AI isn’t killing B2B agencies - it’s exposing what clients really value with Annabel Atchison of IONOS Group

Speaker A: B2B has the potential to be electrifying. But the industry is paralyzed by a culture of conservatism scared stiff in a straitjacket of rational ideas. It's time for change. It's time to make B2B marketing visceral. Join us as we uncover and explore the Truth with leading B2B marketers. This is B2B Marketing the Provocative Truth. Hello and welcome to B2B Marketing the Provocative Truth. I'm Benedikt and today I'm joined by Annabel Achinson, who is head of communication and product marketing at ah, Ionos Group. Annabella, a very, very warm welcome.

Speaker B: Hello. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: You are extremely welcome. Now obviously this is going to be released in a couple of weeks time, so people won't understand the unbearable heat that we are suffering right now. We're in the midst of the European, um, heat, heat wave. Uh, so bear with us. If we're looking a little bit clammy and maybe a bit slowly because it's very, very, very, very warm. Um, but I think the, uh, to sort of turn the temperature up even more and I think probably I'm going to turn the temperature up on myself here. We're going to be looking at AI. That in itself is nothing new. Um, but I'm going to take the slight risk, I think as somebody that works for an agency and look at AI and its disruptive effect on, um, agencies. I was going to say potentially disruptive, but I think that that would probably be slightly naive because I think that it is absolutely disruptive. Um, so to sort of set the scene a little bit, I think that we can all probably agree now that AI is beginning anyway to challenge the foundation of the agency model, which traditionally, you know, the value is being linked to the people. You know, it's linked to labor. But as research, drafting and production are becoming radically compressed, you know, work that once took days can now happen in minutes. Um, and clients, and including Annabel, and we're going to get to her, uh, LinkedIn post, which was the catalyst of this conversation, are starting to maybe question what agencies are charging for. But I think that it's fair to say that while AI accelerates execution, it also exposes a harder question. And that's what parts of marketing and transformation are genuinely automable and which still depend on human judgment. I hope we're going to be able to get to the bottom of that in today's conversation. Because really the hardest agency challenges rarely involve inputs, outputs alone. Rather, um, they involve ambiguity, alignment, context and Helping organizations make difficult decisions under uncertainty. So today we're going to explore how client expectations of agencies are changing, where AI creates value, where its limitations are becoming clearer, and what the future agency looks like. Now to start. And I just sort of mentioned there that the Catalyst was a LinkedIn post that you posted three months ago. Something, something like that earlier in the year. Earlier in the year. Um, now that LinkedIn post, I think, struck a nerve for me and I'm sure it probably struck a nerve for a number of other different people that work within the industry. So maybe let's start. Would you be able to sort of recount what that LinkedIn post was and see whether it strikes a nerve with our audience and then we can take it from there?

Speaker B: Uh, so let me paraphrase, but I basically said that all PR agencies and anyone else that wants to listen is on notice now because clients can do a lot of the things themselves. Claude, 2 seconds, 20 cents of token. And that while I'm not discounting agencies have a sense and have a purpose. It would be a really great time to pick up the phone and call your client clients right now and tell them exactly how you're using AI to make their retainers a lot more efficient and effective. Um, and do that proactively because those clients will come and will have those questions if you don't make the first step.

Speaker A: How many times did your phone ring?

Speaker B: Zero. Um, we have a num. I mean, we're the Ionis Group. You know, we have 10 brands operating in 18 countries. Uh, I run a department with a number of different disciplines within it, all comms, events, PR content. We have a number of agencies that we're working with and we had to actively send out emails and say, or in our one on ones, and there's your fixes, say, you know, please let us know how you're, how you're dealing with AI, what that impact is. And I can, you know, maybe without going into too much detail, but I can kind of summarize the results that, you know, I've seen out of these requests. And I have to say I'm not impressed.

