On 17 August, we will be hosting an informal discussion forum for strategy leaders exploring how AI is changing agency life. From recruitment and efficiency to team morale, client relationships and the future value of strategic thinking.

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It will be open to Heads of Department and strategy managers, and the session will be an opportunity to share experiences, challenges and ideas.

Wind back to last December. 

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I was worried. The mood I sensed from the planning community was one of declining influence. 

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That all sorts of forces are conspiring to make the job harder and more complicated.

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And narrower. 

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It felt like we were being pushed further down the strategy food chain to coalesce, at worst, around just making and tweaking.

Not influencing at the level of our clients’ business.

We’re a thoughtful bunch and it’s easy sometimes to over-think. 

The role has been "underfunded, rushed and reduced to frameworks rather than applying quality, human thinking", according to Pippa Glucklich.

The APG is a not-for-profit organisation run for and by its members: primarily account planners in advertising agencies, but increasingly the wider community of communications strategists, including media planners, channel planners and digital planners.

Martin Beverley will share his thoughts on starting a company from a strategist's perspective. He will draw on his recent experiences and reveal some tips for anyone thinking about starting their own business. He will also attempt to answer any questions that anyone has.

Martin is one of the founders of Ace of Hearts. He was previously CSO at adam&eveDDB, which was named APG's 'strategy agency of the year' 4 times in a row. He was also the Co-Chair of the APG 2024-25.

The MPG sits alongside the APG and is the new home for media planners and strategists. It will run an extensive programme of activity covering training courses, debates and 'how to' guides designed to unpack the fundamentals of media planning, encourage independent, critical thinking, and provide a view on the world of comms and media that is universal, rooted in decades of experience and insight.

On Tuesday night the APG hosted a brilliant Noisy Thinking event featuring four very smart, very human and very AI-forward strategy minds exploring the ‘New Strategy Alchemy’, answering the question ‘How can we best combine our unique human skills with AI to help make us all better, not worse?’