The Anti-Generic Workshop

Why brilliant agencies are losing work to AI, and how to defend it

Three years in, the agency's inbound had dried up.

Not because the work got worse. The creative was genuinely brilliant - the kind that wins on craft alone. But something had shifted in how clients buy strategy. The founder sat across from me and said it plain: "We used to win pitches on our thinking. Now every client runs our ideas through ChatGPT first. Half the time they say thanks, we've got this, and they do it themselves."

This is the work that gets commoditised first.

It's not execution. It's not the craft. It's the thinking layer. Clients used to buy what an agency founder knows. Now they buy what an AI can generate in five minutes, iterated twice, and called close enough.

The irony is brutal: the brilliance that made the agency's reputation is the exact thing that's now being replaced by cheaper, faster, worse-but-good-enough tools.

The problem nobody's naming

Here's what I started seeing across multiple agencies. The best ones - the founders with genuine taste and real thinking - were losing work to generic workflows. Not to other agencies. To ChatGPT prompts and mid-market consultancies that had pivoted into "AI-powered strategy."

The agencies that kept winning new business were the ones who'd already moved on from selling strategy and into selling something else. They'd moved into the execution layer. Or the relationship layer. Or the accountability layer. Somewhere AI couldn't touch it yet.

But the brilliant-at-strategy founders were stuck. They'd built their entire reputation on being smart. On having a framework nobody else had. On the thinking.

And now every founder with a laptop has access to the same thinking. Better? No. Cheaper? Absolutely.

One founder I worked with had an insight that stopped me. She said: “The client doesn't want to hear that I'm smarter than an AI. They want to hear that I'm doing something an AI can't.

That’s your in.

What the workshop actually is

This is where the anti-generic workshop comes in. It's not a pitch deck. It's not a process deck. It's not a way to sell more of the old thing.

It's a reframe of what the agency actually defends.

Here's how it worked with one agency. They brought me in after three months of zero new business. The founder was exhausted, the pipeline was dead, and every prospect conversation ended the same way: "Can you just brainstorm with us? Our team and your team?" Which is code for: we'll do the strategy ourselves if you give us the framework.

I asked her: what's the one thing an AI cannot do for this client?

She thought about it. Thought about her best clients, the ones who actually moved the needle. She said: "They need someone to tell them no. To push back when they're solving the wrong problem. To force them to think about their actual customer, not the shiny thing they saw on LinkedIn."

That's not a thinking layer. That's a friction layer.

We built a workshop around that. Two hours. The agency founder, the client's leadership team, and one hard question: what problem are we actually trying to solve?

The workshop isn't about the agency showing off how smart they are. It's about the agency proving they understand the client's world well enough to push back. To see the thing the client can't see. To add friction where the client wants to add speed.

It's not generic because it starts from a real place. It's not a template. It's not something you'd get from a ChatGPT prompt called "strategic workshop agenda." It's specific to that founder's taste, their frameworks, their track record of fixing the right problem.

How it changes the funnel

The workshop did three things.

First, it moved the conversation from "we need strategy" to "we need someone who understands our world well enough to challenge us." That's a different buyer. That's not someone shopping for the cheapest thinking. That's someone who's already tried the cheap thinking and knows it doesn't work.

Second, it gave the founder permission to charge. A strategy engagement? That's getting commoditised. A two-hour workshop where the founder uses 20 years of taste to prove they understand the client's blind spot? That’s an appropriately costed workshop - and every client paid for it.

Third, it became the gateway. After the workshop, the client either went away (wrong fit, doesn't want real feedback) or they came back asking for the full engagement. The workshop had done the qualifying work. The agency knew the client could handle being challenged. The client knew the agency wasn't going to disappear after the pitch.

Within three months, the pipeline filled up. Not because the agency got smarter. Because they stopped trying to sell what AI could now do cheaper, and started selling what only they could do: the friction.

The pattern that keeps working

I've seen this across five or six agencies now. The ones who are winning new business right now aren't winning on faster thinking or bigger ideas. They're winning on the part of the work that requires years to build: taste. Judgment. The ability to see the thing the client is missing.

An AI can generate a thousand strategic options. It cannot tell you which one matters.

An AI can build a roadmap. It cannot tell you when to stop and rethink the whole thing.

An AI can write the brief. It cannot push back when the brief is solving for the wrong problem.

That's the work that sells right now. Not the thinking. The friction.

The anti-generic workshop is just the shape that friction takes. For one agency, it might be different. Maybe it's a one-on-one diagnostic. Maybe it's a sprint. Maybe it's a single conversation where the founder asks three questions and proves they see something the client's entire team missed.

The shape changes. The principle doesn't.

The principle is: if your pitch is generic enough that a client could replace it with an AI prompt, your pitch is already dead.

Your only defensible position is the thing that requires you.

What this means

If you're a founder-led agency watching new business dry up, and you're seeing clients shop your ideas through ChatGPT before they decide, this is the moment to ask: what do I actually defend?

It's probably not what you think it is. It's probably not the thing you're selling.

It's the thing only you can do because you've been doing it for 15 years and you've built taste around it. It's the question you've learned to ask at exactly the right moment. It's the pressure you put on a half-baked idea that makes the client rethink the whole thing.

That's where the new business lives now.

Not in the thinking layer. In the judgment layer. In the friction.

And if you can show a client what that friction looks like - not in a pitch deck, but in a real interaction where they feel the push back and realise it's exactly what they needed - they'll stop shopping around.

They'll stop running your ideas through ChatGPT.

They'll pay you to be the voice that says no.