Speaker A: Okay, we will get, we will get

Speaker B: to all of it. And, you know, I don't want to exhaust it out, but I'm just saying there's a lot of room for, say, client relationship management there.

Speaker A: Excellent. Well, I'm intrigued to find out your hypothesis for why there was a reluctance to initially engage and also hear the results of your evaluation. But maybe just, just first, what was the almost. What was that final Catalyst, which really prompted you to put, put that message out. Was there a particular event that happened?

Speaker B: I, I think it's must have been months back. I got access to Claude Code. You know, I've, my teams, we've been working with OpenAI, we've been working with um, Gemini, we've been working with all kinds of. And then we decided, okay, now let's do all of that at Claude. Not just chat, but Claude Code. And I set up, I think that morning I set up a media radar basically for all of our countries, all of the media markets. Just a very basic first day kind of um, MVP of what's happening for my topics in my markets with the key journalists and create some pitch ideas out of that based on the narratives that I want to have for each of the brands that I'm running. And it literally took me 10 minutes to kind of set it up and wiggle around with it and then it ran and it really cost like, I don't know, 20 seconds to run a country. It cost 20 cents to, to run a country and get first results. And I was like, okay, I, and, and then comparing that just me, I'm not the most technical in setting anything up. I'm like strategic and creative and I've always prided myself into words are so important and Mr. Strategy. So and all I was like, okay, but if I can sit down and just, you know, uh, do the, the groundwork parts of this and kind of put my knowledge into an actually applicable technology solution that I just built and created with my own fingers in whatever, 10 minutes. It's like this is going to be hard to justify to myself and to my budget. Why, uh, we would wait week after week, for example, to get these proactive pitches even, uh, you know, maybe not proactive pitches from agencies in our network. I'm not saying, not dunking on our own agencies that they also do a lot of, you know, great stuff. But just for the purposes of these, this discussion, I think you can do so much yourself now in 20 minutes. So when your billing model is still based on hours and still based on. A junior can't do this because they don't have whatever. Or here you need only juniors to do this because that's the grunt work and you want someone's else, someone else's strategy brain to focus on the more strategic work, that's over. I want the strategic people to also be able to do all the, the, the tool using and the grunt work to actually infuse because the grunt work isn't going to be grunt work anymore, or a lot of it isn't going to be grunt work anymore because the tool is doing most of the grunt.

Speaker A: I would say I agree with the hypothesis there in terms of the grunt work is the automobile work. And therefore if it's autom, then it can actually fold under potentially the more senior person that's doing, doing the work. Um, I'm also just really interested in, because I think that it's a provocation that you put out there. And that's perfect. Given the idea of this, uh, this podcast, um, what was the, what was the reaction when you did engage with the agencies? How, how are they seeing the, the equation?

