For Agencies, Start AI Where No Client Can See It

Start where no client can see it. That is the rule I give agency teams, because the internal work is where the hours actually go and a mistake there costs you an afternoon rather than an account. Three to begin with. ## 1. Reporting assembly Most agencies rebuild the same report every week from several platforms by hand. Automate the assembly and the first draft of the commentary. Leave the interpretation to the person who knows the client. Measure it properly. Count the hours the team spent on reporting last month, then count them again in thirty days. If the number did not fall, the tool is not being used. If it fell and nothing else changed, you have not decided where the time goes. ## 2. Pitch qualification Take every pitch from the last two years. Record which you won, which you lost, and what each one cost you in hours. Then look for what the losses had in common. Sector, budget size, incumbent, how the brief arrived, how much time you had. Most agencies find a pattern they already suspected and had never written down. Use it to decline earlier. Declining a pitch you were going to lose is a margin decision, and it is usually the largest one available to a mid sized agency. ## 3. Post campaign analysis Campaign results get reported, rarely analysed, almost never compared across campaigns. Pull the last twelve campaigns into one place and look for what actually correlated with performance. Creative format, timing, audience definition, spend pattern. This is the material that makes the next pitch credible, because it is evidence from your own work rather than a platform case study everyone else is also quoting. ## The rule to write down first Which tools are approved, and what client material may go into them. One page, circulated, acknowledged. Agencies carry a specific exposure here. The confidential material in your building mostly belongs to somebody else, and your client contracts already commit you to protecting it. BROAI, people quietly using their own AI because nobody gave them an approved option, is a client confidentiality issue in an agency rather than an internal housekeeping one. This is the Scan and Score phase of SWITCH, the framework I use with clients. Know what is actually happening before building on top of it. Pick one of the three. Give it an owner and a number. Review it in thirty days and decide whether it stays. If you want this run with your own accounts, processes and client obligations rather than as a generic session, the [speaking and training page](/speaking) sets out the formats, or reach me at me@martins.com.ng or through the [work with me page](/work-with-me).