Schafer Condon Carter (SCC) is leaning further into its challenger-brand positioning with a new AI-focused speaker series that asks a question many agencies and marketers are still struggling to answer:
What if companies are thinking about AI all wrong?
Last week, the independent Chicago agency hosted an AI Summit at its offices featuring Jim Lecinski, the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management marketing professor and co-author of The AI Marketing Canvas who recently joined SCC as Senior Advisor focused on AI strategy and growth.
And according to Lecinski, one of the biggest reasons AI adoption has stalled across marketing organizations isn’t technological.
It’s philosophical.
“Two-thirds of company CMOs who are employing AI are applying it for efficiencies and not growth,” Lecinski explained during the presentation.
That distinction became a central theme throughout the summit. While much of the broader business conversation around AI remains dominated by automation, cost-cutting, and productivity gains, Lecinski argued challenger brands and challenger agencies have an opportunity to approach the technology differently, using it as a growth engine rather than simply a way to do existing work faster.
That mindset aligns naturally with SCC’s positioning as an agency built around challenger brands looking to disrupt larger incumbents.
According to Lecinski, the companies seeing the strongest AI results are treating it less like a tool and more like an operational system woven directly into decision-making, planning, and business strategy.
“AI is NOT a tool,” Lecinski stressed. “It’s a system.” The presentation broke AI implementation into several key areas, including identifying clear use cases, developing a roadmap, and maintaining the discipline required to scale AI effectively throughout an organization.
Importantly, Lecinski emphasized that the strongest AI strategies begin by identifying who actually benefits from implementation, whether internally, externally, or both, and ensuring growth remains central to the objective.
He also outlined a five-stage roadmap for successful adoption, beginning with foundational data collection before progressing through experimentation, expansion, transformation, and, eventually, monetization.
And despite all the conversation surrounding platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, or Google’s Gemini ecosystem, Lecinski argued the technology itself is only part of the equation. The more critical piece may actually be human judgment. Watch below:
One of the summit’s strongest takeaways was that AI makes craft more important, not less. For agencies specifically, that means doubling down on creative judgment, strategic thinking, and taste.
Because ultimately, somebody still has to decide whether the conclusions generated by AI actually make sense for the brand, audience, or business problem at hand.
In other words, AI may generate options. But humans still need to know what good looks like.
That perspective feels particularly relevant as agencies across the industry race to publicly embrace AI while privately wrestling with what the technology means for creativity, staffing, workflows, and client expectations long term.
SCC’s summit suggests the agency wants to position itself less as an AI hype machine and more as a guide for brands navigating the increasingly messy intersection of technology, growth, and creativity.
That may be the smarter lane right now.
Because at this stage, most companies don’t need another LinkedIn post claiming AI will “change everything.”
They need someone who can explain how to use it without losing what made their brand valuable in the first place.
ALSO READ:
Old National Bank sends a message only a Bears fan can love