Speaker B: Well, so let me just be a little more general without going too deep into like, you know, our, our conversations there. But when I'm having conversations in general in the industry, with agencies and with, um, other clients of agencies and other corporate, you know, comms people, usually they're very aware. Of course, you know, no one's putting their head in the sand and saying nothing's changing. AI Never heard of it. But I find that they're mostly. Agencies still seem to be at the stage where everyone else is. So that means, oh, uh, we're kind of trying to figure it out. We're maybe creating a slide deck or a slide that kind of puts. We're using AI here and there and there. But it's kind of like when agencies started comms agency started pitching everyone their monitoring services and they're like, oh, m m, look, we're so technologically forward. We have all these tools and you can buy them as extra services. And the AI discussion has that same feel now. It's like, oh, we also might be able to kind of tack on AI into certain things. Or yes, of course we'll use ChatGPT. But actually thinking this through, positioning yourselves as the expert, helping your clients through this transition and telling clients in a real, like, business case scenario, this is what this means for your retainer. Let's. Let's shift how we look at the models. Let's shift how we look at the outcomes and how we price that. I'm not necessarily saying retainers, retainers need to be cheaper than they are right now. I'm just saying this conversation has to happen and the value attribution of this retainer needs to shift. That conversation has to happen. So what I'm seeing in the agency world and the comms world right now is that when I go and speak in front of peers, panels, marketers, and I tell them, and I say, look, we're creating content with Claude and ChatGPT and with Gemini and with Perplexity and with Notebook and we're using kind of all these tools together and then we're doing an automated flow that is still people slash automated within it and Canva. And then we're kind of using templatization to scale this and eyes get big. And I'm like, well, this is the baseline. I'm not saying the content that comes out of that is the best content that's ever lived, but for a lot of content that you need just um, explainers and guidebooks and whatever might be, that's workflows that work just fine. That's, that's great. And then it comes from, I don't know, two, three months creating a white paper. It might go down to a week or two creating this white paper. You still have some people involved but, but usually eyes just open very, very wide and they're like, oh, oh. We're still discussing if we can get a chat GPT plus membership in our organization. I'm like, okay, that's, that's, that's the issue here. Agencies need to, in my opinion, need to be super forward in the technology. They need to be at the forefront. If I'm buying an agency for partnership and for strategic guidance, I expect them to be at the forefront of all of this. I expect them to be right there and tell me how we deal with these technologies and not the other way around.

Speaker A: So there's the honesty dimension which is really, really key and that's a key part of the partnership. But really the more fundamental issue I'm hearing here is that the changes that agencies are making are too incremental. Um, rather than necessarily being the more radical steps forward, do you think that, that the resistance maybe to taking those bigger steps that you, you have described, is that a, a lack of understanding of the technology in its application or actually is it more of an and emotional self preservation anxiety?

Speaker B: From my gut feeling, change is hard for everyone and there's a lot of fear mongering, uh, around AI and a lot of uncertainty. So for right now, which I fully understand, I used to have my own agency. I ran my own comms agency for about five years before I started with ionos. And we had 15 people, 15 mouths to feed. So it was a small one. Putting myself back in, in that mindset. I understand that you want to make the way that you make money right now work for as long as possible because it is scary and you don't want to Put your people at risk. So I would say yes, gut feeling is anxiety. Just like people outside of agencies, we see all the layoffs happening in the tech world right now. The world is full of anxiety right now and full of uncertainty. I get that. But at Hianos we were really lucky because we had a board that very, very early on because, I mean, we're also a tech company, right? And biggest digitalization partner in Europe. But years ago our board was very, very forward on this and said, hey, AI is here, it's coming to stay, we better learn it. Not necessarily just in terms of how we put it into product, but how we actually use it as a marketing and IT and whatever function. And so from my perspective, I started using AI with my teams in 2022. Is that when ChatGPT 2021, 2020, when ChatGPT was my event team, created an event. Well, it's not an agent. Back then it was like a, uh, you know, a dedicated GPT basically with all the stuff that would help with like content creation and with checklists and stuff like that. So we've had a really good head start because we've had from the top this directive of embrace it. But we're also 4,000 something people within the Ionis group. And I, when you look at companies like they're bigger corporates, I understand change is hard and change is difficult, but agencies should be a lot more flexible and a lot more agile and they should embrace that. You know, we have to go with the, uh, uh, go with the tools, go with the technology. Where some, you know, corporates might say, we're discussing if we can have a chat GPT plus account. Yeah, okay, but agencies say, well, here's the 15 models, we've tried them all out. We're taking that risk from you, we're taking the experimentation from you. We're figuring this out and we're selling you the, you know, peace of mind that you're going to get the newest and best and next week it might be different, but that's fine. That's our brunt to bear. And, and that's then again where I think there's a real massive value that's currently not as unlocked as it could be in the agency world now.

