‘2025 Is the Year of Now’: Sir Martin Sorrell on AI’s Impending Breakout Year and Why Nvidia Is Undervalued

Sir Martin Sorrell

Artificial intelligence is often described as the next Industrial Revolution and S4 Capital Executive Chairman Sir Martin Sorrell believes 2025 is going to be the year it will finally take off. In this interview with FutureWeek, Sorrell, the founder and former CEO of advertising titan WPP, breaks down how AI is reshaping the industry, interrogates the sky-high valuations of companies like Nvidia and explores the challenges and opportunities ahead, offering his vision for how companies can embrace AI to stay competitive. 

This conversation has been edited for concision, clarity and flow. 

Where do you see the value of AI in terms of use cases? 

Sir Martin Sorrell: I think we see AI affecting five areas: visualisation and copywriting, hyper-personalisation at scale, media planning and buying, general efficiency, and, the most exciting, the democratisation of knowledge.

  1. Visualisation and copywriting: AI is changing the work of art directors and copywriters. The simple truth is that time-to-market has been drastically reduced, which means there will be fewer roles in these areas, but those who remain will be more effective. For an industry that sells time, it has brought pressure from procurement departments, who rightly say ‘if it takes you less time, charge us less.’
  2. Hyper-personalisation at scale: I call this ‘Netflix on steroids.’ We’re seeing huge interest in that. You need to shift from selling time to charging for output. While the price of assets might fall, the number that are used increases exponentially, so if you charge on an output basis, which is what you should do, that’s an improvement and revenues increase. That’s a huge thing.
  3. Media planning and buying: In its infancy but the industry is a trillion dollar industry, dominated by digital. The investment industry doesn’t do things semi-manually or semi-automatically, they do things algorithmically. What we’re going to see is a significant reduction in employment in media planning and buying. Instead of having a large teams of media planners, agencies will monitor the output of algorithms. The agencies will have to work much more closely with platforms, who, in turn, will be working much more closely with clients. So a big revolution coming. The quality of outputs planners will be using will improve, but there workforce will be smaller.
  4. General efficiency: There are huge, huge opportunities for the industry here. We’re seeing lots of reductions in cost and improvements in efficiency both at the client level and the agency. A great example is reducing the costs of outside broadcasting by 80 or 90% through partnerships with AWS, Adobe, and Nvidia.
  5. Democratisation of knowledge: I think this is the most exciting. It’s like the internet, right? AI enables organisations to make knowledge instantly available. It makes for a more effective and flatter organisation. It’s no accident that leaders like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang have embraced these flatter structures.

As for use cases, we’re not really seen adoption at scale. The exception here is General Motors. They’re doing extremely well and we’ve seen an extraordinary change in the way they’re doing their marketing.

Obviously, you’ve mentioned there will be fewer jobs. What do you think about the risk of job losses in the industry?

There’s job loss and job gain, right? Some areas lose, others gain. My own view is that, on a net basis, and talking about this generally economically, is that we’ll end up having more holidays—but we’ll see.

How are clients viewing AI? Are they seeing it mostly as a cost-saving tool or are they willing to pay for improved services?

It’s a bit too early to tell. People have workshops, they’ve got tests, they’ve got pilots, but going all, in it’s too early to tell.

I look at 2023 as being ‘Wow,’ 2024 as being ‘How,’ and 2025 as being ‘Now,” with broader adoption. That’s what I’d like to see.

Are there any misconceptions about AI in the industry that you keep coming up against?

There’s a lot of trepidation and obviously a lot of fear about AI, particularly at middle management levels. I think use cases are critically important, like with GM. I think there’s a lot of frustration because it’s early days but the key has to be application across the organisation, at scale. What we’re seeing at the moment is application in individual pockets of organisations. I’m talking about wholesale adaptation.

What do you make of the valuations for some of the leading AI companies like OpenAI, Perplexity and Nvidia?

Who knows, really? We’ve seen ebbs and flows. The market tends to swing too far one way and too far the other. That’s the opportunity. But in terms of the fundamentals at play here, it is huge, it is another Industrial Revolution. It is like electricity, the printing press, the automobile, the internet and smartphones, maybe even more. It’s going to alter the way we do everything.

As for Nvidia. Well, it’s sitting on a what three and a half trillion dollar wrapped to a rocket. You can make an argument it’s expensive, you make an argument it’s cheap. We’ll see. In the fullness of time, my own view is that the AI revolution is so fundamental that Nvidia’s probably undervalued. To support its market valuation and prospects, it will have to have more use cases.

AI has already driven many different industry deals. Any acquisition targets in mind?

No. We’re more focused on what we’re doing and trying to create products around that.

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates

Join thousands of media and marketing professionals by signing up for our newsletter.

"*" indicates required fields

Share

Related Posts

Popular Articles

Featured Posts

Menu