Finding Volume in Value

In a world of AI, our ability to spot value in the volume is all-important.

This week I completed a research project into Gen Z Football fans in five minutes. It won’t surprise you to hear that I used AI – the newly released Deep Research Agent in WPP Open.

It was genuinely impressive unpacking how modern fans consume the game as well as deeper themes around belonging and identity. The output was comparable to a deep dive I worked on in the lead-up to the 2018 World Cup. It took six people six weeks.

As you can imagine, this raised some fairly existential questions. In a world where the machine can do in minutes what I do in weeks, what’s my worth? But I realised that the true skill isn’t in the compiling of the information (or even in its prompting). It is spotting the gold, the value in the volume, the really compelling insights that illuminate the subject, informing new and exciting ways forward. And (just as importantly) its limitations – where the AI had fallen into the clichéd, the predictable, or just the plain wrong.

I was reminded of the (almost certainly apocryphal) story of Picasso and the napkin. He was approached in a café by a fan who asked for a sketch. He obliged, doodling a goat on a napkin for which he promptly asked for 1 million Francs. Taken aback, the fan pointed out that the drawing had only taken a minute, to which Picasso replied "My dear, it took me a lifetime to be able to draw this."

The research may have taken 5 minutes, but its value is only realised when a creative strategy perspective (in my case 20+ years' worth) is applied to it. This, in turn, raises some thorny questions about time, FTE-based remuneration models, and how we train the gold-spotters of the future at a moment when our industry increasingly appears to regard junior talent as unnecessary.

But, I believe (with my fingers tightly crossed) that just as Picasso’s unique way of seeing the world meant that he thrived despite the existence of modern means of visual reproduction, so our ability to identify value in volume will sustain