Speaker A: Uh, indeed. I like the, the idea actually is that the agency's responsibility is to do that, testing, make those mistakes, learn, and then be able to come back with advice. I mean, look, clearly, as you said, change is hard. And maybe we can discuss that in a minute in terms of how almost psychologically or organizational psychology, you need to get through that, but perhaps to sort of make it a little bit more tangible and real in your mind. And we're going to be talking very in general terms which of the areas must have an application and which are the areas within our sort of overall sort of marketing activities. Is it key that it remains a human LED activity? There's always going to be hybridization, but I'm just, I'm just trying to get a, get a feel which, which, which sits in which bucket.

Speaker B: So in my opinion, if we're very broad about it, anything that is done on the screen, the research aspect of it, the content creation, the putting together text, putting that within a design system, doing this according to brand standards, um, doing the reporting. Oh my God. Reporting. How, how easy it is nowadays to automate reporting. So all of that, all of the things where you just sit and you click and a junior could do it. AI can help with that. I'm not as naive as to say AI will deliver you the most fantastic results every time. I, I do believe at the moment still we very much need human oversight on the results there. And like having created a bunch of AI content, AI assisted content, let's say, myself, I know you can't just say write me a newsletter and the newsletter is perfect. And no, that's if you have standards that you want to achieve and you like quality metrics, you actually need to look, uh, at this yourself. But it significantly can optimize the time that you spend. Where I would say what I'm looking for, for, for actually an agency partnership is still the brains of people that operate these, the, the people that have the relationships when it comes to, to pr, when it comes to the journalists, when it comes to analysts, uh, when it comes to, um, fantastic project management and being able to actually get stakeholders. I mean, that's still super messy, right? A lot of. I also put a LinkedIn post about this middle management part, which in a lot of, you know, instances kind of, uh, mirrors project management and how a lot of people think it's going to die out because through AI, magically everyone will have this same info at the same time and just things will get done. I don't believe that. I think the second you still have whatever it be, agents and people and you have this messiness of working together towards a common goal, you'll need someone to actually structure and lead that. So I think project management is going to be one of the things that a lot of agencies will probably kind of dismiss, but that will, I think will have real value, uh, in still being able to be built on a human level. Um, and of course the like, the strategy, creative brain of it all, AI will give you, most of the time, will give you okay to mediocre, like the middle of the results. Right. Very rarely will you come and see something, a headline that an AI LLM suggests and you're like, oh, this is the best thing I've ever read. It'll give you a direction and you're like, oh, okay. But then it sparks something in your own brain that kind of helps you uh, jump a little more creatively. So I think the actually standout creative part of that. Absolutely. And of course things like, you know, events where you need people and hands on the ground and you need that human experience, I think that's also going to be um, a lot more in demand in the future.

Speaker A: That's, that's great. I think it's really interesting actually in terms of what you led with there, which is the project management side of things. And hey, I'm, I'm probably as guilty as anyone else is, is that project management is, it's the least sexy part of the work that we do. But it's so, so fundamental. And I think as you rightly said, it's messy when you're dealing with humans. And whilst human beings are in the mix and they are going to be in the mix for the foreseeable future, you have to take into account the emotional dimension. And in some respects almost the emotional resistance might be increased because of the intervention of AI within this. I think human beings are just even more protective. So that ability to be able to translate, engage, bring people with you is, is so, so, so important.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's the management aspect of it. I've always found that a good project manager, they actually feel like they are leading. Like they, they don't just say, you know, they don't just do lists and send them out, but they actively lead a project to completion. And people and agents or whatever, they need to follow that. And so no one wants to give up that authority because if you just put something into a system of like 15 agents and say create me a newsletter or create me a white paper or create me a campaign, sure they'll do that and something will come out half an hour later. But then that's the system, that's it. And I know that, you know the McKinsey's and whoever says um, or Claude Anthropic, they say you need to create systems of agents that kind of prompt themselves and of course that's any, any marketers, a wet dream is to actually

Speaker A: go, what a sound bite. What a sound bite.

