99c began exploring the opportunity presented by AI early on, following a two-year programme that has seen it develop more than 40 AI agents designed to tackle many of the common, time-consuming challenges of modern agency delivery.
99c has developed more than 40 AI agents to tackle many of the common, time-consuming challenges of modern agency delivery (Image source: © 123rf
123rf)
Group CEO and founder Andrew Brand says 99c’s approach from the outset went beyond the generative tools most commonly associated with producing creative assets faster.
“When AI really started taking off, some of the first use cases in our industry were the obvious ones: suddenly you could generate a storyboard or create an image by typing a prompt,” says Brand. “We could see the value in this, but we felt there was a much bigger opportunity.”
He says they started looking across the entire agency ecosystem and asking: ‘Where are the pressure points? Where could we save time? How can we minimise admin and maximise time to think? And what are the problems AI might genuinely help us solve?’
He adds, “We believe the real opportunity in AI lies in connecting data and workflows, and finding new ways to scale expertise, rather than simply churning out creative assets.
“But using it intelligently also makes human insight and judgement more important, not less.”
A natural extension
For 99c, this was a natural extension of an area in which the agency had already invested heavily.
Working at significant scale for some of South Africa’s biggest brands and retailers means process has long been pivotal to how the agency operates.
“As we produce an enormous volume of work, process has always been a differentiator for us – because it has had to be.”
He says they didn't start with AI and go looking for somewhere to use it. “We started by looking at the common friction points across agency delivery, and then began evaluating the tools and models that might help address them.”
Institutional knowledge
Two years of testing, mapping and iteration have since developed into multiple AI agents and use cases, connected through 99c’s agentic network.
Brand says that at the heart of the capability is the agency’s accumulated institutional knowledge.
“Information generated through the course of our work can be securely connected and made available to the people who need it, according to individual access rights.
“This allows teams to draw more easily on everything the agency historically and currently knows about a brand.”
Value for clients
For clients, Brand believes the real value lies in making the agency's accumulated knowledge more readily available to the people working on their business.
“If you've worked with a client for 10 or 15 years, as we have for many of our clients, there is an enormous amount of intel sitting inside that relationship.
“The question for us was: how do we make it more useful and accessible to the person who needs it today?”
99c Group CEO and founder Andrew Brand (Image supplied)
The applications extend into the everyday workings of each account.
Updated brand guidelines can be incorporated into the knowledge available to teams, for example, while relevant regulatory requirements can be incorporated into quality assurance in categories where advertising is tightly regulated, helping to flag potential compliance issues earlier in the process.
The technology also helps move information more efficiently through briefing and strategy processes, and enables campaign performance to feed back into the work faster, allowing teams to respond while there is still time to improve it.
“It means less time spent searching for information or repeating work that has already been done,” says Brand, “and more of our time applied where people still add the greatest value: judgement and creativity.”
An important distinction
This distinction is an important one for 99c. Its founding principle for AI adoption has been that the technology should enable better human output, with people remaining firmly in control of what ultimately leaves the agency.
“The human being is absolutely essential,” says Brand.
“AI can give you an answer very quickly, but somebody still needs the wisdom to know whether that answer is any good.
“You need skilled people who understand the nuances of the brand, have the relevant context, and can interrogate the outputs to produce the right result.
“Brand curatorship and human judgement become even more important, because you need to be able to guide the AI when it makes the wrong assumption.”
Efficiency: An end in itself
It is also why Brand is wary of allowing efficiency to become an end in itself.
“If an AI-written brief goes into a system without proper interrogation, and an AI-generated answer simply comes out the other side, what have you actually achieved?
“The human needs to be the gatekeeper and arbiter. For us, that's the cornerstone of the whole process.”
Applied within client organisations
The agency's experience is now beginning to open another avenue with clients themselves.
As marketers work through their own AI adoption, 99c is increasingly exploring how the same approach – starting with operational marketing challenges and identifying where AI can usefully solve them – could be applied within client organisations.
Brand says 99c continues to test new platforms, models and use cases as the technology evolves.
“The tools are evolving incredibly quickly, and what works best today might be leapfrogged next month,” he believes.
“So we're going to keep testing and learning. But the principle doesn't change: start with the problem, implement AI where it can make a meaningful difference, and make sure there is still a human being at the centre of the process,” he says.
Think about it: now when a new copywriter joins an advertising agency and starts working on one of the agency’s most prolific brands, instead of spending weeks (or even months) getting to grips with years of brand history, previous campaigns, tone of voice and the things the brand will – and absolutely will not – say, they can tap into that accumulated knowledge from day one.
