Arthur Sadoun says the industry needs to stop feeding its own doom loop. The 4As chief agrees – but he’s also putting real infrastructure behind the optimism, from self-serve AI tools to a full product rethink.
Justin Thomas-Copeland, chief executive of the 4As, wouldn’t put it quite so bluntly. But after 70 conversations with founders and CEOs since October, he has landed in a broadly similar place: yes, the model is changing fast, but no, this is not an industry in terminal decline.
“I absolutely believe that this industry is here to stay,” he tells The Drum. “It has a great future. It’s just going to be a different shape, a different pace.”
That “different shape” is exactly what he is now building the 4As around.
Less trade body as grand old institution. More service platform, product engine and utility layer for agencies navigating AI, margin pressure and a very different talent market.
It is a notable evolution for an organization now in its 108th year.
From membership body to platform brand
The biggest shift is structural. Thomas-Copeland has stood up a new growth team, effectively creating what he calls “one front door to our portfolio of value creation.”
The idea is simple enough: instead of members navigating events, studies, talent initiatives and partnerships as separate silos, the 4As wants a more coherent commercial and service model.
Research becomes a product. Events become products. Training becomes a product. New tools become products.
“If you think about all the things that we do at the 4As… those really are products,” he says. “We should have a portfolio view of all of our products.”
That thinking is now going much further, with plans to bring in a head of product whose job is to map the full value journey for members and non-members alike.
It’s a surprisingly modern move for a trade body, but probably a necessary one. The old world of sending an email, waiting for a PDF extract and digging through old studies simply does not match the pace agencies now work at.
Which is where the next piece comes in.
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The self-serve AI layer
By the time Cannes Lions rolls around, the 4As plans to beta-launch a new AI-powered self-serve research tool for members.
Built on top of its existing research IP, salary studies and benchmarking data, the platform is designed to give agencies immediate access to answers around things like sector intelligence, pitch economics, salary benchmarking and deliverables pricing.
Thomas-Copeland describes it as “an AI agentic front end” sitting on top of its research services.
In plain English: less rummaging, more utility.
“We know we’re in a world where they need to get it and have at it when they need it,” he says. “So we have to be smart and move to that more self-serve model.”
The tool will include a prompt library, pre-built common queries and access to key findings from major studies, while learning from how members use it over time.
It is the clearest manifestation yet of what he has been calling “4As as a service” – a shift from static membership value to something closer to an always-on operating layer.
And it is only the start. “This tool is going to allow us to start on that journey,” he says. “Then we’ve got ideas already for other tools that we want this to sit on top of.”
The first real play for creatives
The other major evolution is cultural. Historically, the 4As has been strongest at the agency C-suite level. Thomas-Copeland wants to take it deeper into the actual communities doing the work.
For the first time in its 108-year history, he says, the organization is now putting real focus on the creative community itself.
The best example is Gen Jam, a pilot initiative built with partners including New York Festivals, LTX and McCann New York, where multi-agency creative teams came together to learn prompt-to-video tools in real time.
“Normally, creatives do not learn together,” he says. “They don’t want to even be in the same building if they’re from different agencies.”
Yet by lunchtime, teams that had never touched the platform before were already building film and activation ideas.
The significance here goes beyond one workshop. Thomas-Copeland clearly sees this as the start of a broader repositioning around taste, craft and confidence in the AI era.
“There are people who have taste that should commandeer that technology to drive creative solutions for brands,” he says.
That line lands because it gets to the real fault line in the business: production is getting easier, but judgment is becoming more valuable.
The talent squeeze is real
For all the optimism, he is under no illusions about the talent crunch. The disappearance of junior roles is now impossible to ignore. Thomas-Copeland cites reports showing an 8% drop in entry-level roles, with estimates rising to 15% and even 30% depending on whose forecast you read.
“I see that there is a reduction. It is real,” he says.
But what he is hearing from CEOs is less a total retreat from junior hiring and more a reset of expectations.
Those who are still hiring want entry-level talent that can contribute earlier, operate across more hybrid roles and work fluently with AI-assisted workflows from day one.
“They’re redefining what entry level means,” he says. That is both exciting and slightly brutal.
The old apprenticeship logic of easing your way in is giving way to something more accelerated: fewer seats, higher expectations, more visibility, less margin for passengers.
It also raises awkward questions for education and accreditation, which is why the 4As is now looking at new forms of converged upskilling with what Thomas-Copeland calls ‘creative cousins’ – adjacent worlds like fashion, film and music.
The future agency, in his view, will not be built in neat old silos.
Still 20% of GDP
The most refreshing thing about Thomas-Copeland’s take is that it avoids both nostalgia and panic.
He is clear that people are hurting, that job losses are real and that the business is going through an uncomfortable reset. But he is equally clear that advertising remains economically enormous.
“I always quote the 20% of US GDP driven from our industry,” he says. “That’s a big economic multiplier and contributor. We should be proud of that.”
That figure matters because it cuts through the noise. Yes, agency models are being redrawn. Yes, AI is reshaping workflows. Yes, the talent ladder needs rebuilding. But this is still a trillion-dollar global industry and Thomas-Copeland’s bet is that its institutions need to evolve at the same speed as its members.
That means products, not just programs. Utility, not just membership. Platform thinking, not just heritage.
Sadoun may be right that adland needs to stop talking itself down. The more interesting question is who is actually building the scaffolding for what comes next.
Right now, Thomas-Copeland seems determined that the 4As will be one of them.