Andy Gilroy: Why now’s the time for agencies to zoom out, not add on
By Andy Gilroy, VP APAC, Cape.io
As agencies lock in their 2026 plans, a familiar pattern is playing out. Everyone is scrambling to “do something with AI”, bolt on another integration or spin up a new dashboard to show they’re keeping up. Tool first, strategy later.
After a few frantic years of that approach, it’s time for a reckoning. The question isn’t “What’s missing from our stack?” anymore. It’s “What’s actually working – and what’s just noise?”
From MarTech FOMO to Franken‑stacks
Most media and creative teams I talk to are living inside quiet Franken‑systems: overlapping tools, manual workarounds, and disconnected data that slow everything down. You’ve got:
- • One platform for planning
- • Another for creative production
- • A couple for approvals and file transfer
- • Separate systems for TV, BVOD, social and display
- • And a growing collection of “AI-powered” widgets scattered across the top
Individually, most of those tools are fine. Collectively, they create rebriefs, rekeying and rework – especially at the joins between creative and media. Brilliant ideas get stuck in process debt and I know I’m not the only one feeling increasingly frustrated by this.
The AI hype-a-thon isn’t helping (yet)
Layered on top of that is a wave of AI experimentation. If I had a penny for every I’ve heard ‘Check out our new internal pilot’, ‘Come along to our AI process-hack-a-thon’ and ‘Can you just take a quick look at this new tool, it looks cool’ this year, I’d be a millionaire.
My LinkedIn feed is also full of posts promising, “How we saved 100 hours per campaign using this one AI tool. Comment ‘AI’ for the Playbook.”
The hype is insane, but the uncomfortable truth beneath the surface here is that none of it actually works. MIT even released a study in July that revealed 95% of GenAI pilots have failed! Not because AI is useless – but because often we’re throwing money at the latest gadget without properly thinking through which specific problem in our workflow we actually want to/need to solve.
Why you need to think in workflows, not widgets
There is a light at the end of the tunnel though. I’ve been talking with a few agencies who’re making real progress because they’re doing one simple thing very differently – they’re zooming out BEFORE they add on.
Instead of starting with a feature list, they map their (and their clients’) campaign lifecycle. End‑to‑end, full view from planning to creative to compliance to activation. Who touches what? In what order? With which tools? Where does time actually disappear?
When they look through it all from that zoomed out lens, three truths usually emerge:
- 1. The worst friction lives between tools and teams, not inside them.
- 2. Creative vs media misalignment is still a massive tax on speed.
- 3. Late-stage compliance is quietly killing velocity and nerves.
Until you tackle those fundamental workflow issues structurally, another “AI assistant” inside one platform won’t fix anything. In fact, it’ll only keep you spinning those wheels.
Too many tools, not enough partners
At a recent industry forum, one phrase kept coming up… “Too many tools.” Agencies and clients want to try to strip back, but they’re not sure how. They’ve spent so much time fitting together out-of-the-box SaaS products that they’ve just accepted that ‘too many tools’ is the issue. They’ve forgotten that truly collaborative tech partners exist. Partners that want partners to solve multiple problems WITH them, not just sell them a single‑issue app.
The most valuable relationships I see aren’t just a licence and a help centre – although that’s what we’ve all become so used to. They’re platforms that come with a deep consultancy layer. They have teams that will actually sit with you, understand your workflow reality, and then collaboratively help you redesign it with automation in mind. That’s what you need to be aiming for. That’s the new standard for partners you should be seeking out.
How to zoom out so you can win in 2026
In a year where attention is fixed, budgets are flat and expectations keep rising, “doing something with AI” isn’t the right strategy. Zooming out is.
Map your lifecycle. Pick your biggest pain. Strip back the clutter. Then, and only then, choose partners and platforms that genuinely join the dots – across creative, media, compliance and activation.
The agencies that win next year won’t be the ones with the most tools or the loudest AI story. They’ll be the ones whose work flows cleanly from idea to live – faster, safer and with far less thrash in the middle.
None of this is an argument against AI. It’s an argument against AI as decoration. Instead, you need to work with partners who know how to embed AI inside a unified workflow that will be empowered by that automation and enhance human creativity. That’s the thinking behind what I see as this desperate need for our industry – this ‘zooming out’ so we can truly benefit from the technological advances we have at our fingertips.
Andy Gilroy is VP APAC at Cape.io, an Intelligent Campaign Automation platform that unifies planning, creative, compliance and activation across channels.
Register for FREE HERE and receive the Campaign Brief Daily Bulletin and/or the global Best Ads Best of the Week Bulletin. Subscribe to Campaign Brief Magazine.
#More Creative News #No paywalls #No annual membership fees
Subscribe to Portfolio & Reel for current listings of Australian and NZ ad agency and production company leadership and key personnel