Geoff Clarke.
Geoff Clarke, Managing Director, Business Transformation, Omnicom Media
The media industry is alive with transformation. The promise for agency C-suite teams is both simple and seductive; that if they adopt the right technology stack, transformation will follow. But the reality is, technology without an end-to-end strategy won’t transform businesses, it simply automates dysfunction faster.
The current trend sees many businesses heading towards a convergence trap that will see a blind reliance on technology for future success. Technology convergence across our industry is rapidly evolving with AI, Robotic Process Automation, and other digital software solutions no longer considered separate capabilities but interconnected systems fundamentally reshaping a company’s output.
Yet too many agencies are treating this convergence as the transformation itself, rather than what it actually is, an accelerator. Many continue to invest millions in sophisticated technology platforms only to discover they’ve digitised broken processes, cemented unclear accountabilities, and fragmented workflows. The result is an expensive convergence strategy compounding rather than eliminating existing operational debt.
Put simply, technology convergence will spotlight an organisations health with brutal, straight forward honesty. If its processes are inefficient, automation makes them efficiently inefficient. If a team lacks clarity on its responsibilities AI-powered tools will simply distribute confusion at scale. The agencies struggling most with transformation aren’t those lacking technology, they are those lacking a strong operational foundation to leverage transformation effectively.
In my experience, true business transformation starts long before the first line of code is written, or the first automation model is deployed. The first step should always be to assess the strength of the businesses foundation pillars. Transformation begins with operational excellence, the unglamorous work of mapping processes, defining clear accountability through R.A.S.C.I. modelling, and cultural alignment around shared goals.
This back-office investigation determines whether technology propels a business forward, providing future scalability or simply spins the wheels faster. It is pointless to invest behind and implement the very latest agentic solution without first establishing clear workflows and R.A.S.C.I mapping.
The technology solution may well streamline an eco-system, but if an agency’s client teams do not fundamentally understand their responsibilities, they will soon default to their old, manual methods. In that scenario the technology didn’t fail, nor did the team working on the project, the transformation strategy did.
The most successful transformations I’ve either worked on or observed all have one important ingredient in common; they follow a consistent pattern: operational health first, technology second. An audit of the foundations of an operation honestly is the first step. That involves identifying where human capability is being wasted on manual tasks, or worst still duplicated that technology can handle, and then, only then, the right tools to elevate people’s work can be deployed, not replace it.
This brings us to the fundamental question every transformation leader must answer: what is technology for?
In the media industry, the answer should be unequivocal, technology exists to support human intellectual property, creativity, and strategic thinking. It’s not a replacement strategy; rather it’s an elevation strategy. Businesses that understand that now will not only protect experience, they will provide an improved product output advantage for their clients and in turn, have less churn as their people will be the heartbeat of their success.
Yes, both AI and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can handle repetitive high frequency, low value tasks, but it is short-sighted to assume the only benefit back to the agency and client is just efficiency, or in other words more output with less people. It is far more strategic when technology convergence is there to enhance craft skills, not commoditise, to celebrate craft experience, rather than dilute employee IP.
To travel the ‘protect experience’ path, requires both strength, bravery and a focused intent. It requires leaders to ask, ‘How does this technology make our people more valuable?’ rather than ‘How does this technology make our people more replaceable?’ It requires investment in upskilling and creating psychosocial safety so teams can experiment with new technologies without fear of loss of job.
Here’s the tension every transformation leader navigates: technology enables rapid change, but sustainable transformation requires deliberate, human-centred implementation. On one hand, the pace of technology convergence demands speed as competitors are moving quickly, client expectations are evolving quickly, and if leaders stand still, the business will go backwards. On the other hand, transformation that outpaces an organisation’s culture’s ability to adapt, creates resistance, burnout, and ultimately failure. The answer lies in recognising that different parts of the business require different transformation velocities.
Leaders need to recognise that technology infrastructure might need wholesale change by ripping out legacy systems and implementing modern platforms. But a team’s adoption requires continuous evolution, training, support and most of all patience.
As we stand at this crossroads in our industry’s evolution, business transformation leaders must ask themselves a key question: what are they transforming toward? Technology convergence is the vehicle, not the destination. The destination is a more valuable, resilient, human-first agency model where operational excellence provides the bedrock to success, technology accelerates capability, and people remain the irreplaceable source of creativity and strategic insight.
The agencies that understand this are already building their competitive advantage for the next decade. Are you?
