Practical ways event agencies can maintain their edge in the AI era
As AI rapidly reshapes agency workflows, Sledge’s creative services director Becca Shanks argues that staying competitive means moving beyond fear and experimentation to embed AI intelligently – while recognising where human creativity, judgement and expertise remain essential.
Clients traditionally look to agencies as they possess skills or expertise they don’t have in-house, but what happens when clients’ knowledge overtakes that of their agency?
From brand new tools and evolving technologies, to fresh applications and creative use cases, AI is changing at a rapid rate – as little as weekly – which means it can't be treated as a ‘set and forget.’
If agencies are to remain competitive and provide genuine value, they need to be doing the research, staying on top of the latest developments, continuously finding ways to integrate it into their workflows, and using it to elevate the attendee experience ongoing. Fail to do so, and clients will see little benefit in engaging us at all.
Becca Shanks, Sledge
Becca Shanks, Sledge
Master the mindset change
For AI to truly be embedded in an agency’s day-to-day there needs to be a mindset shift from AI-fear to AI-first. Instead of worrying it might replace us or viewing its use a bit like ‘cheating your homework,’ this approach involves considering how a tool or combination of tools might, within reason, add genuine value and support a specific task from the outset before diving in and doing it yourself.
AI is by no means a unicorn solution – and asking the questions and considering the options might take a little more time initially – but you can reap the benefits of the right AI use down the line.
There’s an annual event we produce for a company’s sales team, for example, and this year we had the conversation around pre-event response compiling early on in the piece. By using Claude to identify specific keywords, we could select the most inspiring sound bites to feature on the main stage LED at speed, which also connected back to the brand's values. While a fairly simple task, it eliminated the need for our team to sift through the responses manually, which resulted in hours of time saved and speedier delivery for the client.
Create space to test and play
It might feel like a luxury in our busier than ever lives, but instead of treating AI like a creative that needs to churn out ideas at speed (which never have the same impact), try to step away from a purely results-driven focus.
Whether it’s playing around with ideas and turning them into mind bending visuals in MidJourney, or diving into ElevenLabs to test pacing, duration and structure with temporary voiceovers while film scripts are still evolving (which eliminates the need to keep recording human ones), at Sledge we all carve out time in our week to explore, play and discover with AI. This allows us to see some of what is new and changing, and as we don’t do this in a project sense when the pressure is on to deliver, there’s less overwhelm.
We all get a lot of value out of this exercise. As we’re approaching it with playfulness and curiosity, it inspires and gets us genuinely excited about how we might apply a tool’s features to internal workflows or projects.
Don’t be afraid to try
It’s something all agencies leading the way with AI have in common: they’re open to testing and trialling to see what benefits them.
Some (of many) use cases to consider that we’ve found valuable include:
● Ideas generation – Presenting clients with many options shows we understand their brief and it highlights our creativity, yet requires less manpower. Once they pick their preferred ideas from the bunch, they can then be finessed much further.
● Visual production – Using tools such as Nano Banana to develop renders in the early stages saves a lot of time and helps us gain buy-in. We also have a client that prefers to update presentation decks entirely as their scripts evolve (which is almost daily). In the past edits could take a full day to incorporate, but now we’re able to do them in minutes, which shows clients we’re efficient and can keep projects progressing. When a script is finalised or a preferred render is confirmed, designers step in to enhance the client’s chosen option.
● Research & production support – From identifying suitable venues to finding niche talent on the other side of the globe, AI not only reduces the time spent on these tasks, it provides another perspective that might not have been considered before.
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels
Avoid putting your head in the sand
AI isn’t going away, and agencies that don’t embrace it will inevitably get left behind. If one can produce more – and better – ideas than another, turn tasks around faster, deliver more engaging attendee experiences, and do it all for less, working with the former is a no brainer.
Additionally, companies are making mega investments in AI and for many, it underlies all decisions they make. A case in point: we worked on a project earlier this year where our client opted to reduce costs by maximising their sophisticated internal resources to design the event with AI.
They presented some great ideas, but the practicality just wasn’t there. There was no consideration for the outdoor location, the role the weather might play, or how a hero element would fit in the main event space (spoiler alert: it was way too big).
A lack of AI understanding can make these conversations difficult to tackle, and leaves agencies stuck with an event they can’t deliver on budget.
On the flipside we can engineer a hybrid approach that both incorporates AI tools where appropriate and leans into our human-centric expertise and critical thinking – which also involves knowing when AI isn’t the right solution, especially where confidential information, security, accuracy or client sensitivities are involved.
AI needs manipulating and coaching to deliver the right results, and the sooner all in our industry see it as a tool that can elevate what we do, all while delivering better outcomes for clients, the sooner our sector will both benefit and thrive.