Agency owners (and some advisors) love to tout strategy as the secret sauce that enables some firms to charge premium prices.
Now I’m hearing it as the solution to the AI “threat.” You may hear you need to be strategy-focused in order to avoid being ravaged by the impact of AI on execution. It’s your moat against the AI enemy, some say.
I hate to burst your bubble, but your clients expect strategy — but don’t want to pay for it. (And AI is not your enemy.)
Despite what you’re being told, clients aren’t hiring you for strategy. They might be hiring you for execution (extra arms and legs), but what they really want are the results you can produce.
Yes, that involves strategy. But if you run around stressing that strategy is your “secret sauce,” you might as well brag about how your team is your real differentiator and hope that closes the deal. It’s just as ineffective.
I’ll explore this more later in the newsletter, but first let’s look at other SAGA content and Jen’s usual roundup of useful resources.
— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder
Latest from SAGA
SELLING WHEN YOU DON’T LOVE SALES. If business development feels like a chore you keep putting off, you’re not alone. Most agency owners didn’t get into this business because they love selling. I wrote about lead generation approaches that actually work for people who hate traditional sales tactics, starting with where your prospects already spend their time.
THE PESO MODEL’S LATEST EVOLUTION. AI is changing how clients find information and that has real implications for how your agency creates and distributes content. In a recent Agency Leadership Podcast episode with Gini Dietrich, we dig into how the PESO model is evolving for the AI era — and why your website isn’t dead.
WHO DOESN’T LOVE BOOMERANGS? Rehiring a former employee might feel awkward, but it can be one of the smartest talent moves you make. Boomerang hires come with real advantages.They know your culture, they’ve grown since they left, and the ramp-up time is usually a fraction of a typical new hire.
Jen’s Weekly Roundup
This week has me singing Taylor Swift’s lyrics – “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” Could it be that you’re the bottleneck in your agency’s growth? Whether it’s that your agency can’t scale because you haven’t built a true second-in-command, or the strategy work that stays stuck because you’re waiting for permission that will never come, or the positioning that’s vague because you haven’t made time to clarify it—agency owners keep discovering that the thing holding them back isn’t the market, the clients, or the economy. It’s the decisions they haven’t made yet.
WHAT CAUGHT OUR EYE THIS WEEK:
YOU ARE THE HOLDUP — Anchor Advisors asks the fundamental question: how do you create time? Not manage it, not optimize it, but actually create more of it by eliminating what doesn’t matter. Karl Sakas gets specific about one major time drain: why agencies struggle to scale—or sell—without an independent #2. If every decision still runs through you, you’re not building a business; you’re building a very expensive job. And David C. Baker at Punctuation identifies the most at-risk shops—spoiler: it’s not about size or specialty, it’s about structural vulnerability when the owner becomes the single point of failure.
STOP WAITING FOR PERMISSION — Spin Sucks argues that leading with strategy doesn’t require permission. You don’t need clients to ask for strategic thinking; you just need to show up with it. Agency Bytes reinforces this with Amy Hood on making the work you want rather than accepting whatever walks through the door. The through-line? Agencies that wait to be asked for what they do best may never get asked at all.
THE AI VALUE QUESTION (AGAIN) — For Immediate Release explores AI and the rise of the $400K storyteller, making the case that in a high-tech age, high-level strategic storytelling becomes even more valuable. The Innovative Agency features Nick Usborne on winning the AI advantage without losing trust. And Ragan PR Daily tackles AI bots, fake outrage, and the new rules of reputation management in a landscape where you can’t always tell what’s real. The message: AI changes the tactics, but judgment and trust remain in the human domain.
VISIBILITY IS A SYSTEM, NOT A CAMPAIGN — RSW/US urges you to crank up the “awareness meter” if you want prospects to find you when they’re ready to buy. Spin Sucks gets tactical with The Visibility Engine: Owned and Earned Media, showing how these channels work together systematically. And Solo PR Pro explains why PR pros urge brands to put people before processes—because visibility without humanity is just noise.
