Of all the many industries, it’s marketing where AI is no longer an “innovation lab” side project but embedded in briefs, production pipelines, approvals, and media optimisation. A WPP iQ post published in December, based on a webinar with WPP and Stability AI, shows what AI deployment in daily operations looks like.
Here, we’re talking about a focus on the practical constraints that determine whether AI changes daily work or merely adds another layer of complexity or tooling.
Brand accuracy a repeatable capability
Marketing agencies’ AI treats brand accuracy as something to be engineered. WPP and Stability AI note that off-the-shelf models “don’t come trained on your brand’s visual identity”, so outputs can often look generic. The companies’ remedy is fine-tuning, that is, training models on brand-specific datasets so the model learns the brand playbook, including style, look, and colours. Then, these elements can be reproduced consistently.
WPP’s Argos is a prime example. After fine-tuning a model for the retailer, the team described how the model picked up details beyond the characters, including lighting and subtle shadows used in the brand’s 3D animations. Reproducing these finer details can be where time disappears in production, in the form of re-rendering and several rounds of approvals. When AI outputs start closer to “finished”, teams spend less time correcting and more time shaping narratives and adapting media for different channels.
Cycle time collapses (and calendars change)
WPP and Stability AI point out that traditional 3D animation can be too slow for reactive marketing. After all, cultural moments demand immediate content, not cycles defined in weeks or months. In its Argos case study, WPP trained custom models on two 3D toy characters so the models learned how they look and behave, including details such as proportions and how characters hold objects.
The outcome was “high-quality images…generated in minutes instead of months”.
The accelerated workflow moves rather than removes production bottlenecks. If generating variations becomes fast, then review, compliance, rights management and distribution, become the constraints. Those issues were always there, but the speed and efficiency of AI in this context shows the difference between what’s possible, and systems that have become embedded and accepted into workflows. Agencies that want AI to change daily operations have to redesign the workflow around it, not just add the technology as a new tool.
The “AI front end” becomes essential
WPP and Stability AI call out a “UI problem”, wherecreative teams lose time interfaces to common tools are “disconnected, complex and confusing”, forcing workarounds and constant asset movement between tools. Often, responses are bespoke, brand-specific front ends with complex workflows in the back end..
WPP positions WPP Open as a platform that encodes WPP’s proprietary knowledge into “globally accessible AI agents”, which helps teams plan, produce, create media, and sell. Operational gains come from cleaner handoffs between tools, as work moves from briefs into production, assets into activation, and performance signals back into planning.
Self-serve capability changes agency operations
AI-powered marketing platforms are also becoming client-facing. Operationally, that pushes agencies to concentrate on the parts of the workflow their clients can’t self-serve easily, like designing the brand system, building fine-tunings, and ensuring governance is embedded.
Governance moves from policy to workflow
For AI to be used daily, governance needs to be embedded where work happens. Dentsu describes building “walled gardens”, which are digital spaces where employees can prototype and develop AI-enabled solutions securely, and commercialise the best ideas. This reduces the risk of sensitive data exposure and lets experiments move into production systems.
Planning and insight compress too
The operational impact is not limited to production. Publicis Sapient describes AI-powered content strategy and planning that “transforms months of research into minutes of insight” by combining large language models with contextual knowledge and prompt libraries [PDF]. Research and brief development compress work schedules, so more client work can happen and the agency has faster responses to shifting culture and platform algorithms.
What changes for people
Across these examples, the impact on marketing professionals is one of rebalancing and shifting job descriptions. Less time goes on mechanical drafting, resizing, and versioning, and more time goes on brand stewardship. New operational roles expand, with titles like– model trainer, workflow designer, and AI governance lead.
AI makes the biggest operational difference when agencies use customised models, usable front ends that make adoption (especially by clients) frictionless, and integrated platforms that connect planning, production, and execution.
The headline benefit is speed and scale, but the deeper change is that marketing delivery starts to resemble a software-enabled supply chain, standardised, flexible where it needs to be, and measurable.
(Image source: “Solar Wind Workhorse Marks 20 Years of Science Discoveries” by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)
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