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- Spark Intelligence #33: The future of production, the real state of AI skills and hiring in agencies today + a small tip that will make a huge difference
Spark Intelligence #33: The future of production, the real state of AI skills and hiring in agencies today + a small tip that will make a huge difference
The AI brief for creative leaders to grow your business and career, by Spark AI
Emma Wharton Love
November 17, 2025
👋 Greetings earthlings,
Here’s your fortnightly dose of creative AI insight from me: Emma, co-founder of Spark AI. A warm welcome to our new subscribers. This is Spark Intelligence – your briefing on AI for agencies and brands, helping you stay informed and take practical action without the overwhelm.
This week we’re breaking down Adobe’s big AI updates, sharing brand-new industry research, and giving you a practical exercise you can run today to make your work with AI so much more seamless.
But first, a quick glimpse behind the scenes – we don’t usually do this but the last two weeks at Spark AI have been mega.
What a fortnight! My co-founder Jules kicked things off in Chicago on a traditional photoshoot for one special client, then we went straight to London for the publication of his book Shift – AI for Agencies, the launch of our joint research on the future of AI skills and hiring in agencies with The Industry Club, and two appearances at The Future of Media. A whirlwind.
And what happens after a whirlwind? I got sick. So I’m writing this WFB (working from bed). We are still coming down from the energy around our book launch and research report. Shift hit #1 bestseller across eight Amazon categories – Advertising, AI and Sales & Marketing among them – the holy trinity we were dreaming of!
OK – onto what you’re here for. The long read. Here’s what we’re unpacking today:
1. Adobe MAX 2025: What's actually changing for agencies
Quick context: Adobe MAX is where Adobe show the future of their creative tools each year – and this year, of course AI was baked into almost every update.
Adobe's MAX conference revealed where creative production is heading: conversational interfaces, multi-model access, and production workflows that let you iterate after capture. Here's what matters for agencies and brands:
Conversational creation is now mainstream
Adobe embedded AI assistants across Express, Firefly, and Photoshop. You describe what you want in natural language – the software figures out which tools to use and in what order.
What this means: Technical execution is becoming accessible to more people on your team. Strategic thinking and creative judgement become proportionally more important.
Production economics are shifting
Several capabilities change the cost structure of content creation:
Firefly Custom Models – Train AI on your brand's visual language. Generate on-brand assets at scale while maintaining consistency.
Bulk editing (private beta) – Edit thousands of images simultaneously. Background replacement, colour grading, cropping. Production tasks that took days may now take hours.
Browser-based video production (private beta) – Generate clips, add voiceovers, create soundtracks. Mix AI-generated with shot footage on a single timeline.
Multi-model access – Your Firefly subscription now includes access to Nano Banana, ChatGPT Image, Runway, and Flux. Choose the best model for each task, all commercially-safe.
The "iterate infinitely" workflow
Adobe's experimental projects point to a fundamental shift: production is becoming infinitely malleable. What you capture is just the starting point – lighting, perspective, materials, and sound all become creative variables you can adjust afterwards. This makes iteration cheaper and faster, but also means agencies need to compete on creative judgement rather than technical execution skills alone.
We used to make decisions about lighting, materials, and camera angles during production. Changing them required reshoots or extremely specialist skills. Now we are starting to be able to capture once, then adjust lighting, swap materials, change perspectives, and generate soundscapes – all in post.
What this enables:
Test multiple variations from single production
Adapt existing assets without reshoots
Start to personalise creative at greater scale
Iterate your creative based on campaign performance data
Where value sits now
As execution becomes universally accessible, your agency’s value will begin to concentrate in the areas software can't reach: Strategic thinking that challenges assumptions. Creative judgement that knows what actually works. Cultural intelligence that understands context and nuance. The courage to tell clients when they're solving the wrong problem.
I asked Adrienn Major, Founder of POD LND what her take on all this is:
“Adobe MAX is pretty mad this year. From a production perspective there’s a real positive around carbon footprint – anything that reduces the need for reshoots is good news. I agree with your four key value areas for agencies, but I also see a growing need for support services around infrastructure. For AI tools to run properly, teams have to think about asset management, workflow intelligence and partners who understand how assets evolve over time.
