As AI transforms everything from content creation to customer engagement, agencies and enterprises are being forced to rethink not just how they work, but why they work the way they do.
In an exclusive interaction with Storyboard18, Andrew Dimitriou, Global Chief Client & Growth Officer at DEPT, spoke about the changing economics of marketing, the future of agencies, India’s AI opportunity, and why the biggest AI opportunity isn’t productivity, but growth.
According to Dimitriou, the abundance created by AI is making one human quality increasingly valuable: judgement. Edited excerpts.
If AI creates abundance and content is no longer scarce, what becomes valuable?
Judgement. Anyone can generate content today. The value is shifting from creating content to creating competitive advantage.
Differentiation will come from strategic judgement, creativity, cultural relevance and the ability to orchestrate thousands of AI-generated interactions into one coherent brand experience.
In a world where content is abundant, relevance becomes the scarcest resource.
Is AI solving a production problem while worsening the attention problem?
Potentially, yes. Brands are creating more content than ever before, but the challenge isn’t volume. Its usefulness.
The future belongs to brands that earn attention, not brands that simply generate more content. Success will come from delivering the right content, in the right context, to the right audience at the right moment.
Is the industry overestimating AI’s ability to generate originality and underestimating its tendency to create sameness?
We often confuse different applications of AI. There are repetitive, rules-based tasks that should absolutely be automated. Then there are empathy-based decisions involving creativity, human insight and cultural understanding.
AI can assist those processes, but human judgement remains critical.
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If brands apply AI indiscriminately, they risk looking, sounding and behaving exactly like everyone else.
Which agency functions are most vulnerable to automation over the next five years?
Repetitive tasks are the obvious candidates. But at the same time, entirely new services are emerging. Six months ago, brands weren’t building shoppable experiences inside ChatGPT environments. Today, they are.
The real divide is between organisations focused only on automation and those using AI to create new growth opportunities.
Are marketers saving money with AI or simply being asked to do more?
Both. We’ve helped some clients reduce content production costs by as much as 75%.
At the same time, those savings are being reinvested into new channels, new experiences and new growth opportunities. AI lowers costs, but it also raises expectations.
What’s the biggest barrier to successful AI adoption?
Organisations often treat AI as a technology project. That’s the mistake.
The companies seeing real benefits are transforming workflows and operating models alongside AI adoption. You can’t bolt AI onto a decades-old way of working and expect transformational outcomes.
AI is fundamentally a business transformation challenge.
Why are so many enterprises still struggling to move beyond AI pilots?
Ultimately, it comes down to human behaviour.
New companies often have an advantage because they don’t have legacy systems, legacy incentives or legacy operating models holding them back.
Established organisations frequently find it harder to reimagine how work gets done.
Do you see a divide emerging between companies using AI for efficiency and those redesigning their businesses around it?
Absolutely. One group uses AI to become slightly more efficient. The other uses AI to reinvent how it competes.
The biggest opportunity in AI isn’t productivity. It’s reinventing growth.
Companies that stop at efficiency improvements risk being disrupted by AI-native competitors.
Does dependence on a handful of foundation model providers create strategic risk?
The strongest AI strategies will be model-agnostic.
Different models will serve different purposes. Companies will increasingly build intelligence layers that combine multiple models while retaining ownership of their own data, workflows and proprietary capabilities.
Can India’s GCCs evolve from execution centres into AI innovation hubs?
The opportunity is absolutely there. India possesses world-class engineering talent, deep data expertise and a strong technology ecosystem.
The question isn’t capability. The question is whether organisations are willing to move beyond traditional execution models and embrace innovation-led growth.
The companies that move fastest will win.
How should GCC leaders rethink talent pipelines build around scale and process efficiency?
They need to shift from outputs to outcomes.
Historically, many organisations were designed to deliver work efficiently. In an AI-driven world, the focus must move towards solving business problems and driving growth.
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The winning combination will be AI efficiency paired with human intelligence.
Will AI strengthen India’s role as the world’s back office or help it become something bigger?
I would bet on the latter. The back-office model will continue to exist, but it will increasingly be automated.
The bigger opportunity is for India to create and export entirely new AI-enabled services. That’s where long-term value creation lies.
Can India become a global exporter of AI-powered marketing services?
Absolutely. India has already demonstrated its ability to scale complex technology services.
The engineering talent is here. The AI expertise is here. The creative capability is increasingly here.
I don’t see any reason why India cannot help leading the next wave of global marketing innovation.
Can AI finally enable true localisation in a market as diverse as India?
That’s one of the biggest opportunities. India is effectively a microcosm of the world. Multiple languages, regions, cultures and digital ecosystems coexist within one market.
AI now makes hyper-personalised content at scale possible in ways that were previously unimaginable.
As AI-generated content grows, does authenticity become more important?
Brands need to be extremely thoughtful about how AI is used and what consumers ultimately experience.
The technology has matured significantly. The challenge today is less about AI quality and more about ensuring the right processes and safeguards are in place.
Done correctly, AI can help create more authentic and relevant experiences.
If AI dramatically lowers production costs, should agencies expect clients to pay less?
Agencies will need to evolve. The future won’t be built around time-and-materials pricing. We’re already moving towards output-based and outcome-based commercial models.
Clients increasingly want measurable business results, not simply more hours.
Will distribution and trust become more important than creativity?
Distribution intelligence matters, but creativity and judgement remain foundational.
The real advantage comes from combining deep brand insight with intelligent deployment systems that learn and optimise in real time.
AI is often said to replace tasks rather than jobs. Does that distinction eventually disappear?
If people don’t evolve alongside changing tasks, then jobs will disappear.
The responsibility for organisations is to continually retrain and reskill employees so they can move into new, higher-value work as automation increases.
Has AI created a measurement problem in marketing?
The challenge isn’t measurement. It’s learning.
The most sophisticated marketers are building continuous feedback loops that analyse performance, optimise campaigns and improve outcomes in real time.
Many brands are producing more content. Fewer are building the systems required to learn from it effectively.
What’s the biggest AI-related mistake marketers are making today?
They’re focusing too much on efficiency. Efficiency matters, but eventually everyone will have access to the same tools.
The real opportunity lies in reinventing growth models, discovering new channels and creating new forms of customer value.
What’s one prediction about the agency industry that many leaders would disagree with?
The future of agencies isn’t selling people. It’s selling outcomes.
Clients will increasingly buy capabilities and business results rather than headcount. Agencies that fail to make that transition risk becoming commoditised.
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