Speaker B: Right. Um, any marketer's wet dream to go and have a system that's fully 360 degrees and you feed it all the information and you feed it all the results and then it comes up with campaigns and it comes up with new content. It comes up and then it magically finds that your, you know, audience and then it magically converts them and then it kind of keeps them happy. That's a very, very, very, very, very long way to go. So consultancies, the big, you know, top consultancies that I've spoken to on AI or been in sessions with, of course they say they've implemented kind of systems like that, but that's uh, you know, 20 people on their side, 50 people on the customer side. Six months of continuous actually, you know, million euro worth investments to build the data baseline to make sure you have the guardrails in place, that the AI isn't going to do what it's not supposed to do and then kind of having continuous human oversight that the waiting is not off and that it just doesn't stop somewhere. And so I mean sure it can make sense but then you, but I think for most companies right now that kind of investment doesn't make sense yet. So. Absolutely. Still a lot of it is people based and tool augmented.

Speaker A: Yeah, well my, my colleagues in client services will be uh, this is m music, music to their ears. And I think that it's you know, almost a join the three things you're saying there. It's that project management which is making sure everything is flowing smoothly, making for people that are sort of engaged. But I also feel it brings in an additional responsibility for an account director or whoever is managing the relationship to bring real. You talk about leadership, but I think it's, it's strategic leadership and it's, and it's consultancy again. And I think that new shape of the agency, I think there is even greater responsibility on that particular role as the client services to, to provide that counsel, um, as much as anything else.

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. And if I would give agencies in the future of agencies one big piece of advice or if I were to found an agency again in the future, it's, it's the, the, the moat m of getting people to spend money with you where they, where they think to themselves, I could probably do this myself, I don't want to or someone else might do it better. But it's going to come down to the right brains and the right people with the right relationships to those clients. So I would, if I were an agency I would spend a lot of time on client relationships on this actually human to human interaction and not just in my true fixes and reporting is that like truly make these connections. And I think we talked about a little before we started the recording right. It's much this getting to be inside the organization that you're working with as much as you can. And that doesn't come just from them seeing you as a vendor. That comes from them seeing you as a partner and really making that shift or if you're not doing that already, um, to really positioning yourselves as the you know, uh, work husband, work wife, work like it's a married, it's like a kind of I'm in this with you dear clients and we're in this together and we're both going to be measured by the outcomes that we create together. And that's why on a human level that's where you need hack your clients to make sure that that's not what the AI can do. And then you have to really showcase how you're using AI just in your day to day to make things more efficient so customers don't think they're getting one pulled over. They're, they're, you know, you're billing things that you shouldn't be billing time for.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think that, well to work backwards, you know comes back to this idea of honesty and an integrity key. Um, also I think that it's beholden on agencies to demonstrate that expertise be very, very forthcoming in terms of talking about the applications of AI to provide that sort of guidance and yeah in terms of that sort of the, the relationship I think it's, it's a deepening of the ratio. But I've also sort of maybe foresee that one of the effects of AI is it creates a greater hybridization between the traditional project manager client services and, and maybe the strategist that exists because it needs to be that central point of hey, you could be confident I'm going to make this work on time and deliver. But also I am your conciliary at all times and I can really, really deeply, deeply engage with marketing as a discipline, the business as a practice. So I uh, think it's really interesting actually about some of the knock on effects that we might see in terms of how it changes that dynamic. But fundamentally being able to provide that sort of consultancy and support to clients is really key.

