Global marketing and consulting firm Monks positions itself as a powerhouse in content, data, media, and technology. With innovation deeply embedded in its DNA, it’s no surprise that co-founder and newly appointed Chief AI and Revenue Officer, Wesley Ter Haar, embraces AI with optimism.
In this interview, Wesley shares how AI is transforming Monks’ operations and what its broader impact will be on the industry.
How are you using AI at Monks?
We integrate AI APIs and models in ways that productise solutions for our industry and clients. Our partnerships with Adobe, Runway, and Stability AI focus heavily on image and video generation, starting with Google’s VO2.
Google’s Gemini stack is particularly strong in video understanding – an advantage that’s sometimes overlooked but is currently unmatched in the market. While we use Claude for specific tasks, DeepSeek stands out. Its open-source reasoning capabilities are approaching AGI-like performance, which is both unexpected and impressive.
Ultimately, we use a wide range of AI models, staying flexible and unbound to any single provider. We’re enthusiastic about Google’s advancements but always exploring the next breakthrough. With billions in AI investment, we get to adopt the best new API as soon as it outperforms the last – and that’s what makes this space so exciting.
Internally, we have Monk Flow – a productised technology stack launched 13 months ago – designed to optimise high-value workflows, both internally at Monks and for our clients. By standardising workflows, Monk Flow enhances productivity, speed, efficiency, and scalability.
How is AI transforming the creative industry, and what role will agencies play in its evolution?
While AI often sparks anxiety in our industry, it should be seen as an opportunity. As a creative field, the potential to create more, faster, is exciting. Our “real-time brands” approach uses data-driven reasoning to streamline production, not by replacing people, but by collapsing silos and optimising workflows. Currently, much of this applies to large-scale digital marketing tasks like translation and transcreation, allowing us to produce more content at speed and scale.
What’s next is agentic creativity – AI moving beyond execution to ideation, with Python and creative agents conceptualising brand content in real time. Some clients are already using these workflows to ideate hero content before producing it through AI pipelines. This technology enables real-time brand operation.
The next evolution is called an ‘orchestration partner’, where AI integrates seamlessly into organisations. With AGI potentially two years away – some reasoning models are already exceeding human capabilities – the challenge will be implementation: how to embed these innovations within enterprise structures.
Our role is to bridge that gap, helping clients integrate AI into their workflows, data systems, and business processes. Some solutions enhance digital marketing speed, while others apply AI more deeply within the enterprise.
Are these products being applied to your work with clients?
We’ve reduced manual labour by 70-80% simply by leveraging existing AI models intelligently – and that’s the real takeaway.
A few years from now, we may look back and think, “Wasn’t it crazy that half our day was spent copying and pasting, waiting on tasks, sifting through 100 emails, or managing calendars?” Many tasks we now consider “work” will require far less, if any, human effort.
Our main focus with clients is optimising workflows – not by cutting headcount, but by freeing talented people from low-value tasks. Instead of spending 30-60% of their time on administrative work, they can focus on what they were actually hired to do. AI-powered agentic assistants help offload repetitive tasks, allowing teams to be more efficient, creative, and impactful.
How are you using AI agents at Monks?
Every white-collar services business will face pressure from agentic workloads this year, with real scale hitting next year.
Take the creative process as an example – we’re not replacing creatives, but empowering executive creative directors (ECDs) with 100 AI-driven creative directors that generate ideas through agentic workflows that ingest and verify data. Machines can produce a vast number of ideas, but the challenge is identifying the great ones.
To refine this, we deploy specialised AI agents: one analyses cultural climate, another mimics the ECD’s style, others represent the consumer, industry award juries, and more. These agents filter thousands of ideas into a high-quality subset, which is then reviewed by human creatives – where instinct and nuance still play an important role.
With 60-70% of the process automated, we’re seeing a fundamental shift in how our business and industry operate. These systems are already in use for pitches and projects. Just last week, in a comparison between a purely human-driven process and a human-AI hybrid approach, the hybrid consistently delivered better results.
Have you faced any internal backlash from AI integration?
The key is being proactive and transparent – almost two years ago, we openly discussed AI’s potential impact and what we expected to unfold.
We recognise that AI will reshape talent dynamics and organisational structures, so we’re approaching this with serious intent. Our focus is on navigating this shift in the best possible way, ensuring our team is prepared, and ultimately turning this foundational moment into an opportunity to win.
What do you think will be the impact of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)?
It’s surprising that there isn’t more high-level discussion around it. The term AGI itself is subject to shifting goalposts and debates over whether a system truly qualifies. But regardless, we are rapidly approaching a reality where AI agents will outperform most people at most tasks.
In an industry that is highly short-term and financially driven, the combination of advanced AI capabilities and economic incentives seems almost certain to lead to significant job displacement. It’s hard to imagine a different outcome, and it’s a conversation that needs to be had more openly.
What kind of impact do you see AI having on the agency business model?
I think our industry’s commercial model is dead. I don’t think you can bill for time and material realistically and be relevant. I think not all of that will change at the same time, and it will take time to change courses, but our most modern clients are changing the commercial model with us.
This shift will reshape talent needs – both in skill sets and workforce size. Ultimately, most businesses are built around talent, and this evolution makes that even more interesting.
Smaller companies will likely compete with larger ones more effectively than ever before. While the full impact may take three to four years to unfold, the industry is already in transition – it’s just a matter of time.
How do you think AI is going to disrupt the traditional structure of an agency?
AI will likely push more work in-house, but in the short term, it’s beneficial for agencies. Since AI innovation is new, clients often turn to third parties for expertise. While consultancies have taken a share of digital transformation work, AI-driven creativity offers agencies a stronger foothold in shaping the future.
Traditional large-scale production models no longer make sense under the old time-and-materials approach. Instead, agencies will evolve into strategic partners, helping clients implement AI-driven workflows, manage pipelines, and train their teams to run them effectively.
This shift will also reshape agency structures – moving toward smaller, integrated teams rather than large groups of generalists or specialists. AI-powered agent expertise will enable leaner teams to deliver high-quality creative output more efficiently than ever before.
How do you see agency productivity and pricing changing?
We are getting to places where you can get fundamentally better performing output for a lot less spend. It’s that the economics of advertising has changed and moving forward, we’ll see more package-based, license-driven, and software-like pricing models. Our positioning reflects this: clients aren’t just buying creative services, but a combination of proprietary software and the expertise that powers it.
The key differentiator is that our software is built by people who deeply understand its purpose – blending AI capabilities with human creativity. While some may critique AI-generated content as lacking a human touch, the right talent, paired with AI, produces work beyond what’s possible with off-the-shelf digital solutions.
As AI advances and new reasoning models emerge – delivering better results at lower costs – agency pricing will continue to shift. Some services that once formed a core part of industry revenue may become nearly cost-free, redefining how agencies generate value.
What is your outlook on the future of AI ?
It’s a constant balance between excitement and uncertainty. But in our industry, if you’re not excited about this transformation, you’re missing out.
Agencies like ours play a key role in shaping AI’s real-world impact – from how it’s implemented to how it redefines customer interactions in digital environments. We have a unique opportunity to influence how brands go to market with these technologies, ensuring they are used in ways that are both innovative and meaningful.