We’re already seeing junior roles reducing* because AI works like a very hard-working but inexperienced employee. Where we once needed edit assistants, AI can now do the heavy lifting. But interestingly, the need for senior artists is increasing – the ones who influence taste, creative direction, brand coherence and strategic decision-making, all the areas you mentioned.”
*some great advice on junior roles in the next section!
What to test this week
Run a pilot on current work. Pick one project. Use Adobe's AI Assistant or Firefly Image Model 5. Document where it helps, where human oversight is essential, how it changes your process.
Map your value. List what clients currently pay you for. Which capabilities are becoming widely accessible? Which remains specialised? Where does your distinctive value sit?
Identify new opportunities. What could you build using these tools that creates new value? Custom brand intelligence systems? Proprietary strategic frameworks? Services that didn't exist before?
We designed our AI Accelerator to help you do exactly this thinking – at the same time as building AI literacy in your team.
2. What our research revealed about AI skills and hiring in agencies
Over the last few months, in collaboration with The Industry Club, we surveyed 149 agency leaders for our latest in-depth report The Future of Skills and Hiring in the Age of AI. You may have noticed that for a training and transformation business we do one heck of a lot of research! We're big believers in continuous market research – it ensures our programmes stay aligned with what the industry needs right now, and helps us spot trends early. Invaluable investment for us, and we hope you find it helpful too. Win-win. |  |
Here's what we found:
63% of leaders feel confident about AI, but 37% say their businesses are still using AI sporadically without structure or strategy. Confidence is outpacing real capability. And it’s possible that the most confident may be the least aware.
Only 7% of agencies are genuinely innovating with AI to drive new products and services, whilst just 12% have optimised it into their workflows. The majority are experimenting with AI or just starting to put real structure around their AI change programmes.
Leaders thought the biggest skills gap with AI isn't technical as you would think – it's about who can think, apply and use AI with commercial judgement to grow the business.
Whilst 44% of leaders expect AI to deliver efficiencies and better margins, 23% are looking to grow revenue streams through AI – where we think the real long term focus should be.
68% said they are investing up to £15k in AI training over the next year – and 16% up to £50k.
What the panel said
At the research launch we had an incredible panel: Robin Garton from Sky Creative, Natalie Winford from Jellyfish, Laura Jackson from Not Actual Size, Charlotte Mulley from MullenLowe, and Vix Jagger from Droga5.
They shared what's working for them but more importantly, didn’t hold back on what’s not working, what's confusing and what's scary. All the conversations we are not often having publicly about AI!
On junior roles:
Charlotte: "If we don't have those perspectives in the building and fresh ideas and diversity of thought, we're really going to be making our own industry redundant."
Laura: "Our juniors are probably the most vocal about being anti-AI, primarily because of the big power dynamics. But they bring fresh perspective on ethical usage. They're helping us shape our approach."
On quality expectations:
Vix: "I could have created that film in two days, but I wouldn't have been proud of the output. It would have looked horrific and that person wouldn't have known it was horrific but I would know."
On systematic adoption:
Natalie: "Our 400-person creative team now works through structured AI workflows. We didn't start there. We started with one SOP, proved it worked, then scaled."
On experimentation:
Robin: "There's still moments where you can experiment and you can try new approaches and then there's moments where the traditional method is working better."
These were very refreshingly not polished corporate messages about AI transformation. Instead honest reflections from leaders navigating uncertain terrain, like all of us.
What is clear: the agencies progressing aren't the ones with the fanciest tools or the biggest budgets. They're the ones creating space for honest conversation. Building psychological safety for experimentation. Treating juniors as fresh thinking, not just cheaper labour. Measuring outcomes, not just activity.
See how these findings break down by agency size and type (indie, network, in-house) in the full report – it's a free download:
3. Try This Today: The Five-Minute Intern Test
This exercise from Shift – AI for Agencies is a small change to how you work that will make a huge difference to the value you get from working with AI.
The problem: Your AI tools give generic outputs because they don't understand your clients, your agency's approach, or the work you've already done.
The solution: Organise your project data so AI (and humans) can quickly understand context.
