate work: they identify potential clients, establish contact and relentlessly pursue them until they convert into paying customers. Without hunters, workers would have nothing to do. Although this seems patently obvious, workers often take hunters for granted. When I started out at Interbrand, I would look at senior people and wonder what they did all day. Their lives seemed to be an endless merry-go-round of media interviews, lunches and general schmoozing. Meanwhile, people like me would be chained to our desks and made to carry out the client-billable work. It wasn’t until I became more experienced that I realised how much effort was required to generate the work I took such pride in delivering.
Farmers are equally important. These are the people who think beyond the existing project and cultivate client relationships. They try to understand a client’s wider hopes and concerns: what’s the next mountain they want to climb? And the mountain after that? In doing so, they generate fresh opportunities from existing clients.
Consultancies and agencies tend to succeed through a healthy balance of workers, hunters and farmers. I’ve witnessed what happens when responsibility for hunting rests in the hands of too few people: eventually the pipeline dries up. I’ve also seen what happens when there aren’t enough farmers: low hanging fruit goes unpicked and clients become frustrated by a lack of proactivity beyond the immediate requirements of a project. Too few workers can also be an issue: they burn out, or freelancers are hastily onboarded, quality dips, and reputation suffers.
How will AI affect this?
Let’s assume AI becomes a way to deliver better, faster, cheaper work (which isn’t an assumption I buy into based on current experience). The balance of consultancy jobs would shift towards hunting and farming, which are roles that only humans can fulfil. ‘Hunter’ has obvious connotations of Glengarry Glen Ross, but the most effective people I’ve seen in the role aren’t predators: they are empaths. Strangers warm to them. They are attentive and alert. They are genuinely curious and ask interesting questions. They enjoy coming up with imaginative solutions to people’s problems. Farmers are also deeply empathic (although often more introverted). They are the first people clients call when they have a question or a problem. They are the people you remain friends with years after you last worked with them, because they also genuinely care about people and their problems. For effective hunters and farmers, the relationship between the professional and the personal often blurs (in the best way possible).
They don’t need to fake an interest in clients and their problems, because their interest is genuine.
In other words, there’s nothing ‘artificial’ about them.
So when a brand consultant tells me they are worried about the impact of AI on their job, I urge them to learn to hunt and farm. But I also urge them to get better at the work. The more capable you are as a worker, the better-equipped you will be to identify a client’s problems and the more confident you will be in developing a great solution.
The best consultants are hunters, farmers and workers all in a single package.
And that, I believe, is how you become indispensable.
Whether or not you’re AI-assisted.
And even if you present using acetates.