ALSO WORTH YOUR TIME — PR Week looks at which brands made the podium at the Winter Games’ Olympic Village, offering lessons in activation and visibility. And The Sutter Company features Haley Hunter and Suzy Langdell on Just Ask Jody Live.
THE BOTTOM LINE — The agencies that survive and thrive this year won’t be the ones with better tools, bigger teams, or luckier timing. They’ll be the ones whose owners take action and built the systems—and the second-in-command—that let them lead instead of just execute.
— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager
Strategy is not your moat in the age of AI
If you think that strategy is the shield that will protect your agency against the looming AI monsters, you’re wrong.
The problem with positioning yourself as a “strategy shop” is that strategy alone isn’t a deliverable most clients value enough to pay for separately.
What clients actually buy is results. Better awareness. More qualified leads. Stronger reputation. Increased sales. Whatever the outcome is that matters to their business.
Strategy is simply the connective tissue between their goals and the execution that delivers those results. It’s essential, yes. But it’s not the hero of the story.
Think about it from your client’s perspective. They don’t wake up thinking, “I need better strategy.” They wake up thinking, “I need more customers” or “I need better press coverage” or “I need to launch this product successfully.”
Your strategic thinking is valuable because it ensures the execution actually drives toward those outcomes. It’s what prevents you from becoming a glorified task rabbit just checking items off a to-do list.
But if you try to sell strategy as a standalone offering or position it as your primary value proposition, you’re fighting an uphill battle. Clients will nod politely and then hire the agency that talks about results.
AI can do strategy too
Here’s the uncomfortable truth that nobody wants to say out loud: AI can handle strategy reasonably well.
Not perfectly. But if you give it the right inputs—client goals, market context, audience insights, competitive landscape—and interact with it thoughtfully, AI can get you 85% of the way to a solid strategic approach for most clients.
It can analyze market positioning. It can recommend channel strategies. It can identify audience segments. It can map customer journeys. It can spot gaps in competitive approaches.
The remaining 15% still matters. That’s where your judgment, your pattern recognition from years of experience, and your understanding of nuance come in. But let’s not pretend that strategic thinking is some mystical art that AI can’t touch.
If you’re banking on strategy alone as your defense against AI disruption, you’re building your moat in the wrong place.
AI changes the execution equation
This is where the real shift happens and why doubling down on “we’re strategic” as your defense mechanism completely misses the point.
AI doesn’t commoditize strategy. It amplifies execution capacity.
The agencies that will struggle are the ones using AI to do the same amount and type of work more cheaply. That’s a race to the bottom. If your pitch becomes “we can deliver what we did before but faster and cheaper thanks to AI,” you’re competing on price. You’ll lose.
The agencies that will thrive are the ones using AI to dramatically increase both the volume and quality of execution they can deliver at similar or better price points.
With AI assistance, you can produce more comprehensive content. You can analyze data more thoroughly. You can test more variations. You can monitor more channels. You can respond more quickly. You can personalize at scale.
All of this requires strategic thinking. Actually, it requires more of it, because now you’re directing a much larger execution engine and making more decisions about how to deploy that capacity.
What this means for your positioning
The winning approach isn’t positioning yourself as a strategy shop. It’s positioning yourself as an agency that delivers exceptional results through strong strategic thinking combined with AI-enhanced execution capacity.
Your clients should see tangibly better outcomes—more coverage, better engagement, stronger performance—not just a prettier strategy deck.
This means when you’re in conversations with prospects, you talk about what you’ll actually do for them and the results they can expect. The strategy is implicit in how you approach the work, not a separate thing you’re selling.
Your competitive advantage isn’t that you’re “strategic” while others are “tactical.” It’s that your strategic approach, combined with AI-leveraged execution, produces measurably better results than agencies still operating like it’s 2019.
The firms that figure this out will be able to serve clients better at higher margins. The ones still trying to sell strategy as a standalone antidote to AI will watch their margins erode while wondering why clients aren’t valuing their “strategic thinking.”
