How do you adapt strategy fast enough to keep up with digital advertising without the work getting sloppy? Work in short sprints, but keep the strategy outside them. Tactics should move in days or weeks. The audience, the core tension and the definition of success should move deliberately, and the checks that keep work honest should be automated so they never get skipped.
Plenty of agencies are already selling speed as the product. Campaign US calls it "a constant hustle": agencies selling fixed sprints measured in days or weeks instead of months-long projects or agency-of-record retainers. Beers With Friends works in five-day sprints. X&O runs sprints from four days to three months, averaging three to four weeks, and says it has "zero client retention" because clients come back several times a year rather than signing AOR contracts. It has even recast AOR as "Answers On Repeat".
What is the agency sprint model?
A sprint is a fixed, short engagement focused on one client problem and one set of outputs. According to Campaign US, the agencies using it share a few habits: one client and one project at a time, clients heavily involved throughout, and repeat hiring instead of a retainer. Gus, another agency in the piece, uses sprints selectively and sizes each one to the request and its deliverables.
The appeal is obvious. Clients get answers in the time it takes a traditional agency to schedule the kick-off. The agency gets focus and a clear finish line. Campaign notes that the model changes how agencies think about pricing, utilisation and retention.
It is not easy. X&O's Brett Banker calls it a "big bet operationally", and his co-founder Eric Segal says the pace "keeps us honest, hungry and it forces us to continually deliver."
Why does speed so often cost strategy?
Because under time pressure, teams cut the slow, invisible work first. Picture a five-day sprint run badly. Monday is the brief. Tuesday to Thursday is making. Friday is the presentation. The competitor check was squeezed into a Monday-morning skim. The audience read was whatever the team remembered from the last project. Nobody wrote down how success would be measured.
The output looks fine. Nobody can say why it should work. The next sprint starts from scratch, and the one after that quietly contradicts the first.
That is the real risk of speed. Not bad work, but unconnected work: a string of sharp tactics with no strategy holding them together.
Why it keeps happening: cultural lag
Social change theory has a useful idea for this. The sociologist William Ogburn called it cultural lag: technology changes quickly, the norms and institutions around it change slowly, and the gap between them causes strain.
Agencies live in that gap. Platforms, formats and AI tools change monthly. Approval chains, timesheets, scopes of work and reporting rituals change yearly, if that. Teams bridge the gap with heroics: late nights, skipped steps, the research that will be done "next time".
The insight we keep coming back to is simple: in the pursuit of speed, let not integrity be the casualty. Slowing down is not the answer. Rebuilding the rigour so it runs at the new speed is.
How do I run sprints without breaking strategy?
- Write a strategy spine that lasts a quarter. One page: the audience, the core tension, the positioning and what success means. Sprints can challenge the spine, but they should not silently rewrite it.
- Start every sprint with fresh evidence on day one. Competitor activity, audience conversation and last sprint's results should be waiting when the sprint opens, not assembled by a junior on day three.
- Keep the room small. Banker told Campaign US that too many stakeholders who need to buy into the direction "slow us down". Agree upfront who decides, and keep everyone else informed rather than involved.
- Ship every output with a reason. One line per deliverable: which part of the spine it serves and what evidence supports it.
- End with measurement, not just a deck. Decide what you will check, when, and what result would make you stop.
- Keep a learning log. If clients come back several times a year, "zero retention" must not mean zero memory. Record what each sprint found so the next one starts ahead.
What should I speed up, and what should I protect?
Not all work deserves the same pace. Split it deliberately.
| Work | Make it fast | Keep it human |
|---|---|---|
| Competitor monitoring | Always-on, automated tracking | Deciding which moves matter |
| Audience research | Live conversation feeds | Choosing the tension to build on |
| Performance reporting | Automated assembly of the numbers | Explaining why results moved |
| Asset production | Automated resizing and versioning | The idea and the craft |
| Status updates | Short written updates | The conversation about direction |
Where do AI agents fit in a sprint?
The middle column of that table is where agents belong. Monthly reports, competitor audits, status meetings and manual resizing are chores. They need doing, but they do not need your best people.
Defy Agents are built for exactly this: agentic workflows that take on repetitive delivery such as reporting, monitoring and resizing, so people can focus on the work that wins. SAMY, a global influencer agency, used them to cut performance reporting from three days to one. For an agency running five-day sprints, getting two days back would be the difference between rushing the thinking and doing it properly.
Agents also make rigour cheap. When the competitor read and the results summary are produced automatically, there is no excuse to skip them. You can see how agents connect to monitoring and analysis across the Defy platform.
Is the sprint model right for my agency?
It suits problems with a clear question and a clear end: a launch idea, a positioning refresh, a campaign concept, a fast response to a competitor's move. It suits agencies with senior people who can make decisions quickly, because sprints leave little room for layers of review.
It suits always-on work less well. Media management, CRM programmes and community management depend on continuity. Many agencies will end up with a hybrid: retainers for the always-on base, sprints for the questions that cannot wait.
Either way, the rule holds. Move fast on tactics. Move deliberately on strategy. Automate the chores that tempt you to skip the checks.
