The question was deliberately uncomfortable: if AI can produce almost anything at almost no marginal cost, what exactly is a client still paying an agency for?
At Communicate A.I. Conference 2026 in Dubai, that question moved from an industry talking point to a live debate.
“The Big Debate: Do You Still Need an Agency?” brought together agency founder Hubert Boulos, Danube Home CEO Sayed Habib, VinFast Middle East CMO Ravi Kiran Cheni, Talabat UAE Director of Marketing, Brand and Growth Jacopo Garino, and Eleveight founder Patrick Samaha.
The session was part of this year’s Communicate AI Conference, held on September 29 at Dubai Knowledge Park Conference Centre under the theme “The Age of Abundance.” The conference, organised by Communicate in partnership with NordStella, focused on a simple but increasingly difficult reality for the marketing industry: AI has made creative production abundant, but it has not made judgement, originality or trust equally abundant.
And that distinction sat at the centre of the agency debate.
For years, agencies have justified their fees through a combination of creative talent, production capabilities, strategic expertise and the ability to bring different specialists together around a client problem.
Generative AI has disrupted almost every part of that equation.
A marketer can now generate campaign concepts, write copy, create images, produce variations and adapt material for different audiences with tools that were unavailable just a few years ago. The traditional relationship between time, manpower and creative output has consequently become harder to price.
The conference organisers framed the challenge bluntly: when creative output becomes effectively free, where does the agency’s value reside?
The presence of senior client-side marketers on the panel made the discussion particularly relevant.
Sayed Habib brought the perspective of Danube Home, where marketing ultimately has to connect with consumers and commercial performance. Ravi Kiran Cheni represented VinFast Middle East, a global automotive brand operating in a region where localisation, digital communication and brand building are all moving quickly. Jacopo Garino added the perspective of Talabat UAE, a platform operating in one of the region’s most competitive and highly digital consumer environments.
On the agency and creative side, Hubert Boulos and Patrick Samaha brought a different set of questions around what agencies can continue to provide when production itself becomes easier.
That distinction matters.
The debate was not simply about whether an AI tool can write an advertisement or generate an image. It was about whether producing the thing is still the main value proposition.
If a client can generate 20 campaign routes before lunch, having an agency generate another 20 may not be particularly valuable. The more important questions become: Which one should the brand pursue? Which one is distinctive? Which one fits the audience? Which one is culturally appropriate? And which one can actually contribute to the business?
That shifts the agency conversation from production towards judgement.
It also puts greater pressure on clients.
AI makes it easier for internal marketing teams to take on work that once required external suppliers. But the technology does not automatically provide the strategic context needed to decide what should be made in the first place.
For MENA, there is another complication.
A significant amount of regional marketing has historically involved adapting international campaigns for local markets. AI can make that adaptation considerably faster and cheaper. The Communicate AI programme therefore extended the question beyond agencies to a broader challenge for the region: if adaptation becomes almost effortless, what should MENA create for itself?
That question was picked up later in the conference during the “Do You Speak AI-rabic?” session, which focused on Arabic-first technology, regional intellectual property, cultural relevance and commercial models originating from the region.
Together, the sessions pointed towards a shift in how creative value is understood.
The first phase of generative AI was largely about demonstrating what machines could make. The next phase is increasingly about deciding what is worth making.
That distinction may become particularly important for agencies.
An agency that competes on production volume alone is now competing against tools that can produce variations almost instantly. An agency that brings cultural knowledge, strategic thinking, distinctive creative direction, specialist expertise and a strong understanding of the client’s business is playing a different game.
The same applies to in-house teams.
The rise of AI does not necessarily mean companies will eliminate agencies. It could mean they become more selective about when they use them. Routine production and adaptation may move internally, while external partners are brought in for major campaigns, brand strategy, specialised creative work, cultural insight or problems that require an outside perspective.
In that sense, the agency of the future may look less like an outsourced production department and more like a specialist strategic partner.
But there is no guarantee that the market will reward every agency for making that transition.
That was perhaps the most interesting tension running through the debate in Dubai. AI is not simply changing how quickly work can be produced. It is forcing both sides of the client-agency relationship to reconsider what constitutes expertise.
The conference itself reflected that wider shift. Other sessions examined AI-generated advertising that failed, investment in AI and entertainment, Arabic innovation, AI in tourism marketing, agentic AI and the growing debate around AI versus human influencers.
The common thread was not that humans are disappearing from marketing.
It was that human value is being redefined.
When production is scarce, production can be sold. When production becomes abundant, something else has to carry the value.
That could be strategy. It could be taste. It could be trust. It could be cultural understanding. It could be original intellectual property. Or it could simply be the ability to recognise a genuinely good idea among thousands of acceptable ones.
For agencies operating across the UAE and wider MENA market, the question is therefore unlikely to disappear after one conference session.
Do clients still need agencies?
The more useful question may be what they need agencies for.
Communicate A.I. Conference 2026 did not make that question any less complicated. It put it directly in front of the people who buy, sell, create and manage marketing work in the region.
And as AI continues to make production cheaper and faster, the answer will increasingly be determined not by how much an agency can produce, but by how much value it can create beyond the production itself.
