We got faster. We just can’t charge for it.

Everyone is asking the same two questions

Ask Couto what has changed and he describes a mood rather than a trend. “I think the biggest difference is AI,” he says. “Everyone is thinking one, or both, of two things. How can I implement AI in my workflow? Will AI replace our business — marketing, media creation, design?”

What clients want has moved in one direction only: “faster and faster delivery.” What they want less of is expensive work. Higher-budget productions are being commissioned less often than they were.

And they are doing more of it themselves. Asked whether clients are bringing this work in-house, his answer is two words. “Yes, definitely.”

It took everything around the work, but not the work

There is no mention of AI anywhere on the agency’s website, which turns out to be a position rather than an omission. “AI is a tool we use, together with many other tools. I don’t think we mention the other tools we use on our site. It’s not about the tools, it is about results. There’s no secret — we are all using AI.”

What it does inside the agency is a long and entirely unglamorous list: analysis of financial documents and budgets, IT support, automated processes, administrative tasks, photo retouching, legal support work, and video and audio transcripts. Where it quietly cost them was heavier media work — intensive image processing, video, audio creation, cataloguing footage.

What it failed at goes to the centre of the business. “Creating content from scratch. We tried several tools, only as an experiment. We ended up with results that sometimes looked good, but a more demanding evaluation always revealed results that were not up to our standards.”

Clients do sometimes ask for something generated rather than shot, and his answer to that is one few agencies will say out loud. “People think you can do anything, with production quality, in AI, but we are actually not there yet — and sometimes it can get even more expensive to do something with AI.”

The same goes for the production budget line most people assume has already gone. Stock, retouching, voiceover, music: “We have tried, but none was replaced. The quality is not there yet.” Nobody has yet asked him to avoid AI altogether, though he expects it. “Not yet, but I do expect that might start to happen soon.”

He puts the whole argument most clearly when asked about something much smaller — whether he ever shoots on a phone. He does, rarely, for a few seconds of B-roll or when the moment arrives and the phone is what is in his hand. But the line itself has not moved. “An amateur can make good content with a smartphone, better than ever with any tool, including a professional kit. A professional can do much better work with a proper kit, every day.”

Being under budget is a problem too

The agency’s own website sells three things: criatividade, rapidez, experiência. Creativity, speed, experience. AI has improved all three, Couto says, and speed most of all. Then the part that stings. “It is more difficult to charge for being fast. Being fast is the new normal.”

Which leaves the estimate as the thing that decides whether a job makes money. “Yes, all the time,” he says, asked whether tracked time has changed a decision. “We created a budget for a project that we thought would take 200 hours and, in the end, we realised it took double the time, or half.”

Most owners would stop at the overrun. He does not, and the second half of the sentence is the more interesting one. “If we are over budget, we are losing money. But if we are under budget, we might be losing clients.” Quoting too high is its own kind of failure, and unlike the overrun it leaves no trace — the job simply goes somewhere else. “Only with accurate time tracking can we solve this.”

On his own commercial model he is disarming rather than polished. The way he charges has not changed much in two years, “but maybe that’s my mistake.” Asked which business metric he watches more closely now: “Not sure. I should pay more attention to metrics.”

Fewer tools, and one integration that ended the spreadsheets

The direction of travel is subtraction. “The biggest difference is an effort to reduce the variety of tools we use, especially productivity tools.” Zoom, ChatGPT and Microsoft 365 all went, replaced by Google Workspace. Two marketing tools, Swonkie and Adzooma, were shut down “because native tools from the platforms are working better, and implementing AI in the user interface.”

The bill is down this year, and he is careful not to give AI the credit. “Our software bill is getting cheaper this year, but it has nothing to do with AI. It’s about reducing redundancy.”

Asana was chosen for a reason worth repeating to anyone picking one: “the balance between functionality and user interface. It had what we needed in a UI that was built for regular users, not engineers.”

What that pairing removed was a whole category of work nobody misses. “The integration between Everhour and Asana was one of our biggest achievements in the last two years, drastically reducing the use of XLS and Sheets.”

“No, not an inch”

The agency is small and intends to stay that way. “Yes, we are, proudly, a small agency. There are no plans to change that.” The team shifted a little over two years — more focus on productivity and efficiency, and training weighted towards automation and AI. Juniors are still being hired, and asked whether what makes one stand out has changed, he declines to perform an opinion he does not have: “It is too soon for me to say. Maybe it did, but I don’t want to be unfair.”

Asked whether AI has changed what he expects from a good employee, the answer is four words long. “No, not an inch.”

His reasoning for why comes out in the last question, about what humans will still be doing in five years. “AI doesn’t build from scratch. It builds upon a knowledge base, just like any human — that’s true. But what has always distinguished humans is the ability to generate something new from a shared knowledge base. This genius, I can’t see how technology could replace it. But only time will tell.”

Which may be why the things he actually wants automated are so far from the creative work. Selecting the best photographs from a shoot, and the best takes from two hundred hours of footage. And then, unprompted: driving; turning off a tap when nobody is using the water, “especially with my children, and the same with the lights”; watering each plant with the right amount, adjusted for its growth, the air temperature and the humidity.

Seven short ones

One industry cliché you don’t believe any more?

“Video killed the radio stars.”

Which piece of common advice in your industry is wrong?

That a new technology will automatically make the previous one obsolete.

One thing every agency should stop doing?

Dramatically lowering prices.

One thing you wish you had started earlier?

Therapy.

Something you would never automate?

New ideas.

One tool you couldn’t run the business without?

Asana.

A prediction two years out you’d bet money on?

Interactions between humans will be valued.