AI is squeezing agency fees, marketing budgets remain unpredictable, and client expectations keep shifting — but four agency chiefs say the fix starts with bringing their people along.

Adweek convened the executives at Brandweek Atlanta for an Agencies Vanguard roundtable hosted by Liz Kneebone, Adweek's vice president of community programs and development. The panel brought together Melissa Berger, chief solutions officer at Digitas; Sharon Napier, founder of Partners + Napier and strategic partnerships at Project Worldwide; Andrew O'Dell, co-founder and CEO of Pereira O'Dell; and Frances Webster, CEO at Walrus.

Asked what they wanted to change over the next six to twelve months, every leader pointed to the same priority: preparing staff for the transformation already underway.

Upskilling comes first

O'Dell, who also founded Silverside AI — the AI innovation lab behind campaigns including Coca-Cola's AI-generated "Holidays Are Coming" and Svedka's Super Bowl debut — said upskilling employees around evolving technology tops his agenda.

"As an industry, we have to really lean into what's happening in this new transformative revolution," he explained. "That's going to require us to really look at our businesses and our people."

Berger framed the opportunity in operational terms. She hopes AI can simplify and speed up work, freeing agencies to spend more time growing clients' businesses. The bigger prize for senior leaders, she argued, is time for conversations that move past the assignment and dig into the client's actual problem.

"Forget the brief you gave us; that's maybe just a symptom," she said. "But what are you actually trying to do?"

Who drives transformation

Napier said she wants to make sure young women are brought along on the journey her agency and others are on.

"We need to make sure we're finding ways to bring them in and [for] clients to pay for them because they are our future, but they can help us transform AI much faster than probably anyone in this room," she said.

She also called for agencies and brands to shoulder the shift together, citing the economics of enterprise AI adoption.

"These tools cost a lot of money; they cost a lot of money to train… we need to partner on this AI revolution," she said.

Webster, whose agency Walrus currently uses AI mainly for internal value and client delivery, put the stakes bluntly: "This is a time of major disruption, but [also] so much opportunity if you're flexible enough to take advantage of it."

Her teams already run AI tools in daily production. "It's [helping us] respond to an RFP, or negotiate a contract, and our creative teams have Nano Banana and Runway, and Midjourney," she said.

Disruption with precedent

The roundtable's premise acknowledged that agencies have weathered squeezes on fees and shifting client demands before — and that adaptation is already moving fast.

The panelists' shared bet is that the agencies best positioned for the next twelve months are those that pair new tools with investment in people, from upskilling programs to protecting entry-level talent. As Napier put it, the younger generation "can help us transform AI much faster" than the leaders making today's budget decisions.