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The Agency Edge: Is AI making your Agency think less?

Four tips to encourage critical thinking

Agency team discussing how to use AI while maintaining critical thinking and human judgement.

As an agency leader, do you have a nagging worry about the use of AI in your business?
Several recent conversations with agency leaders have all revolved around the concern that using AI may be stopping their people from thinking properly.

It’s manifesting itself in different ways but all with the same root cause.
One agency leader told me they were seeing proposal sections coming back that looked polished but could have been written for almost any client.

Another talked about campaign ideas that sounded plausible but had no real audience insight underneath them.

Someone else mentioned junior consultants bringing AI-generated pitches for approval without being able to explain the reasoning behind them.

We all see the upside of using AI. Faster first drafts. Quicker research summaries. More headline options. A way to get past the blank page.

But the downside is that some consultants are handing over their thinking to the AI – rather than using it to support their thinking…and that is the danger.

So, what should agency leaders be doing?

1. Be clear about where you use AI

AI can help with summaries, first drafts, rough structures, options, thought starters and alternative angles.
But it should not be allowed to define the client problem, decide the strategy, invent the insight or make the final recommendation.

The agency rule should be: Use AI to go faster. Use human judgement to make it much better.

2. Make people show their thinking AI

AI hides weak thinking. A consultant can now produce an answer that looks professional at first glance but upon examination its superficial.

Great consultants embrace the challenge of going through the messy, necessary process of working out what they really think. So, encourage all your team to challenge by asking better internal questions.

What is the real client challenge here? What do we know? What are we assuming? What evidence supports this? Why would this work? What would make the audience care? What is the strongest recommendation, not just the most obvious one?

If someone cannot answer those questions, the work is not ready.

3. Build in a human check layer – The Thinking Review

Before AI-supported work goes to a client, or even to a senior colleague, it needs a proper human review.
Does it fit the brief? Is it specific to the client? Is there an insight? Are the claims supported? Is the logic sound? Is the message clear? Does it sound like the client? Is it actually useful?
It sounds obvious but based on the conversations we are having it seems to have slipped.

4. Train people to challenge the machine

The best consultants will be the ones who question it best.

They will prompt better, interrogate outputs harder, edit more intelligently and add the human value that AI cannot provide on its own.

Critical Thinking is still the human edge

It’s why we have created a new Amber Group workshop: Thinking Better with AI – Critical Thinking for Agency Consultants.

It is designed for PR and creative services agencies that want their teams to use AI confidently, but without losing the judgement, challenge and originality that clients pay for.

Give us a shout, if you think we could help.

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