AI is transforming the way creative work gets done, but most agencies still don’t know where to start using it.
Jules Love, founder of Spark AI, a consultancy that helps creative businesses weave AI in their daily worksays the real challenge is not technical, but psychological.
“Adopting AI on your team won’t happen by chance,” he told Business Insider. “You have to do it deliberately: empower someone and give them the space to succeed in that role.”
Drawing on his work with more than 60 agencies through Spark AI, he shares six ways leaders can future-ready their teams in the age of AI.
1. Create an AI working group, not a technical committee
Love says most agencies won’t transform unless someone takes ownership of the work of integrating AI.
Rather than creating vague “innovation groups,” he encourages leaders to assign responsibilities and set aside time for AI integration, even if it means moving people slightly away from billable client work.
Successful agencies, he added, treat AI as a core priority of their business, not as a side project that gets pushed aside when deadlines allow.
2. Make AI training role-specific and not generic
“It’s amazing how many agencies deploy ChatGPT or Gemini on their teams and don’t train anyone on it,” Love said.
He compares untrained teams to people looking at a giant Lego box with thousands of bricks inside, but no picture on the front or instructions. The image on the box, he said, represents role-specific training.
For him, training is what transforms experimentation into practical ability.
3. Encourage play – and make it policy
Love said agencies struggle to innovate when teams are constantly under deadline pressure.
To make real progress with AI, leaders must create structured moments for experimentation, moments where people can test new workflows without risking missing a customer delivery.
He cited companies like Lego, which regularly takes teams offsite to explore new ideas, and Canva, which paused normal work for a full week to rethink how departments could use AI.
“Fear kills innovation faster than bad tools,” Love said. “You have to leave a little room for failure.”
4. Replace fear with ownership
Love said the lack of openness around the use of AI is one of the clearest signs that something is wrong.
When employees feel the need to hide tools like ChatGPT from colleagues, it suggests that AI is still seen as risky or illegitimate rather than useful.
To change this dynamic, he advises leaders to make the use of AI visible and normalized, including creating space for teams to share experiences, including what went wrong.
“This is the #1 sign that there isn’t a good culture around AI in your company.”
He also encouraged managers to shift responsibility to the organization by giving individuals responsibility for specific AI initiatives, such as managing a library of prompts or developing custom tools, so that adoption feels collaborative rather than imposed.
5. Put your culture before your tools
Love said many creatives misunderstand how AI is supposed to be used. Too often, teams treat it like a faster search engine (asking one-off questions and moving on) rather than a collaborative assistant that improves with context and iterations.
He argues that the real gains come when people learn to “inform” the AI as they would a colleague, giving it information about context, constraints, and feedback instead of quick messages.
“It’s best to think of it as instructing someone else to do the job,” Love said.
6. Start small, but measure the impact
Love said agencies risk undermining their own value if they focus only on how AI accelerates work.
As creative output accelerates, clinging to the billable hour may push companies toward commodification rather than differentiation, he said.
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 what is improving.
“If all we do is do more things faster, then we’re going to see a sort of race to the bottom in fees,” Love said.
He believes that fixed-cost projects, which reward better results – not speed – give agencies the opportunity to invest in learning and experimentation without eroding their margins.
A change of mentality
Love’s advice for 2026 is simple: “Stop thinking about what you can do today faster and what you can do better tomorrow.” »
He believes the agencies that will thrive won’t be those with the biggest budgets or the flashiest technology, but those that help their employees learn, lead and experiment.
“In 2027, you’re going to look pretty dated, pretty expensive and pretty uninteresting as an agency if you don’t embrace this stuff and see what you can do with it,” he said.