AI is transforming the way creative work is done, but most agencies still don't know where to start leveraging it.
The real challenge is psychological, not technical, says Jules Love, founder of Spark AI, a consultancy that helps creative companies incorporate AI into their daily operations.
“Bringing AI to your team is no accident,” he told Business Insider. “You have to do it intentionally. Hold someone accountable and give them room to succeed in that role.”
Based on his experience working with over 60 agencies through Spark AI, he shares six ways leaders can future-proof their teams for the AI era.
1. Build an AI task force instead of a technical committee
Love says most agencies won't transform unless someone takes charge of AI integration work.
Rather than creating vague “innovation groups,” he encourages leaders to allocate responsibilities and create time for AI integration, even if it means taking people a little away from billable client work.
He added that successful agencies treat AI as a core business priority, rather than a side project pushed in as deadlines allow.
2. Make AI training role-specific rather than generic
“It's amazing how many agencies are rolling out ChatGPT and Gemini to their teams, but no one is training them on it,” Love said.
He likens untrained teams to people staring at a giant Lego box containing thousands of bricks but no pictures or instructions on the front. According to him, the pictures on the boxes are role-specific training.
For him, training is what turns experimentation into practical ability.
3. Encourage play and make it a policy
Love said agencies struggle to innovate because teams are under constant deadline pressure.
To make real progress in AI, leaders must create structured time for experimentation. This is the time when people can test new workflows without risking missing out on client offers.
He pointed to companies like Lego, which regularly takes its teams offsite to explore new ideas, and Canva, which suspended normal operations for an entire week to rethink how its department could leverage AI.
“Fear kills innovation faster than bad tools,” Love said. “You have to give yourself a little bit of room for failure.”
4. Replace fear with ownership
Love said a lack of openness about the use of AI is one of the clearest signs that something is wrong.
If employees feel the need to hide tools like ChatGPT from their co-workers, it suggests that AI is still considered dangerous or illegal, rather than useful.
To change this dynamic, he advises leaders to make visible and normalize the use of AI by creating a space to share how their teams are experimenting, especially what doesn't work.
“That’s the biggest sign that your business doesn’t have a good AI culture.”
We also encouraged managers to shift responsibility to the organization by giving individuals ownership of specific AI initiatives, such as maintaining prompt libraries or developing custom tools. This helps the implementation feel collaborative rather than imposed.
5. Change the culture before the tools
Love said many creators misunderstand what AI is used for. Teams often treat it like a faster search engine, asking one-off questions and moving on, rather than a collaborative assistant that gets better with context and repetition.
He argues that the real gains come when people learn to “explain” AI by providing context, constraints, and feedback instead of quick prompts, much like people talk to their colleagues.
“It's much better to think of it as explaining to other people how to do the job,” Love says.
6. Start small and measure your impact
Love said if agencies focus solely on how AI can make their work faster, they risk undermining their value.
As creative output accelerates, he said, fixating on billable hours could push companies toward commoditization rather than differentiation.
Instead, he urged leaders to rethink pricing based on results rather than speed, and to pilot AI in specific workflows so teams can clearly measure improvements.
“If all we're doing is doing more and faster, there's going to be a little bit of a race to the bottom in pricing,” Love said.
He believes fixed-cost projects that reward better results rather than speed give agencies more room to invest in learning and experimentation without hurting margins.
Shift in thinking
Love’s advice for 2026 is simple. “Stop thinking about what you can do faster today and what you can do better tomorrow.”
He believes successful agencies will not be the ones with the biggest budgets or the flashiest technology, but the ones that help their employees learn, coach, and experiment.
“In 2027, if we don't embrace this stuff and think about what we can do with it, we're going to be pretty outdated, pretty expensive and pretty uninteresting as an agency,” he said.
