Group managing director Jennifer Maclennan has joined The Drum Podcast to tackle a deliberately provocative question: in a market being rewired by AI, is the full-service agency model obsolete?
Hosted by The Drum's associate editor Richard Draycott, the special episode brought Maclennan together with Nick Beck, founder and CEO of Tug, and Heather Connearn, managing director of Space & Time, to debate what brands actually need from agency partners now that AI has changed both the tools and the expectations.
Maclennan made the case for a specialist B2B perspective, drawn from Fifth Ring's work in complex, technically demanding industries such as energy and heavy industry, where high-value decisions involve many stakeholders and the answer AI gives is only ever as good as the thinking behind it. She also argued that some of the disciplines many assumed AI would sideline are the ones coming back to the forefront, and explained why focus, not speed, is where independent agencies win.
There is more in the conversation, including where she believes brand and PR now sit in an AI-driven market, and whether she would build the agency any differently if she started from scratch.
Listen to the full episode, How AI is reshaping agency models, on The Drum Podcast.