Speaker B: So if you're and that's what I meant earlier. Like, if you're a senior account manager or something, right. You should be able to use today AI tools in a way that helps you optimize your project management like crazy. Right. Or, you know, the person that you have on your team that also helps with the project management. The tools should help you do that so much more efficiently. And then you still have to deal with the people. Okay, but showing exactly that. The right people with the right brain, with the right inflections they make from the information they get, that's who we're enabling and empowering with AI. And that's how we're going to continue to showcase our worth and how we're going to, you know, also how we're going to change billings. I wouldn't mind spending more for a really great person that's even then made more amazing by the tools that they use. But if we're honest and open about this conversation and if we're having a, like, reshuffling, refactoring conversation, I'm enjoying this

Speaker A: conversation because, uh, clearly, I mean, we can't shy away. There is a disruptive quality to what we've been talking about and there are implications to that. But I do also feel that there is. This is quite an optimistic conversation, actually. And not only about the continued role of agency, but very, very much the continued role in terms of the value that you can bring as a human.

Speaker B: You put it nicely. Exactly. It's not just about agencies. It's about the value of human work, of human brain, of human power and the whole process.

Speaker A: And to give it, hopefully be controversial. But on the flip side, do you see when you're looking around the industry that maybe there is some naivety creeping in client side about the role that AI can take because there's a misconflation of speed and fluency for strategic judgment or how do you see it?

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I deal with this, you know, the teams myself, because I. People that don't necessarily use the tools every day and, you know, get into the thick of it with the tools every day to actually create content and that just read about the latest marketing materials or, you know, hype piece of what you can generally maybe potentially do with AI right now, um, they tend to think, oh, AI can fix everything. So it's, uh, a very valid question to say, where can AI replace tasks of a person? Where can AI support tasks of the person? That's very valid to do. But then the next step is, how good is it able to do that without actually creating more work for the person that was doing it or for the team around in the first time. So absolutely. And I would counsel everyone, sit down and try to create if you can, not in English. I mean, English generally is okay with the tools. They're all kind of calibrated and optimized for English output, which is okay. It's not stellar when you just leave it on its own. Um, but sit down and use the tools and actually try to create a simple workflow that you had people do. Like here's an English white paper, I need it in German. And I need the design, uh, adapted and all the, all the little itty bitty steps that you're doing of the links need to be updated, all that kind of stuff. Prompt it with any of the tools that you're using or could be using right now and see if it actually holds up without human intervention, up to your standards. Because it won't. So I, I do think that also agencies, uh, will probably also continue to buy some things from agencies that are grunt work because we don't, it's. Or companies because they just don't want to do it. And it's, you can have an internal and a per. An FTE doing that, and if you don't want to have the FTE doing that, you go and you get another FTE doing that. And that's also still, I think, part of it. So sure, agencies will also still do grunt work if they're transparent about it and if it's billed as actual, you know, grunt work. And if, if again the tools are visible there and the optimization is visible, very much a hype that needs to turn into craft bit by bit by bit, where I foresee a giant opportunity for agencies to lead the fray.

Speaker A: Wonderful. Well, I think that uh, closing line in terms of opportunity for agencies to leave the fray. Maybe it's a nice point to end on. Um, I think that it's, as I said earlier, actually I feel it's been a very constructive and uplifting conversation. I think that there are some, to quote our uh, title of podcast, provocative truths that agencies need to listen to and they need to direct, directly engage with this. Um, as you talked about, you know, agencies have a responsibility to be bringing to, to taking you forward, making sure that you're always making progress. And a big part of that is understanding the application of AI and that means testing, going down some, some dead ends, but ultimately being able to provide advice for how to move forward. These things are going to happen anyway. And so Unless agencies embrace that and lean into it, they are going to face obsolescence. Um, but based on our conversation today, there is a very, very important and continued role which is built around the relationships. That may sound obvious, but actually I think that the value in being able to provide that strategic leadership, but also being able to understand that when you are doing anything within marketing, you're dealing with changing people, you're changing behaviors, and knowing how to engage the right people, take them on a journey, enfranchise them, make sure that they adopt is going to be ever more important, funnily enough, within the world of AI. Um, so thank you, Annabelle. I think it was wonderfully provocative in all of the right places. Um, but also, I think offered a really, really positive, um, vision for, uh, the future.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Thanks very much.

Speaker B: Happy to be here.

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