A social post that once went to an agency can now be made by a brand’s own designer. So can a campaign adaptation, a presentation, a performance ad or a dozen versions of the same creative.
Canva ended 2025 with 260 million people using the platform every month, while Adobe’s current Creative Cloud Pro offering includes more than 20 creative apps. Figma, meanwhile, has expanded its platform further into AI, prototyping and product development. Then there are tools such as Midjourney, Runway, Synthesia, Microsoft Designer and Adobe Firefly, which are making image and video production considerably more accessible.
The most obvious shift is happening at the production end. “High volume, high frequency output is moving in-house, and quite reasonably so. Social calendars, festive creatives, template-driven adaptations and resizing a campaign across multiple formats benefit from proximity and speed,” says Masuma Siddique, Founder and Chief Strategist, InkCraft Communications.
Rohit Dhamija, Founder & Creative Director, Goodness of Design and Digital, sees a similar pattern. “In-house teams can be effective for high-volume, everyday requirements such as adaptations, performance assets and routine social content,” he says.
For brands, the logic is straightforward. If a designer can take an existing campaign and create ten social formats internally in a few hours, sending every adaptation to an agency adds another layer of time and cost.
“At Policybazaar, our in-house design teams understand the product, users, business and organisational history, which is critical for complex journeys that require cross-functional collaboration,” says Anuj Kapur, Head – App Business and Head of Design, Policybazaar.
But the tools are not the talent
The democratisation of production does not necessarily mean the democratisation of creative capability. A brand designer and an agency designer may open the same software, but that does not mean they bring the same experience, perspective or judgement to the brief.
“Tools such as Canva, Adobe, Figma and AI are enablers; the quality of the outcome still depends on the person using them,” says Dhamija.
For him, the value of design lies in decisions that software cannot make on its own, from typography and composition to imagery, hierarchy and tone. The challenge for agencies, therefore, is to stop selling production time as the primary value proposition.
Ronita Mukerjee, Executive Director, Client Services, Landor, says this does not eliminate the need for specialist partners. “AI is great at setting the baseline. For businesses to succeed, they need to move beyond the baseline, and that is where agencies come in.”
The new agency premium
If brands can produce more themselves, agencies have to justify what sits above production. For Kapur, that advantage comes down to two things: fresh ideas and speed.
“Agencies have the advantage of accumulated learning. They work across brands and categories, so when a new technology or format comes along, they may already know what works and what doesn’t. An in-house team would take longer to build that knowledge,” says Kapur.
The other advantage, he says, is speed to market, particularly for work that requires more than just design skills.
“Take personalised creatives. An in-house team may have the capability to create the asset, but building the entire pipeline around data, generating thousands of versions, hosting the images and running quality checks can take a lot of effort. For an agency that already has that infrastructure, it can be turned around in hours or days,” he says.
For Siddique, the bigger question is what the technology cannot solve. “Tools have made production faster, but they haven’t made thinking easier. They can help create an asset, but they can’t tell you what it should say, who it should speak to, why it matters now or what it needs to achieve,” she says.
Strategy alone won’t save agencies
As brands take more routine work in-house, agencies could increasingly find themselves being called in for strategy and ideas. But strategy and execution do not always sit as neatly apart as that. “I do not see agencies becoming strategy-only partners because strategy and execution cannot be separated,” says Dhamija.
For Siddique, staying involved in execution is what keeps an agency’s thinking grounded. “Strategy without execution tends to drift. You lose the feedback loop that tells you whether an idea actually worked,” she says.
Mukerjee sees another layer between the two. “There is a step between strategy and execution – original and impactful design and experiences. There is still room and need for specialist partners who can craft the strategy and bring it to life in a meaningful way in service of the business,” she says.
The work moving away from agencies, then, is not execution as a whole. It is the routine and repeatable work that brands can handle faster and more economically themselves.
The production layer gets cheaper
The economics are changing too. AI and accessible design platforms have made it possible to produce more assets with fewer people and in less time. That puts pressure on agencies that have historically charged for hours, headcount or production volume.
“Agencies priced time because time roughly tracked value. AI has broken that link. If something that was billed as two days can now be done in two hours, that model falls apart,” says Priyank Dattani, Associate Creative Director, White Rivers Media.
The question, Dattani says, is shifting from how many assets an agency can produce to which ones are actually worth making. “AI can produce a lot of options, but it does not know which one deserves the client’s money. That judgement still has to come from somewhere,” he adds.
Dhamija similarly believes agencies need to demonstrate the value of the thought, craft and consistency behind the output rather than simply charging for the number of assets produced.
What remains valuable is the part of the work that cannot be reduced to a tool or a template: fresh ideas, specialist expertise, judgement, relationships, strategic clarity and the ability to build a distinctive visual language.
The agency’s next pitch
Brands are unlikely to bring every piece of creative work in-house. But they may start questioning why they need an agency for work their own teams can turn around in a few hours.
That leaves agencies with a fairly clear challenge. The more accessible production becomes, the less valuable production alone becomes. And hence, what clients pay for next will depend on the thinking, expertise and creative judgement that sits behind the output.