How to do it:
Pick your most recent completed project
Ask yourself: Could someone new to your agency quickly understand the client, the brief, the creative direction, and the reasoning behind key decisions from your current files and folders?
Create a simple "briefing pack" containing:
Clearly named files (not "PRJ_2847_v3_final_FINAL")
A project summary explaining what happened and why
Key assets exported to universal formats (PDFs, JPGs, plain text – not just Photoshop files AI can't read)
Document the decisions: Why did you reject that concept? What client feedback shaped the direction? You can use meeting transcripts here.
Point your AI assistant to the folder or provide it as the information in the background (depending what tool you are using!).
Why this works: If your intern can't understand your projects from your file organisation, neither can your AI tools. This exercise reveals gaps in your data organisation whilst creating a template you can apply to future projects.
Next time you use AI on a client project, you'll be able to say "use the Nationwide brand guidelines" instead of hunting for mystery files. Your AI gets the context it needs. Your team gets clarity. Your future self says thank you.
Our book Shift – AI for Agencies contains 50+ exercises like these. If you've read it and found it valuable, a quick Amazon review helps other agency leaders discover it. Even a line or two makes a difference.
4. We are multimodal again!
Our podcast is back! After a 3 month hiatus (hey, life happens) we recorded a special episode of our podcast What’s New in Creative AI during our book launch week, exploring the future of media, the challenge of infinite content, what WPP’s Open Pro signals about AI’s next wave, and why experience, fandom and trust will matter more than ever.
Watch the episode on YouTube or listen on Spotify.
5. What practical demo would help you most?
We're planning a series of 20-minute practical webinars where the team demo specific AI techniques you can use immediately. So we can make sure the sessions actually address the challenges you're facing – which topic would be most useful right now?
Which topics would be most useful right now? |
We'll run the most popular topics fortnightly. Short and practical.
6. UK Government just revealed where Creative Industries sit in their AI priorities
I spent over a decade working in central government and even I’ll admit that most government reports are dry. This one, however, has a message creative leaders shouldn’t ignore.
A couple of weeks ago, the UK Government released 'AI Skills for the UK Workforce' – a major report with an entire section on Creative Industries. It passed most of us by!
It's mostly interesting for what it reveals about government anxiety: they're deeply worried about AI adoption, workforce impact, and the skills gap.
What the report says about Creative Industries
The headline concern: Too many freelancers and smaller employers are using AI for content creation without training, sparking worries over quality control and originality.
The government identifies Creative Industries as one of 10 priority sectors (alongside life sciences, financial services, clean energy…). But the diagnosis is blunt:
AI is already widely available for content creation and digital storytelling
Adoption is happening without structure
Smaller creative businesses lack basic AI governance
Quality and originality are at risk
If this sounds familiar we've got an incredible AI Fundamentals workshop that has you covered.
7. Where to find us this week
AI for agency leaders live with Design Week
At 4pm today, November 17th, my co-founder Jules Love is joining Design Week live to discuss how design studios should be thinking about embedding this technology in very practical ways.
It's an online event and open to Design Week members – hope to see you there!
Designing AI-powered workplaces
And I'll be on a panel about designing AI powered workplaces at Senator Showroom in Clerkenwell.
As I spent some of my squiggly career in workplace design strategy this is a subject I have been so looking forward to getting into. We will be discussing things like: what skills, mindsets, or cultural shifts will organisations need to nurture for AI to truly improve work, not just speed it up? (see our report!). How might AI influence the physical and digital design of workplaces? And how can we measure the success of AI in workplaces – beyond productivity – to include creativity, belonging, and purpose?
Can't wait. It's an invite only event but I'll share the key messages in a future newsletter.
Until next time
That’s all for today. Don’t forget to download our AI Skills and Hiring Report. And if you want to go deeper grab your copy of Jules’ new book.
See you next time!
Co-founder and CEO of Spark AI
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About Spark AI
Spark AI empowers creative and brand leaders turn AI curiosity into confidence through structured training and business transformation.
We have worked with 60+ agencies running AI Fundamentals workshops and AI Accelerator programmes based on our # 1 bestselling book Shift - AI for Agencies.
Trusted by Oxford University Saïd Business School and backed by Innovate UK.