“AI will not replace humans, but those who use AI will replace those who don’t.”
– Ginni Rometty, former CEO of IBM

According to a 2024 Gallup poll, almost half of employees (45%) report that their productivity and efficiency have improved with AI. Of those who use AI in the workplace, roughly 40% use it to generate ideas, consolidate data, or automate basic tasks.

It's no secret that AI is changing the way we work, the way we communicate, and the way we approach tasks. In our previous article about AI in advertising, we took a look at how our creatives at Point B use AI, and where they see it heading. But there are many other people at our agency who keep the gears in the office turning — and who use AI to keep those cogs turning faster and smoother.

Here’s how three other departments at Point B — Office Management, Production Coordination, and Media Coordination — are using AI, with all the bumps and hurdles they’ve found along the way.

Operations Team

“Since I’ve started using AI, specifically ChatGPT, I keep spotting it in the wild in Instagram captions and advertisements.”
– Taylor K.

AI and ChatGPT are great time-saving tools for Taylor, our Agency Resource Manager. With fast-paced days filled with agency work, any opportunity to automate recurring tasks is a plus (and helps increase turnover on projects).

“I would say the biggest things I use [AI] for right now in an office management capacity are templating, office communications, and onboarding,”

Taylor says. “To streamline tedious or repetitive processes.” From assigning jobs to updating project trackers, AI has been a valuable tool for her, alleviating much of the grunt work that comes with managing an agency’s projects, which means faster turnaround times and more hours freed up for work that needs that human touch.

It’s not without its hiccups, though. “The tone and voice are weak points.” Taylor uses ChatGPT for emails and other written communications, helping her organize and structure her thoughts. “It helps me clean up what I’m working on, or help me say it in a better way,” she says. However, she still needs to finesse the language. “You can often tell it’s AI, because it reads a little more robotic. I still have to edit it a lot.”

The Production Team

“It’s like having a Google that will tell you where to Google something.”
– Shelby A.

It takes a team to get deliverables from our agency into the hands of clients and their consumers. When it comes to print pieces, at the center of it all is Shelby. Handling both traditional production processing and overall billing, Point B’s Production Coordinator has found many uses for AI in her day-to-day work.

“I can do basic math,” she says, “but when I do billing, I’ll conduct hours reviews and have to factor in things like write-offs and splitting time into different job numbers.” ChatGPT lets her do calculations quickly and reliably, saving her tedious time spent crunching numbers and checking for human errors.

She also uses it for research — from business plans and layouts to print production and sourcing products. “It can break down complicated topics,” she says, “and then branch out to make other connections.” She cautions, though, on relying on it for high-stakes topics. “I’m not gonna ask ChatGPT to tell me about business legalities or taxes,” she says. “I’m going to have it direct me to reliable sources where I can find the information.”

The Media Team

“The industry is asking for things quicker, and everyone needs to make tighter deadlines. This is a tool that can make that happen. It’s just finding a balance between human and machine.”
– Sam N.

As a tech-driven machine itself, it’s unsurprising that AI excels in data-related tasks. Sam, Point B’s Senior Media Planner, continually strives to strike that key balance between efficiency and human input. “It can take a long time to sift through Google for credible stats,” she says. “[ChatGPT] is very helpful for decreasing our research time for things like target audiences or reported data.”

A perfect example is industry benchmarks. “I myself will know why a particular shift in data is a good thing,” Sam says, “but I need stats to demonstrate that meaningful insight.” ChatGPT allows her to quickly pull comparable data on click rates, cost-per-click, impressions, and more.

The catch, though? Context. “ChatGPT could tell me that, in general, certain data is going up,” Sam says. “But it won’t know that, for example, in 2023 we made a specific change, which would be a key factor for the client…It’s an aid, but it can’t replace humans at this point.” The hurdle of AI, Sam finds, is that it still relies on human input to learn much of its data. “If you're not actually telling AI that you made [a particular] change, it's never gonna know that. So your data will be faulty.”

Ad Agencies in an AI World

Our clients at Point B look to us for expert advice, recommendations, and valuable industry insight. And that’s the demand that AI can’t meet: the why behind a decision. Numbers and benchmarks are only part of it. Positive results are always rewarding, but for continued success, you need to know the cause. And that’s something that only experience can give you. “Context for data is important. Objectives change and costs are updated,” Sam says. “It’s the reason behind those changes that’s important to know.”

Want to read more? Check out our previous article to discover how our Creative Team is using AI every day!